u32Luke on Nostr: A great post from Kumar on common industrial engineering problems @datarade Twitter ...

A great post from Kumar on common industrial engineering problems

@datarade Twitter

"How to Think More Like an Industrial Engineer Without Being One

When I tell most people that I'm an industrial engineer, they believe I'm an electromechanical designer, tinkerer, or a designer.

I don't know how to use AutoCAD. I’ve never fidgeted with the intricacies of voltage, resistance, and amps or soldered a board.

The art and science of operations research/industrial engineering often consists of figuring out how to measure a system, its metrics, its topographies, its imperfections, and then modeling it so that it may be optimize-able.

95%-99% of the real work in the field is paranoia, data gathering, cleaning, and modeling it so that an optimization model be applied. I'd say very little of the time are great solutions needed, but great problem framing is always needed.

I’d say that 99% of the time that all systems I’ve modeled in this field in the physical world fit into a combination of one or more of the following problem types.

As an overview, study all of these problem types and it will help you think more like an engineer. This shouldn't take more than 3-4 hours.

- Quadratic Assignment Problem
- Transshipment Problem
- Bottleneck Problem
- Cluster Analysis Problem
- Reliability Optimization Problem
- Multi-Echelon Inventory Problem
- Constraint Satisfaction Problem
- Nonlinear Programming Problems
- Time-Cost Tradeoff Problem
- Network Interdiction Problem
- Capacitated Arc Routing Problem
- Bin Packing Problem
- Traveling Salesman Problem
- Knapsack Problem
- Newsvendor Model
- Vehicle Routing Problem
- Job Shop Scheduling
- Flow Shop Scheduling
- Assignment Problem
- Shortest Path Problem
- Maximum Flow Problem
- Minimum Cost Flow Problem
- Facility Location Problem
- Set Covering Problem
- Set Partitioning Problem
- Cutting Stock Problem
- Network Design Problem
- Integer Programming Problems
- Linear Programming Problems
- Queuing Theory Models
- Inventory Management Models
- Markov Decision Processes
- Game Theory Models
- Simulation Models
- Multi-Objective Optimization
- Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling
- Capacitated Facility Location Problem
- Multi-Commodity Flow Problem
- Crew Scheduling Problem
- Machine Scheduling Problem
- Graph Coloring Problem
- Vehicle Scheduling Problem
- Diet Problem
- Blending Problem
- Stochastic Programming
- Robust Optimization
- P-Median Problem
- P-Center Problem
- Dynamic Programming Problems
- Goal Programming
- Portfolio Optimization
- Packing Problem
- Covering-Packing Problems
- Location-Routing Problem
- Quadratic Assignment Problem
- Transshipment Problem
- Bottleneck Problem
- Cluster Analysis Problem
- Reliability Optimization Problem
- Multi-Echelon Inventory Problem
- Constraint Satisfaction Problem
- Nonlinear Programming Problems
- Time-Cost Tradeoff Problem
- Network Interdiction Problem
- Capacitated Arc Routing Problem"
Aug 6, 2025 · 5:06 PM UTC