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The Optimization Edge

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The Optimization Edge

Reinventing Decision Making to Maximize All Your Company's Assets

McGraw-Hill,

15 min read
10 take-aways
Text available

What's inside?

You use computers. You make decisions. But how do you combine the two for maximum benefit?

Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Applicable

Recommendation

Information technology and management consultant Steve Sashihara offers a complete guide to optimization, starting with explaining that it is the process of using the speed and power of computers to analyze information and recommend decisions. He goes beyond yes-and-no decisions, and delves into such issues as determining optimum package delivery routes (for UPS) and finding the best way to sell hotel rooms (for Marriott). Sashihara provides a history of operations research and how it works, and he elucidates what computers have added to the process. He shows managers how to present an optimization program to all levels of their companies, starting with decision-making managers. Sashihara also explains the problems that can arise with optimization programs. getAbstract recommends his book to those who want to understand the decision-making process and wish to know why to optimize and how.

Summary

Asset Management: The Ultimate Goal

While people must rethink many of the old ways of doing business, some goals and basic realities remain the same, such as the need to make effective decisions about using your organization’s assets. Today, companies – particularly start-ups – have fewer fixed assets. Staffs are smaller. Competition is fiercer, more constant and more global. Executives instantly turn to downsizing as a way to manage assets and save money, but this is not how to grow. For that, firms must find better, more effective ways of using their resources.

What Is Optimization?

Optimization is the use of computer programs to analyze all the available information that relates to a decision. It suggests the best decision based on this data and explains the reasons for that recommendation. Optimization is the most outstanding way to determine how to deploy your company’s assets effectively. It can offer more than just yes-or-no choices; in fact, firms apply it to very complicated decisions. UPS, the package-moving company, used optimization to find more efficient routes for shipping packages – a complex task. Optimization in UPS’s case included planning...

About the Author

Steve Sashihara is president and CEO of Princeton Consultants Incorporated, an information technology and management consulting firm.

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