📈 #25 OR in action: why suboptimal solutions are sometimes the best

Discover why practicality trumps optimality in real-world problem-solving.

I've been dealing with a terrible spring allergy for a the last couple of days, and it's only the end of January.

Of course, having a runny nose, coughing, breathing poorly, feeling more tired than usual, or finding it very difficult to climb the stairs in my house does not prevent me from writing a new post of Feasible.

Today, I also bring you a topic that I've wanted to write about for a long time.

If you had to choose between solving a problem in a practical way or solving it optimally, which would you choose?

I'm clear about it.

Amazon is clear about it too.

Jeffrey D. Camm, a professor in the Operations Research department at the University of Cincinnati, also is.

We all choose the first option. Why? Well, for 3 very powerful reasons:

1. You invest less time in developing the solution.

2. It's easier to solve computationally speaking.

3. The solutions tend to be more flexible and adaptable to the real world.

I won't go on any longer... Let's get to it!

📦 How Amazon groups orders in its deliveries

The other day I made a couple of orders on Amazon. I placed them separately, but they were scheduled to be delivered on the same day.

I wondered if they would arrive at different times, but no, they arrived together. If they had arrived in different deliveries, it would have been a hassle. Actually, two hassles.

A hassle for me, because I would have to be at home waiting for those two orders to arrive.

A hassle for Amazon, because they would have to come twice when they could have come just once.

As I say, everything arrived in a single order. It's not a coincidence: they've done it on purpose.

I won't tell you the technical details because you can read them here¹, but I would like to highlight Amazon's way of working.

Simplifying a problem means losing optimality, but gaining manageability

Among many other things, the article I linked above 👆🏻 mentions that to efficiently group orders, they spent several years of development and many different techniques such as: