On November 27, 2024, FORS held its regular annual meeting and a seminar. The annual meeting approved the club’s budget and action plan for the coming year and elected the board for 2025. The 2025 board has three first-timers, which bodes well in terms of new ideas and the development of the society’s operations. 

The seminar focused on operations research applications in the retail sector. In the seminar, three leading experts in the field gave interesting presentations, which sparked lively discussions among the participants. 

Toni Jarimo, Head of the K-Plussa Customer Program at Kesko, delivered the seminar’s opening presentation. He gave an in-depth overview of the analytics used to create a personalized customer experience. K-Plussa offers several features to its users, such as an automatically generated shopping list and personalized discounts, which make extensive use of transaction data. 

The second presentation was given by Professor Heikki Peura from Aalto University School of Business. Heikki explained how product assortments can be improved using robust optimization techniques. In a recent article, Heikki and his colleagues demonstrated that the product assortment offered to customers should not be fixed, as randomizing the assortment can increase the expected sales. 

In the closing talk, the newly decorated OR person of the year, Antti Punkka from the S Group, shared how operations research is applied in S Group’s workforce planning. With over 40,000 employees in various roles, S Group faces numerous challenges in summer vacation planning. Antti demonstrated how operations research methods can optimize the recruitment of summer workers, taking into account costs, required competencies for shifts, flexibility, and labor requirements.