<p>OR is my concentration within my undergrad major (Industrial Engineering and Systems Engineering). Industrial Engineering is sorta like OR applied to specific problems in logistics and manufacturing/service systems. You could say that Systems Engineering and OR are loosely the same field. The difference between IE and OR is that OR is more generalized, more advanced, and more mathematical/theoretical. </p>
<p>You’ll learn to do stuff like find how many workers and/or machines should be in some system to meet some objectives (minimum cost, minimum wait time, etc). You’ll learn optimization which is usually done either with calculus whenever possible or by running a program to try all possible outcomes (sometimes it is impossible or not practical to find the best solution, so you’ll learn how to find a good or acceptable solution). You’ll learn simulation of systems. You’ll also probably be required to study databases & data manipulation, because the field relies heavily on processing and understanding data. </p>
<p>You’ll use a lot of linear algebra, discreet math, probability/statistics, calculus (but rarely differential equations). </p>
<p>Personally, I think it’s a lot of fun. Modeling complex systems, how they behave, and how to optimize them is extremely powerful. This stuff is applied in every field imaginable including the oil industry. Some of the biggest ones are manufacturing (oil extraction included in the definition of manufacturing), transportation (airlines, freight), hospitals, relief organizations, finance (financial engineering is closely related), insurance, etc. Any company that is reasonably large requires the use of OR conceptions in their decision making. People in OR predict the future and do it pretty well.</p>
<p>I would separate OR from Industrial Engineering in your mind, despite the overlap. Industrial Engineering can vary tremendously from school to school. One school might focus heavily on manufacturing, another might focus on logistics/supply chain, some even focus on ergonomics (totally unrelated to OR in my opinion). At my school, Industrial Engineering really IS Operations Research. We pretty much take the graduate core OR curriculum as undergrads, but it is watered down a bit unless OR is your concentration. </p>
<p>The name “Operations Research” is a little weird. I think they’re referring to research as the process of analyzing a system, modeling it, and improving it. The reason not a lot of people have heard of it is because there is very little overlap betwene PetE and OR. There are definitely people doing OR work in any oil company, but they probably don’t deal with petroleum engineers that much. People in OR are more likely to work where upper management works, as they deal with decision making about large-scale problems. Your job title won’t likely be something well-defined, like “Operations Research Analyst” or something. It makes getting information online a little bit tough, but if you study OR you’ll figure it out as your school will have relationships in industry. The demand IS high and it does pay well, it’s just very difficult to find info because of the varying terminology. </p>
<p>I would probably not advise doing OR to make it a part of a career in petroleum engineering. It’s not likely that you would find a position that made good use of both of your degrees. If you’re looking instead to broaden your horizons, I think it’s a great field and will be forever relevant and increasingly important as systems continue to become larger and more complex.</p>