Case Article—Production and Distribution Optimization of Beach Equipment for the Marinero Company

Andrea Manno (), Laura Palagi and Simone Sagratella ()
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Andrea Manno: Dipartimento di Elettronica, Informazione e Bioingegneria, Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Lombardia, Italy
Simone Sagratella: Dipartimento di Ingegneria Informatica Automatica e Gestionale A. Ruberti, Sapienza Università di Roma, Roma 00185, Italy

INFORMS Transactions on Education, 2019, vol. 19, issue 3, 152-154

Abstract: We present a mixed integer nonlinear mathematical programming model, covering a broad range of operations research (OR)-related topics. The case is designed to allow students to use knowledge acquired from OR and management science classes to model, analyze, and provide concrete solutions for the considered problem. Because of its high practicality, this exercise is an ideal tool to make the OR domain more accessible and to learn how to balance a problem’s complexity with the availability of algorithms for its solution. The case has been proposed as a competitive challenge and has been assigned both to students pursuing a bachelor’s degree in management engineering and students pursuing a master’s degree in industrial engineering. Students were grouped into working teams, and all teams competed against each other to get the best solution to win the challenge. Both the work-in-team and the challenge settings have been enjoyed by the students. During three lectures of 90 minutes, a brief review of OR-related tools and a detailed description and analysis of the case study have been provided to the students. Successive periodic debriefing meeting sessions have been scheduled to engage and monitor students during project development.

Keywords: active learning; developing analytical skills; teaching modeling; teaching with projects; teaching min min and min max piecewise linear functions; spreadsheet modeling; AMPL modeling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:orited:v:19:y:2019:i:3:p:152-154

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