IENG2002

Industrial
Engineering
Orientation

Week 10: Operations Research and

other Mathematical Methods
 Operations Research and other Mathematical Methods

How should engineers use numbers to make decisions?

✓ Collecting data
✓ Visual display of data

✓ Models in general
✓ Deterministic models
✓ Stochastic models

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 Models in general

IEs, and other engineers, often want to perform experiments on real systems, but such
experimentation can be difficult.

If an IE wants to try a new layout for a production system, moving equipment, furniture, and offices
would be difficult and time consuming.

Even trying a new procedure may disrupt the production system. Therefore, the IE would create a
model of the system, usually a mathematical model.

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 Operations Research

Operations research involves “research on operations.”

Thus, operations research is applied to problems that concern how to conduct and coordinate the
operations (i.e., the activities) within an organization.

The nature of the organization is essentially immaterial, and, in fact, OR has been applied
extensively in such diverse areas as manufacturing, transportation, construction,
telecommunications, financial planning, health care, the military, and public services, to name just a
few.

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 Operations Research

The research part of the name means that operations research uses an approach that resembles the
way research is conducted in established scientific fields.

The purpose of operations research is to provide a more complete and explicit understanding of
complex situations, thus leading to an optimum performance of individuals, utilizing the resources
available.

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 Deterministic models

IEs are responsible for efficiency, including the efficient use of time and resources.

You already know from calculus class how to find the maximum or minimum of a function and
calculus is one tool that IEs use.

However, IEs often need to maximize or minimize a linear function, which sounds easy, but finding
the solution isn’t easy when there are many variables and also some constraints.

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 Linear programming

Objective function: The appropriate measure of performance (e.g., profit) is then expressed as a
mathematical function of these decision variables.

Decision variables: The variables whose values are under our control and influence the performance
of the System. Respective values are to be determined.

Constraints: expressions for the restrictions.

Parameters: The constants (namely, the coefficients and righthand sides) in the constraints and the
objective function.

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 Linear programming

Maria has an online shop where she sells hand made paintings and cards. She sells the painting for
$50 and the card for $20. It takes her 2 hours to complete 1 painting and 45 minutes to make a single
card. She also has a day job and makes paintings and cards in her free time. She cannot spend more
than 15 hours a week to make paintings and cards. Additionally, she should make not more than 10
paintings and cards per week.

She makes a profit of $25 on painting and $15 on each card. How many paintings and cards should
she make each week to maximize her profit.

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 Linear programming

Maria has an online shop where she sells hand made paintings and cards. She sells the painting for $50 and the card
for $20. It takes her 2 hours to complete 1 painting and 45 minutes to make a single card. She also has a day job and
makes paintings and cards in her free time. She cannot spend more than 15 hours a week to make paintings and cards.
Additionally, she should make not more than 10 paintings and cards per week.

She makes a profit of $25 on painting and $15 on each card. How many paintings and cards should she make each
week to maximize her profit.

Painting Card Availiable 𝑴𝒂𝒙 𝟐𝟓𝒙𝟏+ 𝟏𝟓𝒙𝟐 Objective Function

Time need 2h 0,75 h 15 h Subject to
Profit $25 $15
𝟐𝒙𝟏 + 𝟎, 𝟕𝟓𝒙𝟐 ≤ 𝟏𝟓
𝒙𝟏 ≤ 𝟏𝟎 Constraints
𝒙𝟐 ≤ 𝟏𝟎
𝒙𝟏 ; 𝑵𝒖𝒎𝒃𝒆𝒓 𝒐𝒇 𝒑𝒂𝒊𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒐 𝒃𝒆 𝒑𝒓𝒐𝒅𝒖𝒄𝒆𝒅 𝒊𝒏 𝒂 𝒘𝒆𝒆𝒌,
𝒙𝟐 ; 𝑵𝒖𝒎𝒃𝒆𝒓 𝒐𝒇 𝒄𝒂𝒓𝒅 𝒕𝒐 𝒃𝒆 𝒑𝒓𝒐𝒅𝒖𝒄𝒆𝒅 𝒊𝒏 𝒂 𝒘𝒆𝒆𝒌,
𝒙𝟏 , 𝒙𝟐 ≥ 𝟎 Non-Negativity Condition
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Linear programming-Graphical solution

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 Deterministic models

The following list describes situations where a deterministic optimization model might be useful:

Product mix - determine how much of each type of product to make subject to constraints on
available resources.

Production scheduling - determine how much of each type of product to make in different time
periods in order to meet specified production amounts by certain times.

Blending - determine the best blend of inputs to use to minimize the cost of producing a mixture.

Cutting stock - determine the best way to cut resource material to maximize profit.

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 Deterministic models

Staffing - determine the best way to assign people to jobs to maximize their preference or to
maximize the productivity, based on their abilities at different jobs.

Transportation - determine the best way to route resources through a transportation network to
minimize the cost, while delivering the appropriate amount of resources to each location.

Assignment - determine the best way to assign resources to tasks.

Traveling salesman problem - determine the best route among a number of points that visits each
point at least once.

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 Stochastic models

“Stochastic” means that probabilities are involved.

In deterministic optimization we gave a mathematical formula for the objective function, but in most
stochastic models, we have several goals (minimize the time the teller is idle, minimize the average
number in the queue), so we want to compute the values of our various goals and then make trade offs.

Assume customers arrive at a bank randomly at rate 15 per hour. Also assume service times average 3
minutes and are modeled as a random variable with an exponential distribution. If we have one teller
available, answer the following questions.
1. What proportion of time is the teller idle?
2. What is the expected number of people waiting for the teller?
3. What is the expected time spent a person waits for the teller?
4. What is the probability a person waits more than 10 minutes for a teller?
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 Some other OR Topics-Transportation Problems

A homogeneous product is to be shipped in the amounts a1, a2,...am respectively from each of m
shipping origins and received in amounts b1, b2,..., bn respectively by each of n shipping destinations.

The cost of shipping a unit amount from the ith origin to the jth destination is cij and is known for all
combinations (i,j).

The problem is to determine the amounts xij to be shipped over all routes (i,j) so as to minimize the
total cost of transportation.

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Some other OR Topics-Transportation Problems

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 Some other OR Topics-Network Optimization

The process of striking the best possible balance between network performance and network costs,
in consideration of grade of service.

A network consists of a set of points and a set of lines connecting certain pairs of the points.

The points are called nodes (or vertices); The lines are called arcs (or links or edges or branches).

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 Some other OR Topics-Network Optimization

A salesman is required to visit each of n cities, Postman wishes to travel along every road in a city
indexed by l,...n. He leaves from a home base in order to deliver letters, with the least possible
city indexed by 0, visits each of the n cities distance. The problem is how to find a shortest
exactly once, and returns to city 0. It is required closed walk of the graph in which each edge is
to find an itinerary which minimizes the total traversed at least once, rather than exactly once.
distance traveled by the salesman.

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 Some other OR Topics-Dynamic Programming

A method for optimizing a set of decisions which may be made sequentially. Characteristically, each
decision may be made in the light of the information embodied in a small number of observables
called state variables.

The incurred cost for each period is a mathematical function of the current state and decision
variables, while future states are functions of these variables.

The aim of the decision policy is to minimize the total incurred cost, of equivalently the average cost
per period.

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 Some other OR Topics-Linear Integer Programming

A linear programming problem with the added restriction that some or all of the variables are
constrained to be integers.

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 Some other OR Topics-Nonlinear Programming

Nonlinear programming (NLP) is the process of solving an optimization problem where some of the
constraints or the objective function are nonlinear.

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 Some other OR Topics-Game Theory

The study of the following problem: if n players P1, P2...PN play a given game G, how must the ith
player, Pi, play to achieve the most favorable result? Special two-person games can be solved by
linear programming methods.

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 Some other OR Topics-Decision Analysis

Decision analysis (DA) is a systematic, quantitative, and visual approach to addressing and evaluating
the important choices that businesses sometimes face.

Job A Job B Job C Job D Job E

Criteria

Monthly net 10.000 TL 15.000 TL 9.000 TL 9.500 TL 12.000 TL

salary

Social life Middle Low High Middle Low

Contribution to
professional Very High High High Very High Low
development

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 Some other OR Topics-Queueing Theory

Queueing theory is the study of waiting in all these various guises. It uses queueing models to
represent the various types of queueing systems (systems that involve queues of some kind) that
arise in practice.

Formulas for each model indicate how the corresponding queueing system should perform, including
the average amount of waiting that will occur, under a variety of circumstances.

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 Some other OR Topics-Inventory theory

Inventory theory is a sub-branch of the operation research area considering the design of the
inventory systems to minimize the related costs.

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 Some other OR Topics-Simulation

The design and operation of a model of a system.

Commonly implies the use of a computer program designed to accept selected inputs; to treat those
inputs in a manner analogous to the way the real system operates, and to read out measurements of
the status and change results of the programmed operations affected by those inputs.

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Thank you for your attention.

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