Operations Research II Group Project / IE 4315 / Fall 2015

Email submission of proposal to Dr. Corleys email due Oct 6, 2015 9:30am
Email submission of PowerPoint file and Report to Dr. Corleys email due Dec 1, 2015 9:30am
1.

Goal
To identify a practical OR (operations research) problem worthy of a minor study and to
model it with OR knowledge. It can be deterministic, stochastic, or both.

2.

Where to start?
Two places to start would be a) your real-life situation and b) the example applications in
your textbook.
For example, a real-life situation can be to optimize the profit of a convenience store by
selecting the most profitable kinds of products to sell, subject to various deterministic
constraints such as previous sales statistics and cost information. The following is an
extracted picture of the example applications in your textbook:

3.

How many people are allowed in the group?

Five (5), with only one group having six (6) people.

4.

Deliverables: a) Proposal, b) PowerPoint File and c) Report

a)

Proposal (No more than 3 pages)

You need to include the following:
- Description of the problem and the needs to study it
- Goal(s) of your studies
- Modeling technique(s) to be employed
- Data source (if data is involved)
- Expected result in the presentation and report

b)

PowerPoint File
The typical guideline for a presentation is that you have one PowerPoint slide for each
minute you are allowed to present. As your group presentation would be within 12-15
minutes, you are suggested to prepare a PowerPoint file of 12-15 slides. It can be more or
less than this guideline.

c)

Report (No more than 10 pages, line spacing of 1.5 lines)

You need to include the following:
- Proposal
(not included in page count)
- Introduction including description of the problem and the needs to study it
- Detailed analysis of the modeling technique(s) employed
- Data description, collection, and cleaning process
(if data is involved)
- Result of your OR model
- Discussion of the result in paragraph form
(summary, conclusion, etc.)

5.

6.

(The dataset can be placed in an appendix and is not included in the page count.)
Grade
This group project will be graded on the basis of 1/3 for the reports content, 1/3 for the
reports organization and proper style and professionalism, and 1/3 on the presentations
organization and professionalism.
Tips
- Start and gather your data (if any) early.
- Build your model with the simplest assumptions, and then modify it once your
preliminary model is verified.
- Visualize your result in graphs and charts (if applicable).
- Ask questions if you get stuck.
- Enjoy!