ROBERT FOURER
President, AMPL Optimization Inc.
Professor Emeritus, Northwestern University
Model-Based Optimization for Operations Research: Best Practices and Current Trends
As optimization (or prescriptive analytics) has grown as a tool for business decision-making, a key factor in its success has been the adoption of model-based optimization. Using this approach, an analyst’s major work is to describe a problem of interest by means of an algebraic model, while the computation of a solution is left to general-purpose, off-the-shelf software. Powerful modeling systems manage the difficulties of translating between the human modeler’s ideas and the computer software’s needs. This tutorial introduces model-based optimization and offers a guide to its effective use.
As optimization (or prescriptive analytics) has grown as a tool for business decision-making, a key factor in its success has been the adoption of model-based optimization. Using this approach, an analyst’s major work is to describe a problem of interest by means of an algebraic model, while the computation of a solution is left to general-purpose, off-the-shelf software. Powerful modeling systems manage the difficulties of translating between the human modeler’s ideas and the computer software’s needs. This tutorial introduces model-based optimization and offers a guide to its effective use.