essay

INTERFACES ARTICLE ASSIGNMENT

The purpose of this assignment is to provide you with some real-world

applications of Linear Programming and Optimization. You can do this

assignment as part of your group (i.e., treat this as a team assignment). First

find a journal called INTERFACES from the Rutgers library (you can access

this journal at libraries.rutgers.edu from home with your NetID and

password). Please review the VIDEO that tells you how to access

INTERFACES if you are not sure how to do this (look under the INTERFACES

folder on Sakai). Once you have access to INTERFACES, search for key

words such as “linear programming” or “mixed integer programming” or

“optimization” to find some article published within the last 10 years. READ

THE CHOSEN ARTICLE WITH YOUR TEAM AND THEN POST YOUR

COMMENTS ON THE INTERFACES FORUM. PLEASE NOTE THAT THERE IS A

DEADLINE FOR THIS POSTING. After reading the article, write your

comments on what you learnt in the INTERFACES FORUM. Minimally the

comments should address the following issues:

Q1: What company or organization used optimization or linear programming?

What was the broad purpose of the project?

Q2: State the key decision variables (in words) and state the objective

function in words (i.e., maximize profit or minimize cost or whatever the

objective was).

Q3: What were the key constraints? (in words)

Q4: What was the IMPACT of using the model? (e.g., millions of dollars saved

– some projects will not have a dollar impact but may improve some

operation. Write down whatever you find).

Q5: What were the key lessons learned from the project for the company?

Any other comments/observations are also welcome.

DO THIS AS A TEAM. MAYBE EACH TEAM MEMBER CAN WRITE ABOUT ONE

OF THE QUESTIONS ABOVE.

PLEASE NOTIFY ME OF THE FULL TITLE OF YOUR SELECTED ARTICLE ASAP.

I’ll notify the class that this article is assigned so that we do not have too

many replications. Please note that this is a graded assignment with a

DEADLINE.