CAM colloquium - Friday, April 25

(Joint with ORIE's D.R. Fulkerson Lecture Series )

NOTE ROOM
3:30 p.m.
B17 Upson Hall

Speaker: Robert E. Bixby, Noah Harding Professor Emeritus of Computational and Applied Mathematics, Rice University

Title: From Planning to Operations: The Ever-Shrinking Optimization Time Horizon

 

Abstract: Operations research techniques such as linear and integer programming have not reached their full business potential. One reason is that
they have traditionally been applied to long-term planning models,where the gap between the solutions provided and the actual execution is often quite large. As a result, the impact on the enterprise is sometimes not directly visible to all affected entities. Moreover, these models are often used only once, even where repeated use was
intended, again limiting their impact.

That landscape is changing. Startling improvements in our ability to solve linear and integer programs along with improved data access and automated business processes offer the promise of making optimization tools a more central part of the management of the modern enterprise. Increasingly, optimization solutions are being applied at the operational level, solving core business problems, providing real-time solutions to more detailed models. In this talk, we will describe several such success stories.

Refreshments at 4:30 in 657 Rhodes Hall.