Why Operations Research?

My statistics professor once said that among all the college math subjects we had to endure, only statistics and operations research are very applicable, at least in the corporate world. “Of course, she’s biased in favor of statistics,” I thought. But the second phrase barely registered in my mind. OR courses were only taken as an elective, and since my interests back then were Mathematical Finance and Actuarial Science, I didn’t bother to take up an OR elective.

But now, a different wind is blowing. I’m currently applying for graduate studies in OR. The reason is partly due to my experience at my previous work where knowledge of OR would have been beneficial. But more importantly, I realized I have a knack for improving things, for optimizing scarce resources, essentially what the field is all about.

I have partly confirmed the need to know the field in my previous work. But perhaps I have not yet seen its full potential. An overview of its scope can be surmised from this speech given by President Arroyo (she should know about the field since she has a Ph.D. in economics). The following are some quotes of the problems which can be addressed by operations research:

• logistics

We have an imported logistics challenge in the Philippines to bring our products from Mindanao, which is our food basket, to Luzon through several islands in the Visayas to Luzon which is where sixty percent of the consumers are.

• transporation

We also have our railway service that we are trying to do for Manila up to Clark-Subic in the north, then Manila up to Bicol in the south and then linking the two railways. And then there are the proposals for railways in the Visayas and in Mindanao, and there’s my own transport pet project which is the system of roll-on/roll-off ferry boats and highways from Mindanao through the islands of the Visayas to Luzon.

• food budget allocation

We have a problem of hunger in the Philippines and we would want to be able to work on how to reduce hunger, should it be or what combination should it be of school breakfast or giving rice to the children when they go to school so they can bring it home to their parents. And given the budget available for that how do we distribute this kind of program within the country.

• traffic management

I wondered out loud if operations research could help solve our traffic problem.

• tax management

With your operations research, the Bureau of Internal Revenue and the Customs can leverage innovative approaches to hike revenues and put to justice tax cheats and smugglers.