“We received a huge response for our ‘Kay’ brand’. I think this is the correct time to introduce our new snack under ‘Kay’ brand”, suggested Hari, Marketing Head of ABC condiments. ABC condiments is the producer of sweets and savouries with an authentic Indian flavour. One of its brand ‘Kay’ Snacks is very popular among customers for its freshness and crispiness. Hari, Seema, Sudha and Virat are in a discussion to introduce a new variety of ragi snack under the brand ‘Kay’. “I too agree with Hari!” said Production Head, Seema. “Correspondingly, we have to decide about the lot size of production of this ragi snack”, she added. “We should know the sales and demand forecast for that first”, said Hari. “In our department, we should check the machine…show more content… A system named ‘Coldstart’ uses highly sophisticated implementations of linear and integer programming solvers. With the help of this system, Delta Airlines could solve all the fleet assignment problems and estimated the savings during a period of three months as $220,000 per day over the old schedule. (Source: http://www.pitt.edu/~jrclass/or/or-intro.html#apps).
In this chapter, let us understand what an operations research is and appreciate the importance of operations research in real time business problem solving.
1.1.1 Operations Research – A quantitative approach to decision-making
Decision making is the process of choosing an appropriate solution or strategy from a set of possible solutions or strategies to achieve the goal. In a day to day life, numerous decisions are taken by individual, teams and organisations.
The elements of a decision making process are:
• Decision maker is the person who makes the decision (It may be an individual or a team or an organisation