What’s the ideal application area for OR? Experienced practitioners would likely come up with characteristics such as:

• Managers feel the pain already and don’t have to be convinced that problems exist,
• Problems are intrinsically amenable to a data-driven, model-based approach, · The data needed to solve the problems is available at low cost,
• There is significant financial leverage in solving the problems even approximately.

Well, OR practitioners, start your engines! Such an area exists--it is retail merchandising. After defining retail merchandising, Ramakrishnan will examine why merchandising problems have come to the forefront of the agendas of top retail CEOs. He will then map out the key elements of the merchandising process and present an extensive array of merchandising decisions that are ideal for the application of OR.

Rama Ramakrishnan is Chief Scientist and Vice President, Research & Development, at ProfitLogic where he is responsible for developing analytic techniques that have a significant impact on retailers' businesses and incorporating them into ProfitLogic's products and services. Ramakrishnan has applied OR/MS techniques to solve business problems across many industries. His career includes stints at American Airlines Decision Technologies (OR consulting), McKinsey & Company (management consulting), CIBC Oppenheimer (quantitative investment management), Redwood Investment Systems (decision-support software for fund managers) and Profit Sciences (OR consulting). He holds a BS in Engineering from IIT, Madras, India, and MS and PhD degrees in OR from MIT.

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