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Operations Research




                    Notes          3.  Supply Chain Management: In the area of Supply Chain Management, OR helps in taking
                                       decisions that include the who, what, when, and where abstractions from purchasing and
                                       transporting raw materials and parts, through manufacturing actual products and goods,
                                       and finally distributing and delivering the items to the customers.
                                       The primary objective here is to reduce overall cost while  processing customer orders
                                       more efficiently  than before. The power of utilizing  OR methods  allows examining  a
                                       rather complex and convoluted chain in a comprehensive manner, and to search among a
                                       vast number of combinations for the resource optimization and allocation strategy that
                                       seem most effective, and hence beneficial to the operation.

                                   4.  Retailing: In supermarkets, data from store loyalty card schemes is analyzed by OR groups
                                       to advice on merchandising policies and profitability improvement.

                                       OR methods are also used to decide when and where new store developments should be
                                       made.

                                   5.  Financial Services: In financial markets, OR practitioners address issues such as portfolio
                                       and risk management and planning and analysis of customer service. They are widely
                                       employed in Credit Risk Management—a vital area for lenders needing to ensure that
                                       they find the optimum balance of risk and revenue.

                                       OR techniques are also applied in cash flow analysis and capital budgeting.
                                   6.  Marketing Management:  OR  helps marketing manager in making the apt selection of
                                       product mix. It helps them in making optimum sales resource allocation and assignments.

                                   7.  Human Resource Management: OR techniques are being applied widely in the functional
                                       area of Human Resource Management by helping the human resource managers in activities
                                       like manpower planning, resource allocation, staffing and scheduling of training programs.
                                   8.  General Management: OR helps in designing Decision Support System and management
                                       of information systems, organizational design and control, software process management
                                       and Knowledge Management.
                                   9.  Production systems:  The area  of operations  research that concentrates on  real-world
                                       operational problems is  known as  production systems.  Production systems problems
                                       may  arise  in  settings  that  include,  but  are  not  limited  to,  manufacturing,
                                       telecommunications, health-care delivery, facility location and layout, and staffing.
                                   The area of production systems presents special challenges for operations researchers. Production
                                   problems are operations research problems, hence solving them requires a solid foundation in
                                   operations research fundamentals. Additionally, the solution of production systems problems
                                   frequently draws on expertise in more than one of the primary areas of operations research,
                                   implying that the successful production researcher cannot be one-dimensional.

                                   Production systems problems cannot be solved without an in-depth understanding of the real
                                   problem, since invoking assumptions that simplify the mathematical structure of the problem
                                   may lead to an elegant solution for the wrong problem. Common sense and practical insight are
                                   common attributes of successful production planners.

                                   At the current time, the field of OR is extremely dynamic and ever evolving. To name a few of
                                   the contemporary (primary) research projects, current work in, primarily through the integration
                                   of the philosophies of the Theory of Constraints and Lean Manufacturing.








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