Welcome to Operations Research!
In this video, I'll give you a brief overview of this course.
This course is designed to provide an introduction to Operations Research modeling and solution
techniques.
Students will learn how to apply the fundamental concepts of Operations Research to real-world
examples.
This course will cover the following topics.
Linear Programming and the Simplex Method for solving LP problems.
Sensitivity Analysis and the Duality Principle.
Some special LP problems and applications such as the Transportation, Transshipment,
and Assignment Problems.
Network or Graph Models.
Integer Programming, mixed integer programing, and binary integer programming.
Nonlinear Programming and KKT conditions.
Decision trees and Decision Making under Uncertainty.
Game Theory.
Inventory Theory.
Markov Chains.
Dynamic Programming. and Queuing Theory.
I should mention that this course is an introductory course.
We will only talk about the basic concepts and show you the relevant examples.
Each topic listed here can actually be extended to a semester-long separate course.
This course is intended for junior and senior undergraduate students as well as for graduate
students majoring in industrial engineering, systems engineering, computer science, mathematics,
business, management science, and economics.
Other students who need an overview of the main topics in operations research and management
science may find the course helpful as well.
Professionals who are working in operations research in various industries may also use
this course to refresh their memories.
The knowledge of Operations Research is mathematical and computational in nature.
Therefore, a basic understanding of algebra, calculus, probability, and statistics will
be helpful for students to take this course.
There are many great textbooks.
For example, Operations Research: Applications and Algorithms by Winston.
It is one of the classics and is used in many universities in the United States.
Two other great textbooks are Introduction to Operations Research by Hillier and Lieberman,
and Operations Research: An Introduction by Taha.
It is highly recommended to have a textbook for reference when you are taking this course.
Any one of these three books will do the job.
If you are a graduate student or interested in the most recent theoretical development
and applications of operations research, you are encouraged to read and publish research
articles in academic journals in this area.
You can use a tool called Journal Citation Report to find relevant journals.
For example, when you open this website, you can type in operations research, which is
a journal's name, and click the first item.
It will show your the detailed information about this journal.
The most important one is probably the impact factor.
The higher the impact factor, the more citations each paper gets in this journal on average.
On the right column, you can click this link under "categories".
It will bring you to a list of journals related to operations research, ranked by their impact
factors.
Journal Citation Report requires that your university has subscribed their database and
pay an annual fee so you can have access to the data.
A free substitute is called SJR Journal Ranking.
When you open this website, try to type in operations research, and click this search
button, and then select this journal.
It will show you the detailed information about this journal.
The most important one is probably the SJR index.
The higher the SJR index, the more citations this journal gets.
You can click this link "Management Science and Operations Research" under "Subject Area
and Category".
It will bring you to a list of journals related to operations research, ranked by their SJR
index.
This website uses different measures to rank the journals.
So the rankings may be different from Journal Citation Report.
These tools are helpful to identify relevant OR journals.
However, you should note that a journal will not be viewed the same by different Industrial
Engineering Departments at different universities.
Even different professors in the same department may have different opinions about the ranking
and reputation of the same journal.
Students are encouraged to discuss this with their professors.
In order to download the full-text papers, you can use some academic databases such as
the web of science and the science direct.
They both require that your university has bought the access to the databases.
You can also use google or google scholar to find the free copy of some papers.
As a last resort, you can directly contact the authors of a paper you are really interested
in but don't have access to for a free copy of the full-text paper.
Based on my experience, most people are willing to share their work.
The links to these websites are put below this video.
There are many OR societies and associations around the world.
For example, the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (or IISE) and the Institute
for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS).
They organize international conferences annually so students, faculty from academia and researchers
from industry will have the opportunities to meet and discuss recent advances in this
field.
Many conferences are held in very nice places like Orlando, Florida, San Juan, Puerto Rico,
Waikoloa, Hawaii, and Cancun, Mexico.
Many students always wonder, how am I supposed to use the knowledge I have learned from a
course in my future job after graduation?
OR is one of those courses that are directly driven by industry needs.
There is a specific job title for that.
It's called Operations Research Analyst.
You can search this job title at Indeed.com, which is one of the most popular job-listing
websites in the United States.
It will show you that there are more than 14,000 job openings right now at this moment.
There are jobs for people with different experience levels, entry level, mid-level, and senior
level.
Students are encouraged to click in specific job listings to get a better understanding
of the job descriptions and the required skills.
Let's take a look at the official statistics from the United States Department of Labor.
When you get to this website, scroll down.
You will see in this table that, there are a total of 109,000 employees with this job
title.
The mean annual wage is about $84,000.
The jobs are spread out in different industries.
Many people end up in the management positions.
You can also see the employment of operations research analyst by state, the annual mean
wage by state, the employment by Metropolitan area.
Overall, the job outlook is pretty decent.
Okay, that is a brief overview of this operations research course.
Thanks for watching.