Advanced Operational Research Methods

Learning Outcomes

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• Understand the basic principles of scheduling problems and corresponding solution methods.
• Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of inventory control problems and methods for finding optimal ordering strategies.
• Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the concepts and applications of queueing models including the calculation of key performance indicators for a variety of different systems.

Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• Formulate various heuristics for hard combinatorial optimisation problems.
• Demonstrate practical skills in modelling queueing and inventory.

• Queuing Models: theory and applications of queuing models including calculation of key performance indicators.
• Inventory Control: EOQ models, newsboy models, inventory model with stochastic demand.
• Machine Scheduling: job constraints, precedence constraints, Moore’s algorithm.
• Heuristics: design, construction, relaxation, restriction, hierarchical decomposition, improvement.
• Local search algorithms.

Twenty four 2-hour lectures

Twelve 1-hour tutorial sessions

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.