In the last decade, data has been changing the way operations are conducted and, consequently, the questions studied by academics in the fields of operations management and operations research. In practice, the availability of data is enhancing manufacturing and service providers’ ability to understand their customers and suppliers and optimize their decisions based on this improved understanding. Data is changing the way airlines price their tickets, manufacturers market and sell their products, and retailers manage their inventories and online operations..

The availability of huge amounts of data mandates not only improved estimation procedures but also effective and implementable ways to use this data to inform decisions. This requires updating canonical models of operations and/or introducing new models, ones that do not take parameters as certain but incorporate, explicitly, the statistical nature of the models’ inputs. Operations research, in its role as a source for decision-support tools, informs estimation to the extent that the quality of an estimation procedure must be judged relative to the impact it has on decision making. The purpose of this workshop is to shed light on the transformative effect data has had and will have on the discipline of operations research by bringing together scholars who have made significant contributions to the integration of data, models and optimization.

Organizers

Cornell Tech: Itai Gurvich, Nathan Kallus, Huseyin Topaloglu