Ask HN: Anybody use optimization/ OR techniques professionally?
I am currently enjoying the coursera module on discrete optimization with Minizinc [1]. Optimization modeling always seems to me that it has great potential, but I find it hard to find case studies of real applications, nor do I know anybody that uses it professionally. The case studies I have found are all military based, and I find that a little far from anything I would use it for.<p>Could all you operations researcher types share your experience?  I would also love to hear from anyone who uses optimization modeling or OR in their professional capacity, and about projects.<p>Please note when I say &quot;real applications,&quot; I don&#x27;t mean a large scale simulation of a standard problem by an academic using made-up data and models.  I know that you can use Minizinc to solve the traveling salesman problem, but I want to hear about an actual sales organization -- one that sells stuff (Amazon devs&#x2F; analysts, please chime in!).<p>For &quot;real application&quot; examples: in social services, I could see optimizing case work schedules, application of expensive interventions for best pay off, etc ; then I would want to hear about the <i>actual</i> roll out of this system in county X.  In circuits, I could see using optimizing design problems, e.g. getting close to a required time constant using a dozen resistor and capacitor options; then how it was used to improve a robot that is actually produced.  In dev ops, I could imagine a model for best machine allocation.  Etc.<p>My two real application of optimizatioin:  I used quadratic programming to fit population translation matrices to demographic data [2], and we once used AMPL with NEOS to find estimates of population by household type that would fit a time series with a few years of  missing data.<p>[1] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.coursera.org&#x2F;learn&#x2F;basic-modeling&#x2F;<p>[2]  https:&#x2F;&#x2F;escholarship.org&#x2F;uc&#x2F;item&#x2F;47t278gq