Abstract
The approach to solving industrial optimisation problems differs greatly to approaches to academic optimisation problems in the research community. SINTEF Optimisation has worked in both of these areas for more than 20 years, working on basic research projects funded by grants and on developing optimisation engines for software vendors or for end-users. I will talk about our experience in customer contacts, business models, intellectual property, contract negotiation, expectation management, and different kinds of support. There are compromises to be made and various points to consider, depending on whether you work with applied, applicable, or stylized and theoretical problems. I will also share thoughts considerations we often made on the simplification and limitations of models, the choice of solution methods, verification and validation, dealing with uncertainty, etc.. Working in applied industrial optimisation has some very positive sides, but also some aspects of it are, in some way, counterproductive to general objectives of optimisation research. In this talk, I want to share our experience at SINTEF Optimisation on this topic.