Optimization tradecraft: Hard-won insights from real-world decision support

Practitioners of optimization–based decision support advise commerce and government on how to coordinate the activities of millions of people who employ assets worth trillions of dollars. The contributions of these practitioners substantially improve planning methods that benefit our security and welfare. The success of real–world optimization applications depends on a few trade secrets that are essential, but that rarely, if at all, appear in textbooks. This paper summarizes a set of these secrets and uses examples to discuss each.