Worst and best scenarios of operations research application (作業研究應用的最差和最佳場景)

During the final hour of this semester, I said that "to many people, operations research is only a required course to graduate." That is the worst scenario of a course or a degree. 

I will provide the positive scenarios if you master the concept of operations research. 

1. Procedure and mindset to solve a problem
• From problem formulation, mathematical model, software implementation, to interpretation
• When the optimal solution is unknown for a complex problem, we still try to find a suboptimal solution by using metaheuristics. We might know the optimal bound by using duality theory, and then try to achieve that bound. This is the spirit of industrial engineering "There is always a better way" attributed to Thomas A. Edison. 
• This is a nice way of thinking. When a person, as an engineer, a manager, or a politician, proposes a problem, does he/she provide some solutions to the problem? 
2. As a manager or businees owner
• We mention so many applications in the course and your final project. It should change your mindset when you need to make investment decision, hire qualified talents, and navigate the application roadmap. 
• Another example from calculus when you need to sell a product to a customer: 計算螺絲的體積
3. High paying and self-fulfilllment job
• OR is an imprtant tool for solving problems in AI and machine learning. Why do we need to care about it? Please refer to the following blog. (2 out 30 papers in 100 years of Harvard Business Review!) 
• You could use OR to solve difficult problems and make it a better world. Please refer to this article (English, Chinese) for job satisfaction. 

People are motivated, instead, by interesting work, challenge, and increasing responsibility. These intrinsic factors answer people’s deep-seated need for growth and achievement.

別指望光靠著稱讚、懲戒，或是給獎金，就可以激勵員工；現在，你還要讓他們的工作變得更有趣才行。 也就是說，儘管營造了良好的工作環境，管理也很上軌道，待遇和福利更是不錯，還不如滿足員工內心一直渴望的成就感。