The modern dynamic production environment requires continuous improvement of tools for managerial decision-making. Although decision-making is increasingly directed toward artificial intelligence, the most important managerial decisions are still related to solving combinatorial optimization problems. Numerous papers presenting improvements to existing procedures are published daily; however, the implementation of the proposed algorithms in practice is often unclear and complicated. In addition, experimental evaluations of these algorithms, even in the most reputable journals, often contain bias, which makes it difficult for potential users to select and apply an appropriate algorithm.
This lecture aims to present a new, publicly accessible environment—the web application OPR-MAN (Angular, .NET 8, SQL Server)—which enables users to compare, apply, and visually present the results of the best algorithms for the most important problems in operations management: sequencing and allocation problems, clustering problems, routing and packing problems, as well as material requirements planning problems. For each module, users can upload benchmark problems from the literature or create their own instances, solve them, and compare the obtained solutions with those generated by other algorithms for the same problem. The visualization of solutions is graphically rich; for example, routes are displayed on real maps, packing solutions are graphically illustrated, and similar visual representations are provided for other problems.
The application has already found practical use in many companies within supply chains. A particularly important application of this system is in education, as it allows students to follow every step of the algorithmic solution process. The application is used in the training of students at the Faculty of Organizational Sciences, where it has been evaluated as a significant contribution to the development of competencies of future operations managers.
Milos Danilovic was born in Belgrade, Serbia, on April 1985. He received his Bachelor Degree (2009), Master Degree (2011) and PhD (2017) at Faculty of Organizational Sciences (FOS), University of Belgrade. He currently works as a Associate Professor at Department of Operations Management at FOS. His main research interests and areas of expertise include algorithms, combinatorial optimization problems, supply networks, scheduling theory, operations management and computer integrated manufacturing systems. He has published several papers as an author or co-author in leading journals such as Expert Systems with Applications, Journal of Manufacturing Systems, International Journal of Production Research, Computers and Operations Research, Networks and more. He is the member of the organizational committee of the International Symposium of Entrepreneurs and Scientists – SPIN.