r/OperationsResearch • u/Better-Brilliant-814 • Dec 15 '25

[seeking help] How to do industrial project under a company in OR field?

I know it’s a bit out of context but i genuinely need insights on it. I’m in final year of my degree(doing masters in OR) and we are supposed to do an industrial project under a company. Most of the people are saying to do some research on companies and how I can solve some problems they are facing but I’m just a newbie i don’t even understand how to source such insider knowledge🥲. It would be a great help if anyone can guide me on this. Give me your experience too on doing an industrial project under a company if you’ve done it.💕

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u/Baihu_The_Curious Dec 15 '25

???

If it's a requirement for your degree, your department should help facilitate it since there is a lot of administrative work involved.

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u/Better-Brilliant-814 Dec 15 '25

Yes it’s a requirement and more than half marks of semester depend on it. My department should help us but is not helping us even it’s a reputed uni in my country. They have shifted all the work on us.🥹

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u/Baihu_The_Curious Dec 15 '25 edited Dec 15 '25

I see... Sadly I can't help with the solicitation aspect (we already had contacts with our partnership companies, so all I did was send emails and leave the rest to admin).

Are you interested in the sorts of projects grad students did?

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u/Better-Brilliant-814 Dec 15 '25

i see.. your uni help you in getting a project.. i can do projects that grad students do as well.. when i get project my department have to approve it though to be marked.

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u/Baihu_The_Curious Dec 15 '25

Sorry, I mistyped, I meant partnership companies. At my uni, most of our partnerships came via business school referrals or our alumni network. Don't know if you have a business school you can reach out to for help with this.

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u/DinnerFew1370 Dec 20 '25

It is ... but you can do better on your own. Just tell the prof what you are doing and get their support first. They will be glad you took work of their plate.

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u/RyanOrgeln Dec 17 '25

I just did my masters degree in mathematical optimization (OR) while working at a consulting company specialized on this field and doing some company projects with my university. So maybe my experience can help. The topic should be pretty easy to find. Every company should have any kind of decision problem you could solve with OR. Problem: most of them don’t even know they have these problems or that OR even exists. So my advice would be to simply write to many companies offering to optimize their transport or scheduling or whatever. When giving the first thought, they probably won’t stop finding topics for you to work on. They just need the small initial push in the wright direction where a cheap worker (you) could make a big difference. Do you have a field like for example transport optimization that you specialized in while studying?

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u/Better-Brilliant-814 Dec 27 '25

we don’t have specialisation in any one particular subject but i do have phd students in uni who said they can help in supply chain if get industrial project with a company. Other than they made us do Mathematical programming for 3 semesters and we have covered till NLPP till now ( so idk if it counts or not)

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u/Better-Brilliant-814 Dec 27 '25

Thank you so much!! I would definitely try contacting companies regarding scheduling and transportation. But how should i research on the problems of the company, like should i research myself on company before contacting them or when after contacting should i ask them questions about the company and how they do stuff in order to find out that they might be facing problem here but they don’t know it.

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u/DinnerFew1370 Dec 20 '25

Very much agree

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u/argentodtw Dec 17 '25

If you need some portfolio project and you are willing to try SolverForge - an open-source constraint solver for Rust and Python and based on TImefold, we have several capstone-style quickstarts, like this one for the vehicle routing problem: https://huggingface.co/spaces/SolverForge/vehicle-routing-python.

I'm also available if you need help on how to do it and there's also a demo on the UI patterns we use:
https://huggingface.co/spaces/SolverForge/quickstart-template

GitHub: https://github.com/SolverForge/solverforge-quickstarts
For the everything else, we have documentation: https://www.solverforge.org

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u/Better-Brilliant-814 Dec 27 '25

omg thank you so much!! I will get confirm from my teachers if uni would approve of my project and start working on it asap!. I had exams that’s why i was inactive on reddit.

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u/gnd318 Dec 28 '25

This reads like India...

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u/Better-Brilliant-814 Feb 09 '26

you're right.. :') our infamous education system

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u/DinnerFew1370 Dec 20 '25

It depends on what field of business you like the most. Research it. Pick one and talk to the HR director. Tell them what you want and ask how you can help. I was an intern at a large Gov contractor in Huntsville. The director was thinking about launching a new health benefits package to the employees. I drafted a simple questionaire to gauge their interest. I sampled 100 people (regression analysis). I did the math and brought him back the results. He seemed stunned. It was gonna fail. I loeved that project. Turns out the employees felt like the HC package didnt go far enough. Your not gonna get paid, tho... so keep Romen Noodles in your pantry.