The World is Coming Our Way - OR/MS Opportunities in e-Commerce

John D.C. Little
Institute Professor
MIT

In the early days of OR/MS the biggest challenges were frequently, first, to gain managerial acceptance that models and analysis might improve decision making and, then, once the analysis had been done, to convince executives that they should implement the decisions implied by the analysis. By contrast, today, increasing numbers of business transactions are moving to the internet, where, by necessity, much of the decision making must be pre-programmed into web software. This is a world made to order for OR/MS. Opportunities exist for models, optimization, and construction of decision rules in many, if not most, e-commerce applications. These include such diverse arenas as supply chain management, manufacturing, customer service, e-tailer system design, pricing, advertising, web traffic congestion, and more. In fact, if OR/MS does not pick up the challenge of providing models for these tasks, other fields will!