دانلود رایگان مقاله یادگیری از روش OR ترکیبی: مطالعه مورد NINES

abstract

Despite continued interest in the use of mixed OR/MS methods, limited attention has been paid in the literature to generic lessons that could be gained from mixing methods in practice. Many organisational problems demand the use of a mixed method approach and thus recognising and sharing lessons could prove beneficial to both practitioners and researchers. This paper reports on an in-depth evaluation of a case study involving risk identification and quantification of the Northern Isles New Energy Solutions (NINES) project which sought to trial and plan a new energy system. The intervention involved a mixed method approach and client feedback on the efficacy of the approach was sought. The evaluation reported in this paper is carried out using a set of themes taken from the literature and seeks to highlight transferable lessons. The set of lessons that emerge are presented along with their implications for both general OR modelling practice and the specific situation of mixing OR/MS methods. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of the work and directions for future work which will be of interest to both practitioners and researchers interested in mixed method OR/MS work.

5. Discussion and future work

The evaluation carried out in this paper was guided by a set of themes that had emerged from previous work which sought to highlight lessons from a set of mixed method case studies. This set of themes was found to be consistent with other sets of themes proposed in the literature for the evaluation of OR modelling interventions. However, it is interesting to note that the authors in this paper did not include ‘Context’ as a separate theme in this work as it impacted many of the learning points arising from all the other themes. Context is pervasive and thus separating it potentially misses key insight. Systemic reflection and identification of learning points is likely to yield insights that are far more nuanced and apposite. The set of themes used also highlight specific areas that may be worthy of exploration when focussing on mixed method case studies. The proposed set of themes suggests that an area for specific consideration is the modelling team and how the different members of that team integrate as part of the mixed method modelling process. The learning points that emerged from the evaluation of the case study suggest that this is an area which requires specific attention when entering into a mixed method intervention.