What is Management Science?

Management Science (also known as Operations Research) is the discipline of applying advanced analytical techniques to improve the effectiveness of operations, decisions and strategies.

Management Science includes such disciplines as:

Because the science is often “embedded” or “integrated” into the solution, it is invisible to the user. However Management Science is what provides the mathematical models behind Business Solutions like:

These models are most certainly driving the analysis and optimization engines in all the “canned solutions” behind:

• SAP, i2, Manugistics, Microsoft Great Plains and other providers of enterprise Supply Chain and Optimization Suites.
• All the Demand Planners (DPs) and Demand Managers (DMs), the Advanced Planning Systems (APS), the Transportation Management Systems (TMS), the Decision Support Systems (DSS), the Enterprise Resource Planners (ERP),…

Here are some solutions Management Science can “pull out of a hat”. With a quick and dirty analysis, Management Science can answer these questions precisely and clearly from an analytical perspective:

• Is it possible to get more cycles out of my manufacturing equipment?
• How can I release this bottleneck? What will happen if I do?
• How much of this product will I be selling next year? Give me an interval quantity, but I need 95% certainty.
• Can I get more value out of my data and enterprise systems than I am getting now?
• Can I reduce my logistics costs and maintain my service and inventory levels?
• What is the best, easiest schedule?
• Should I discount? When and by how much?
• Can I optimize this? Do I want to?
• How do I get people to cooperate on this issue?
• What should my strategy be?

Your business is unique. How can (even customizable) shelved solutions work well for you? Your unique business requires unique solutions. That’s why the new breed of intelligent organization is taking the next step: leveraging Management Science models and developing their own individualized solutions.

Why Management Science?

Because Management Science delivers value. In fact, it was designed expressly for that in mind: efficiencies, cost-reductions and optimalities. Management Science pays dividends. It’s about cost-reductions, improvements in performance, maximizing networks and effectiveness, optimal flows of materials, goods, and services.

Developed for and applied in large scale to manage the logistics needs and strategic deployment of the Allied Forces in World War II, these technologies were first adopted by petroleum companies to create process optimization – one of the first commercializations of this science.

Organizations routinely deal with thousands of people, hundreds of products, millions of dollars and billions of data packets every single day. With all that complexity, you need Management Science to help decipher data and manage your business. At Syllogix, we’ll help you get a handle on the complexity so that you can make the right decisions, at the right time for the right reasons.

So why?

• Because cost-reductions and process improvements go directly to your bottom line.
• Because the inherent complexity of your business requires specialized analytical solutions.
• Because the problem is so big, and interlinked, it requires a synthetic and “big-picture” understanding to produce integrated, incremental, customized solutions.
• Because waste, inefficiencies, lack of coordination, lack of control, ignorance of the real-time state of your processes will have to be corrected eventually if you wish to grow and survive.
• Because you need to:
  • Look at all your options quickly and intelligently.
  • Make the best possible decision.
  • Be competitive.
  • Know how much better you would be doing if…

Some of the Benefits of Management Science :

• Quantitative insight into your business processes
• Improved decision-making and release of Dogmatic Thinking, by assessing all alternatives and their likely outcomes.
• Increased performance through model-driven intelligent systems and practices.
• Optimal or better utilization from limited equipment, facilities, staff and capital.
• Increased speeds to reduce cycle times and increase throughput
• Cost reductions and leveraged efficiencies.
• A better basis for more accurate forecasting and planning.
• Efficient scheduling of staff and equipment.
• Quantitative techniques and proof to support operations and planning.
• Dynamic and optimal pricing of products and services.
• Increased revenue or return on investments.
• Balancing qualitative considerations.
• Gaining control and the ability to “see” your own systems.
• Quantitative assessments of risk and determination of critical dependencies in order to manage risk better.

How can Management Science help?

Think about your organization as a whole. What’s holding it back?

• Look for complex decisions that would benefit from the analysis of large amounts of data like setting up operations, choosing a site for your new facility, starting a new product line, or re-engineering your business processes.
• Look for those decisions that are made repeatedly and which would benefit from real-time data driven insight.
• Look for repeating processes that are performed with out-dated systems or methodologies.

Determine whether you are gaining the most out of your processes how you deliver your services, how you set your prices, and whether you are fully leveraging your Supply Chain, logistics, or ERP systems.

Signs that there may be a “breakthrough” benefit for your organization.

• You don’t even know who your most profitable customers or products/services are.
• You have bottlenecks, inventory pile-ups, back-logs, or orders you can’t fulfill.
• Customer satisfaction is down.
• Your processes are too intricate and too interconnected for you to see their impact on your bottom line.
• Something/someone is always waiting for something/someone else.
• Lead times are too high.
• You have data that you have not turned into value.
• You have no data, or data collection process.
• Your processes are in a knot, and many of the smaller, day-to-day decisions are not being made well and are affecting your ability to generate revenues.
• Your key operational systems lack intelligence and reactivity.
• Risk is high and you need to limit or contain it.
• You face difficult decisions and are overwhelmed by the complexity and the number of dependencies on your decisions.
• Your competitors are already leveraging Management Science technologies and have left you behind.