Gurobi hosted a webinar by Irv and Rob to discuss innovative optimization work with Birchbox, the trailblazing e-commerce business. They were joined by Birchbox VP of Global Business Technology David Bendes, who leads subscription technology and operations, data and business intelligence, and platform product management, focusing on creating data‑driven experiences and the technologies that power […]
Soon there will be sports and entertainment returning to arenas and stadiums, hopefully with fans in attendance. As regulations are established and subsequently altered and as social distancing standards at large public events evolve, the managers of these venues will face understandably difficult challenges. The main short-term problem is to determine where people can be […]
Institutional investors in sustainable land-based assets around the world rely on a management firm for superior stewardship and financial yields. Over decades, one independent firm has established an innovative, disciplined approach to become a global leader in conservation, real estate management, and acquisitions and sales. Its continually changing portfolio—comprised of millions of acres worth millions […]
As subscription e-commerce continues to expand, Birchbox, the trailblazing subscription box service, has stood out with a strong value proposition that engages underserved, overlooked, “casual” beauty and grooming consumers, and meaningfully increases their spend in the category. Birchbox, which launched in 2010, delivers five to six samples a month, tailored to each subscriber’s needs and […]
At Princeton Consultants, we have started to do the majority of our optimization model development using python with the pandas library (https://pandas.pydata.org/). We have successfully developed models using the Gurobi Python interface, and the DO CPLEX Python interface for IBM ILOG CPLEX Optimization Studio. Based on these successes, we have codified our approach for rapid […]
Dave Shanno, my colleague and friend who helped jump-start my career over 30 years ago, recently passed away. Dave was a brilliant mathematician and academic researcher who especially valued the usefulness and implementation of solutions—his perspective inspired me and many others in Operations Research. Today, machine learning is just one area that is benefitting from […]
Following are more transcript highlights from our January 29/30 webinar with Ugo Feunekes of Remsoft and Gurobi, which can be watched here. Ugo: Some of the suggestions were things we could do to change our modeling system itself, such as precision accuracies and rounding. Other things are tough for us sometimes to implement because many of the […]
On January 29 and 30, I conducted a webinar on model review and validation about a specific project that entailed challenges and solutions of great potential interest to the larger community of optimization practitioners. Anita Bowers and Gwyneth Butera of Gurobi were the hosts and moderators. My co-presenter was Ugo Feunekes, the co-founder and CTO […]
When working with clients on business processes ripe for optimization, we often must prove and quantify the potential benefits of an optimization project applied to their specific operations. Some executives may say, “But our business is different” or “We already are operating efficiently.” We then propose a low-risk project that centers on a cost-benefit analysis […]
In May 2017, I had the pleasure and honor of interviewing Ralph Gomory for the INFORMS History & Traditions Committee project to create oral histories of luminaries in the field. The interview was conducted at The Century Association, a private club to which Dr. Gomory belongs. To those familiar with optimization, Gomory is known for […]
