Operations Research (OR) may not be a household term, but it quietly powers much of the world around us. Behind the scenes, it helps solve countless everyday puzzles:
- What’s the most efficient way for grocery chains to restock shelves before they run empty?
- How to control the elements of a gas network to safely fulfil the transportation requests?
- How can DSO’s best assign staff to network expansion projects to reduces congestion and maintain high network reliability?
These aren’t simple questions as they involve many different options and trade-offs. OR is the science of tackling such complexity, using mathematics and data to make the best possible decisions with limited resources. In fact, you could say that OR is the most influential, but least known decision technology.
The Core Idea
Think of OR as the science of making tough decisions easier. It uses mathematical optimisation, statistics, simulation, and decision-making techniques to figure out the smartest way to reach a goal when there are limits and trade-offs:
- Goal: Minimise costs, maximise fairness, or minimise pollution.
- Constraints: Limited budgets, staff, vehicles, or time.
- Choices: Who to assign, what to produce, which route to take.
By translating these challenges into mathematical models OR allows us to systematically explore all possible solutions and efficiently identify the best one, navigating layers of complexity that would be often impossible to manage intuitively.
Why It Matters
OR isn’t just theory, it’s an applied discipline designed to make a difference in the real world. Almost every OR project starts with a concrete challenge, whether in logistics, healthcare, energy, or beyond. At Doing the Math, for example, our decision support models help companies and energy providers make smarter, more sustainable choices:
- Optimising energy hubs that balance electricity, heat, and hydrogen.
- Reducing grid congestion with dynamic limits.
- Improving hydrogen network control.
- Advancing sustainability in the supply chain and assuring compliance with sustainability regulations.
In practice, OR enables organisations to cut carbon emissions, boost efficiency, and navigate complex systems with confidence. For more inspiring examples, the Edelman Award website showcases a wide range of impactful OR projects from around the world.
Although its influence often works in the background, OR plays a crucial role in shaping the systems that make modern life more efficient, sustainable, and resilient. If you’d like to learn more about OR and explore the possibilities it offers, we’d be more than happy to share our insights.