what is operational research in a nutshell Oh R is the discipline of applying appropriate analytical methods to help make better decisions in today's world Oh R is all around us it can be found in just about everything we do it forms the building blocks for our everyday world from buying a flight to queueing for our weekly gross movie it helps save lives it drives business and government without oh are the modern world we take for granted wouldn't exist there has never been a better time to be an operational researcher today most organizations have masses of data the ways we communicate are fast computers are sophisticated and powerful and the business world is now investing heavily in putting operational research at the center of what they do this is not maths in theory but maths in the real world making a real difference never before have so many people all products needed to be moved around the world as passengers and consumers we expect everything to run smoothly whether we are buying flights commuting to work or wanting food readily available at the supermarket for businesses moving people and products around can be a complicated and expensive matter here at British Airways getting the maths right can make passengers more satisfied with the service and make millions of pounds worth of difference to the business our Department of British Airways has been here a long time we influence a whole range of decisions we're a big complicated business and our thinking is pretty critical to taking the right positions our helps influence a range of decisions across the business right from which aircraft should we buy where we should fly who our alliance partners should be how we should board the new a380s how many tickets we should sell of what type or what our customer data is telling us right across the range of the business this is the Airbus a380 the largest passenger aircraft in the world these new aircraft are a fantastic opportunity for British Airways to expand but with this opportunity comes risk we've never operate an aircraft this big before and getting it wrong and have huge impacts on the entire operation there could be delays which would impact customer satisfaction and getting it wrong could incur additional costs which obviously will impact profitability the business was interested in seeing how long it would take between the aircraft arriving and then being ready to leave again we chose to solve the problem using simulation and the reason we use simulation was because it allowed us to run multiple scenarios in a safe and virtual environment we were able to recommend to the business how many staff were required how many doors we needed to use to board the aircraft to ensure that boarding - no longer than it currently does on the Boeing 747 whilst making sure the customers have the best experience possible who are really valued here by the company our thinking and our insights incredibly useful when you're trying to take really difficult business decisions and also our people often bring that different way of looking at a problem that you you don't see yourself in today's world all of us expect the things we want and need to be readily available that means shelves to be always stocked and deliveries to arrive on time this is what we term the supply chain of a business for a major UK retailer like Asda it's crucial that this process runs like clockwork and ort Niek sly at the very heart of keeping the business running we service over 500 shops in the UK serving almost 8 million customers every week of the year clearly in distribution we have a huge responsibility summation all that our customers served on time with product that's as fresh as possible we use operational research pretty much every day in our working lives one of our biggest challenges in the last five years is about how quickly we can get the products from point of manufacturer to point to delivery into our depots our folks on route planning and analysis has made a real big difference to the way we operate it means that we take miles off the road we reduce the impact on the environment and it's helped our cost position one of our biggest recent initiatives is the utilization of high capacity delivery vehicles delivering to our shops through the analysis that we completed we were able to prove that by getting almost twice as much product on these vehicles had a substantial cost benefit for us and it saves us 10 million pounds a year which could reinvest back into price here at Asda so our techniques run right through the business helping to influence big decisions such as where to build a new store or Depot building a new Depot is a big investment for Asda and can cost up to 60 million pounds so it's critical that we build in the right location we do this through a large amount of modeling and analysis tools to help us understand where in the country we will be building new stores so where that depo needs to be here o R is used to ensure that Asda are constantly improving every process within the depots to get the products out to the stores more quickly I work and continuous improvement for distribution and we look at our def pose and the processes that we complete how long they take and how we can improve them so that we can make the deck Pro more efficient every single day that we come to work it's a new challenge and if we can use operational research to support that and make it easier and better for our customers then we've done a great job collectively the world of sport isn't an obvious place where operational research is at hand yet many of our much-loved activities rely on oh our and whether designing a sports stadium or even an Olympic Village Oh our helps make the spectators experience much more enjoyable this is the Emirates Stadium in North London home of Arsenal Football Club here Oh our had a big part to play in the design and construction of the stadium as well as in the efficient running of the site on match days just imagine a matchday situation when you arrive at the station itself oh our starts to feature immediately you get offered off the train people marshal you towards the stadium that a part of the protest has already got o are taken into account trying to find the safest way for you to move then when you reach the stadium itself a number of turnstiles for example have been determined by a know our technique and then actually move around the stadium the places where the signs are located and the way you move to your seat will also have been determined by by different Oh our technique so it's really important to everything about this this stadium the design of the stadium is obviously magnificent it's a it's a sixty thousand capacity stadium and without a model of people moving in and out you'd never know weather during a match situation if there was a fire for example if those people could be evacuated safely within the 8-minute guidelines the explosive world of Formula One I see multi-million pound racing technology the in Formula one we we require more and more expert on kind of risk analysis and game theory and simulation Formula one where split-second decisions are the difference between success and failures and often these decisions are a matter of mathematics resting in the hands of some of the world's finest operational researchers I think the first thing that people will see the direct application of power is undefined the race strategy they nishal fuel load estimating competitors fuel load and where they're going to stop and when we're going to heat traffic during the race when is a good luck to come out of the pit stops and tire degradation this is a ole estimation that we need to do as the race developed I strongly believe that aura has a greater role to play in Formula one for the future central government is the biggest business in Britain and in government's öor gets involved in just about everything that affects our day-to-day life operational research plays a crucial role in improving the quality of decision making right the way through the system from senior decision-makers in apartments right the way up to the prime minister our problem if you've ever interacted with schools obviously you have or with hospitals or with the transport system you'll have had some benefit from the Rolo R as played in improving the way that those services are delivered traveling on motorways how does the Department of Transport actually deploy its various emergency services UK borders Agency plays a role in actually modeling the number of people who arrive and leave the country the home office they do significant amounts of work on how we're trying to reduce crime across the country doing LR in the heart of government really gives you the opportunity to influence decision makers right at the very center it's a real buzz of a drive to actually be changing the way that we're delivering the things that we all live and breathe and interact with on a daily basis this is the George's Hospital in London here using our techniques can literally be the difference between life and death one of the really big things that hospitals have to think about is how long patients stay and so therefore how many beds and how many wards and how many doctors you have to look after them it's really important for us to be able to get as far as we can the right capacity for the patients who are going to come through the door so that we can give them the treatment that they need when they need it patients when they're referred by their GP either into A&E or into our patients enter a series of Q's and one of the things that we really have to do and we've been working very hard on is getting those Q's as short as we can and making sure that we don't have bottlenecks in our system and so therefore we need queuing theory and operational research techniques to help us make sure that we can get out right operational research is often at the heart of what makes a business run efficiently here everything must be planned and timed precisely to avoid bottlenecks Tata Steel import Tolbert manufactures steel products and operational research techniques a key to improving productivity and reducing costs what we produce here are big steel coils that we sell on to various companies that produce everyday objects such as tin cans office furniture cars and fridges the o. r team currently consists of twelve members we provide an in-house service where we incorporate ourselves into various project teams for all the departments we use lots of software within the department where we can build real world processes on a computer screen and visually show these to the project managers the process specialists and they can play various scenarios without having to work them out on real-world processes this in turn could save a lot of money and use a lot safer in the long run here on the plant we've had a throughput of up to 4. 4 million tons of steel and we're looking to take that up to 5.
3 million tonnes so we got a project to look at the infrastructure to see if it can handle the extra 20% float but the benefits of producing 5. 3 million tonnes as opposed to 4.
