Operations research

Optima's Operations Research experience is the foundation of the company. The staff are internationally recognized leaders in Operations Research. The combination of Optima's expertise and detailed industry knowledge allows delivery of the following value:

• Expertise in modeling real-life systems, including Emergency Response and Airline Crew Rostering systems
• Expertise in advanced optimization and simulation to solve complex business challenges across a wide range of industries
• Highly configurable software designed specifically to solve Emergency Service challenges

Operations Research uses detailed analysis, modeling and advanced algorithms to solve complex business challenges. Optima's practical modeling experience across a number of industries combined with its extensive emergency services experience gained through working directly with customers for ten years has resulted in highly-configurable software solutions capturing key real-life behaviors essential to providing consistently high-quality decisions.

The term "Operations Research" describes the discipline of applying advanced analysis methods to help make better business decisions.  Operations Research methods and technologies have traditionally played an important role in business areas such as supply chain planning, chemicals, manufacturing, aviation, logistics, telecommunications network design and operations as well as throughout the military.  Typically Operations Research tools are delivered as high-tech computer-based systems, decision support systems, and/or command/control systems.  These Operations Research systems provide important evidence and insights helping executives and managers to make key decisions, to solve pressing problems, and to plan and adjust their "best" strategies. The application of Operations Research leads to improved productivity, lower costs of operations, reduction in risk and more efficient use of limited resources.

Approaches fall broadly into three major categories:

• Simulation - allowing "dry-run" of different approaches on computer models, to investigate scenarios and to find and test ideas for improvement
• Optimization - mathematical models used to select the best possible solutions, from a multitude of choices
• Data Analysis detection of patterns and connections in data, providing insights for forecasting

Most importantly, the analysis that Operations Research provides is vastly more powerful than non-Operations Research analysis, such as projections based on standard spreadsheet studies, simple regression or other models.