Blogs about optimization
There are many interesting and informative blogs about optimization modelling. We link to a selection of blogs, written by a wide range of academic and practitioner experts. Topics include: data science, operations management, logistics, and general modelling.
Activimetrics LLC offers consulting and custom software development related to transportation systems analysis, planning, policy development, and deployment.
Blog topics include:
- Another way to find and use the most expensive node.
- Converting a TSP to a multi-day TSP and using Slack in OR Tools.
- Mapping and animating OR-Tools routes.
- OR Tools AddBoolOr() constraints.
- Exploring disjunctions in OR Tools.
Blog: Activimetrics.
Associate Professor Tallys Yunes offers articles and videos about solving complex decision problems that arise from a variety of practical applications. The emphasis is on optimization, data analytics, and mathematical literacy.
Topics include:
- Optimization games for the young.
- How to optimally allocate "bribe" money.
- Buying Metrorail tickets in Miami.
- An easy way to visualize conditional probabilities and Bayes Rule.
- Mr. Lovr's adventure: A Valentine's Day optimization story.
Blog: OR by the beach.
YouTube: Dr. Y.
Katie McConky is an Associate Professor in the Industrial and Systems Engineering Department at Rochester Institute of Technology. She posts videos from an 'Introduction to Operations Research' classs, including tutorials on using Pyomo and GLPK to write and solve simple linear programs.
Topics include:
- Pyomo for MCNFP shortest path problem.
- Advanced Pyomo - OJ Juice running Abstract models.
- Beginner's guide to Pyomo for Abstract linear programs.
- Pyomo Concrete models - Error handling and data extraction.
- Intro to Pyomo and GLPK for Google Colab.
Blog: Dr. Katie.
Associate Professor Austin Buchanan blogs about his research on solving combinatorial optimization problems in networks. In particular, his research focusses on networks having connectivity or distance constraints, with applications in political redistricting.
Topics include:
- A brief tutorial on Benders decomposition.
- Can my state redistrict at the county level?
- Why is maximum clique often easy in practice?
- A brief tutorial on Lagrangian techniques for k-median.
- A brief tutorial on fixed-parameter tractability.
Blog: Farkas' dilemma.
Professors Jay Heizer, Barry Render, and Chuck Munson are the authors of the best selling textbook "Operations Management". Their blog is intended as a resource for Operations Management educators, providing a wide variety of ideas for the teaching of Operations Management courses.
Topics include:
- The robotic pharmacists.
- Seasonal employees.
- Ford’s latest supply-chain problem.
- European manufacturers shift to the U.S.
- Decoupling of supply chains.
Kevin Gue is Senior Director of Research and Development at Fortna, and formerly a professor of industrial engineering. His blog is focussed on logistics optimization.
Topics include:
- Finding warehouse space in unexpected places.
- A surprising solution to the warehouse labor crisis.
- Optimal block stacking.
- A new angle on container ports.
- Logistics automation and us.
Blog: Kevin Gue.
Nathan Brixius writes about machine learning, data science, software engineering, and sports.
Topics include:
- Character heatmaps in Proust’s In Search of Lost Time.
- A lazier way to solve Knuth’s skeleton multiplication puzzle.
- Creating equation haikus using Constraint Programming.
- Optimizing 19th century typewriters.
- Chaining machine learning and optimization models.
Blog: Nathan Brixius.
Optimisation in the real world is an initiative by Stephen J. Maher to raise awareness of how optimisation regularly influences our lives. Stephen is a research fellow at University of Exeter working on practical and theoretical aspects of optimisation.
Topics include:
- Ingredient utilisation for beer home brewing.
- Logistics of vaccine distribution.
- Carbon-neutral supply chains.
- Investigating 100% renewable electricity using optimisation.
- Music festival scheduling.
Optimization modelling newsletter on LinkedIn by Alireza Soroudi. Most of the posts use the Pyomo library in Python.
Topics include:
- Optimal flight leg assignment.
- Where to fit my container?
- US Election under the optimization lens.
- Shortest, independent, ALL paths between two nodes on a graph.
Blog: Optimization in open-source.
Paul A. Rubin is a Professor Emeritus of Management Science. His primary research interest is in the application of integer programming models and algorithms.
Topics include:
- With CPLEX, you're not in until you're in.
- "Block party" puzzle.
- Models for a social network problem.
- Partitioning an interval.
- Wolf, goat and cabbage.
Blog: OR in an OB World.
Thoughts and observations about Operational Research by David Smith.
Topics include:
- There will always be the need for Operational Research Scientists.
- Road layout problems.
- Lockdown supply chain problems.
- Should operational research be used to design a cruise liner's buffet?
- Expanding Exeter's E-Bike hire scheme.
Blog: OR in Devon.
The focus of Supply Chain Data Analytics (SCDA) is on applied operations research. The target audience are supply chain consultants, logistics and operations managers, production planners, industrial engineers, process engineers as well as data analysts and data scientists.
Topics include:
- Optimization via master production scheduling.
- Price and inventory optimization.
- Inventory simulation for optimized stock.
- Conveyor system optimization procedure.
- Support vector machine with Gekko in Python.
Blog: Supply chain data analytics.
The Operations Room is a forum for discussing current topics in operations management (OM). The focus is on identifying interesting strategic and tactical developments in the field.
Topics include:
- Paying for a place in line at Disney.
- Waiting on the water.
- What's that "EOQ solution" (prescription) for sourcing, batching and inventory management?
- What's that "Newsvendor solution" for inventory and capacity planning?
- Are supply chains and networks truly resilient.
Blog: The Operations Room.
Notes and models by consultant Erwin Kalvelagen who provides services related to the design, implementation and deployment of mathematical programming, optimization and data-science applications.
Topics include:
- Some matrix balancing experiments.
- Wordle: number of words from unique letters.
- Primal, dual and equilibrium format of the Transportation Model.
- k out of n with smallest bandwidth.
- Large sparse transportation model with CVXPY, CVXR.
