100 Best Operations Research Books of All Time
We've researched and ranked the best operations research books in the world, based on recommendations from world experts, sales data, and millions of reader ratings. Learn more
Jeff BezosEncourages companies to identify the biggest constraints in their operations and then structure their organizations to get the most out of those constraints. (Source)
Kevin SystromAbout basically manufacturing and supply chain management. It sounds really boring, but I promise you it’s really good. (Source)
Chris GowardHere are some of the books that have been very impactful for me, or taught me a new way of thinking: [...] The Goal. (Source)
Amazon.com started off delivering books through the mail. But its visionary founder, Jeff Bezos, wasn't content with being a bookseller. He wanted Amazon to become the everything store, offering limitless selection and seductive convenience at disruptively low prices. To do so, he developed a corporate culture of relentless ambition and secrecy that's never been cracked. Until now. Brad Stone enjoyed unprecedented access to current and... more
Doug McMillon[I read and give this book because] you need to understand what you’re up against. (Source)
Santiago BasultoI love to read biographies and stories of companies. Hatching Twitter is a really good book, and if you’re into that sort of books, bios of Steve Jobs (by Isaacson) or Jeff Bezos are great too. (Source)
Tracy DiNunzioIt's a great book and especially for people starting out. (Source)
Marius Ciuchete Pauneval(ez_write_tag([[250,250],'theceolibrary_com-large-mobile-banner-2','ezslot_5',164,'0','1'])); Question: Was there a moment, specifically, when something you read in a book helped you? Answer: Yes there was. In fact, I can remember two separate sentences from two different books: The first one comes from “The Design of Everyday Things” by Don Norman. It says: “great design will help... (Source)
Grey BakerI mainly read to decompress and change my state of mind, so it’s hard to point to an insight I read that helped me. Reading fiction has pulled me out of a bad mood more times than I can count, though, and always reenergises me to attack problems that had stumped me again. That said, I read and loved Norman Norman’s “The Design of Everyday Things”, and it’s helped me think through design problems... (Source)
Kaci LambeThese three books are about how people actually use design in their lives. They helped me understand this very basic idea: There are no dumb users, only bad designers. Take the time to create based on how your design will be interacted with. Test it. Iterate. That's how you become a good designer. (Source)
Space and time form the very fabric of the cosmos. Yet they remain among the most mysterious of concepts. Is space an entity? Why does time have a direction? Could the universe exist without space and time? Can we travel to the past? Greene has set himself a daunting task: to explain non-intuitive, mathematical concepts like String Theory, the Heisenberg... more
Walter IsaacsonThis is the clearest explanation of Newton and Einstein available, and Greene does it with a great sense of humour and wonderful visual thought experiments. (Source)
Sean M CarrollIt covers issues that don’t get attention in other places, such as the nature of time, the nature of space and really gives you a profound understanding of the universe. (Source)
Boyd, more than any other person, saved fighter aviation from the predations of the Strategic Air Command. His manual of... more
Ryan HolidayBoyd was probably the greatest post-WWII military strategist; he developed the F-15 and F-16, revolutionized ground tactics in war and covertly designed the US battle plans for the Gulf War. He shunned wealth, fame, and power all to accomplish what he felt needed to be accomplished. Coram captures his essence in a way that no other author has touched. (Source)
Kirk BorneFantastic accomplishment! Congratulations @nicolefv on your outstanding #DevOps book ... I love that: “The Science of Lean” ... that works also for #DataOps and Lean Analytics. https://t.co/i9gPhKL0dt https://t.co/DNJpuJtER0 (Source)
Foreword by Charles J. Chaput. less
Don't have time to read the top Operations Research books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
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- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
But how does one exactly do data science? Do you have to hire one of these priests of the dark arts, the "data scientist," to extract this gold from your data? Nope.
Data science is little more than using straight-forward steps to process raw data into... more
Hundreds of people have suggested names of programmers to interview on the... more
Santiago BasultoFounders at Work and Coders at Work are really good ones too. They’re filled with interesting and inspiring stories. (Source)
Vicki BoykisIt’s about how those people got into programming and how they think about it. It’s a very conversational book that really helps you to learn the culture of this industry you’re coming into, and some of its terminology. (Source)
Demand Driven Material Requirements Planning (DDMRP), Version 3 presents a practical, proven, and emerging method for supply chain planning and execution that effectively brings the 1950s concept into the modern era. The foundation of DDMRP is based upon... more
Roger D. PengThis book is about how best to present data to other people, what are the tools that you can use, and the types of visualizations that you can make. (Source)
For this new edition the book has been thoroughly updated throughout. There are new chapters on nonlinear interior methods and derivative-free methods for optimization, both of which are used widely in practice and the focus of much current research. Because of the emphasis on practical... more
Don't have time to read the top Operations Research books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
Linear optimization is a powerful modeling method for discovering the best solution to a problem among a set of available alternatives. It is one of today's most important branches of mathematics and computer science--and also a surprisingly rich medium for creating breathtaking works of art. Opt Art takes readers on an entertaining tour of linear optimization and its applications, showing along the way how it can be used to design visual art.
Robert Bosch provides a lively and... more
Fortunately for you, there's Schaum's Outlines. More than 40 million students have trusted Schaum's to help them succeed in the classroom and on exams. Schaum's is the key to faster learning and higher grades in every subject. Each Outline presents all the essential course information in an easy-to-follow, topic-by-topic format. You also get hundreds of examples, solved problems, and practice exercises to test your skills.
This Schaum's Outline gives you
Practice problems with full... more
Logically organized and richly illustrated, Structured Analytic Techniques makes it easy to navigate, reference, and put the tools to use right away. Each technique... more
"Execution may very well be the best business book of the year, and one of the most useful to have come around in a long time. This smart and pithy book focuses on a simple though vexing challenge: How can the leaders of an organization exhort their people to deliver on the most important goals?....It's rare to find a book like this that blends smart practice with intelligent articulation of how to get things done. Do yourself a favor. Buy it." --The Boston Globe
"Making all of the moving parts of an organization function smoothly together is just plain...
moreFaisal Amin‘Execution’ by Lawrence Bossidy and Ram Charan is a book that talks about decentralization and the fact that you are supposed to relinquish control to get things done. However, It’s one of the key learnings that most startups fail to understand. Luckily, the book has taught me great things about entrepreneurship. (Source)
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An actionable business book in the form of a fable.
Radical Focus tackles the OKR movement and better goal setting through the powerful story of Hanna and Jack's struggling tea startup. When the two receive an ultimatum from their only investor, they must learn how to employ Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) with radical focus to get the... more
Most of the recipes use the ggplot2 package, a powerful and flexible way to make graphs in R. If you have a basic understanding of the R language, you're ready to get started.
Use R's default graphics for quick exploration of data
Create a... more
Key features of this revised and improved Second Edition include:
- Extensive coverage, via step-by-step recipes, of powerful new algorithms... more
Don't have time to read the top Operations Research books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
No one has ever written the history of the Defense Department's most secret, most powerful, and most controversial military science R&D agency. In the first-ever history about the organization, New York Times bestselling author Annie Jacobsen draws on inside sources, exclusive interviews, private... more
The authors demonstrate how treating text as data frames enables you to manipulate, summarize, and... more
Nick HighamThe problem is very hard. Even with the fastest computers and the best algorithms that we have today, we aren’t able to solve it yet. (Source)
In 1986, Toyota opened a factory in rural Kentucky and unveiled TPS, its revolutionary management system. While most manufacturers and organizations now use Lean methods, the application is almost always superficial and confined within existing management frameworks. Consequently, the groundbreaking transformation that allowed Toyota to flourish against incredible odds has rarely been replicated.
Toyota's Engagement Equation is a... more
Don't have time to read the top Operations Research books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
Helps you move from theory to optimizing engineering systems in almost any industry
Now in its Fourth Edition, Professor Singiresu Rao's acclaimed text Engineering Optimization enables readers to quickly master and apply all the important optimization methods in use today across a broad range of industries. Covering both the latest and classical optimization methods, the text starts off with the basics and then progressively builds to advanced principles and applications.
This comprehensive text covers... more
Many data science resources incorporate statistical methods but lack a deeper statistical perspective. If you're familiar with the R programming language, and have some exposure to... more
There isn't a business in America that doesn't want to be more creative in its thinking, products, and processes. At many companies, being first with a concept and first to market are critical just to survive. In The Art of Innovation, Tom Kelley, general manager of the Silicon Valley... more
Seth GodinI don't know if you can teach this kind of creativity, but you can certainly raise your expectations by seeing how well they do design. (Source)
Based on exhaustive research and interviews with driving experts and traffic officials around the globe, Traffic gets under the hood of the everyday activity of driving to uncover the... more
This book analyzes how notable companies have employed one or more of these strategies to become the successful businesses they... more
The book is edited by Professor J. Scott Armstrong of the Wharton School, University of... more
Don't have time to read the top Operations Research books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
The world is more complex and volatile today than at any other time in our history. The tools of our modern existence are getting faster, cheaper, and smaller at an exponential rate, transforming every aspect of society, from business to culture and from the public sphere to our most private moments. The people who succeed will be the ones who learn to... more
Seth GodinJoi Ito and Jeff Howe have a new book called Whiplash. Joi's the head of MIT's Media Lab and an extraordinary thinker. Jeff brings the ideas and the lessons of the Lab to life. This is a big think, well worth a deep dive. (Source)
George RavelingThe good Lord helped me discover this book. (Source)
Today, organizations of all kinds are ruled by the belief that the path to success is quantifying human performance, publicizing the results, and dividing up the rewards based on the numbers. But in our zeal to instill the evaluation process with scientific rigor, we've gone from measuring performance to fixating on measuring itself. The result is a tyranny of metrics that threatens the quality of our lives and most important institutions. In this timely and... more
Sanjay BakshiA student recommended this book by @jerryzmuller which I liked a lot. It has some great examples on perverse incentives resulting in unintended consequences from measuring stuff and making the data public. https://t.co/SfnVmhlmWO (Source)
This is a book about a team of scientists and psychics with top secret clearances.
For more than forty years, the U.S. government has researched extrasensory perception, using it in attempts to locate hostages, fugitives, secret bases, and downed fighter jets, to divine other nations' secrets, and even to predict future threats to... more
Don't have time to read the top Operations Research books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
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Joakim Ahlstrom--one of the world's most respected continuous improvement experts--serves as your coach. He first helps you decide whether you want to embark on the continuous improvement journey and takes you through the entire process step by step, all the way through generating remarkable business results... more
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How do you operate at maximum efficiency with minimum cost? Manager's Guide to Operations Management addresses one of the most pressing business issues of our time by offering easy-toimplement advice on creating the most effective, streamlined operations possible. This quick-reference guide explains how to:
Improve your production processes
Boost quality using the Six Sigma approach
Manage supply chains and inventory
Forecast, plan, and schedule efficiently
With... more
Don't have time to read the top Operations Research books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
Readers will learn how to resolve linear independence and find null spaces and factors of matrices, determine existence of restricted solutions to linear equations and inequalities, and resolve definiteness of Hermitian and real symmetric matrices by Gaussian pivoting. Additional topics... more
Through her global consulting projects, keynote speeches, and work with thousands of leaders, Karen has seen first-hand how a pervasive lack of clarity strangles business performance and erodes employee engagement. Ambiguity is the corporate default state, a condition so prevalent that "tolerance for ambiguity" has become... more
Emphasizing a quantitative approach, Supply Chain Engineering: Models and Applications provides state-of-the-art mathematical models, concepts, and solution methods important in the design, control, operation, and management of global supply chains. The text provides an understanding of how companies plan, source, make, and deliver their products to create and/or maintain a global competitive advantage. It emphasizes application of operations research models and methods to optimize the various... more
The authors who have operated various levels of businesses in the clinical research industry since 2005 believe that more practical information pertaining to clinical research needs to be accessible to individuals who are new to the industry or are curious about entering the rewarding world of clinical trials.
This book reads in an easy to understand style and is based on proven methods the... more
The Agile Extension version 2:
- Describes the agile mindset and positions agile business analysis beyond software development
- Introduces a 3-tier rolling planning model to help organizations, teams, and practitioners deliver greater business value
- Incorporates the Business Analysis Core Concept Model(TM) (BACCM(TM))
- Details... more
Don't have time to read the top Operations Research books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
What is Operations and Supply Chain Management and why is it important? What are the key functions within this field, and how do they interact with one another and the broader business? What are the responsibilities and decisions that managers in each functional area think about? How will disruptions in the Supply Chain impact the business world and our lives going forward? What are the practical applications of the knowledge gained around Supply Chain Operations? Have you ever wondered what your... more
User Research... more
Written by a well-known authority in the field, this volume employs practical examples and analogies to make models more meaningful. The more universal methods appear in considerable detail, and advanced dynamic principles feature easy-to-understand examples.... more
Don't have time to read the top Operations Research books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
Lean Six Sigma combines the two most important improvement trends of our time: making work better (using Six Sigma) and making work faster (using Lean principles). In this plain-English guide, you'll discover how this remarkable quality improvement method can give you the tools to identify and eliminate waste and quality problems in your own work area.
Packed with diagrams, cartoons, and real-life examples, What is Lean... more
A lean strategy is about gaining a competitive edge by offering better quality products at competitive prices and making a sustainable profit by eliminating waste through engaging employees in discovering deeper ways to think about their own jobs and smarter ways of working together. In its current form, lean has been radically effective, but its true powers have yet to be harnessed.
Lean Strategy harnesses... more
Today, time is the cutting edge. In fact, as a strategic weapon, contend George Stalk, Jr., and Thomas M. Hout, time is the equivalent of money, productivity, quality, even innovation. In this path-breaking book based upon ten years of research, the authors argue that the ways leading companies manage time— in production, in new product development, and in sales and distribution— represent the most powerful new sources of competitive advantage.
With many detailed examples from companies that have put time-based strategies in place, such as Federal Express, Ford, Milliken, Honda,... more
John SculleyThe best opportunities always come from changing the ground rules. "Competing Against Time "is a provocative and well-researched book with some insightful ideas for competing in the 1990s. (Source)
Donald PetersenIn "Competing Against Time" George Stalk and Tom Hout make a compelling case, supported by extensive research, that a new, time-driven paradigm differentiates successful companies from the "also rans." Through the use of numerous examples, the authors demonstrate that customers seek "the most value for the least cost in the least elapsed time," and that customers are willing to pay a premium for... (Source)
Don't have time to read the top Operations Research books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.