Where is Killer Application of OM

Yesterday, I kept talking with different people. One is a graduated phd student from our department. He was used to work on inventory management in one Fortune 500 company. But the salary cannot compete with phd student from other field such as EE. We both feel that OM such as inventory theory (I doesn't mean those technology such as decreasing leadtime, since it has nothing to do with model) doesn't bring much improvement for the companies. For example, in the EOQ model, the model is quite insensitive to order quantity. And a lot of computation studies exclude cost such as purchase cost in order to emphasize the benefit of the model. Not to mention the restriction of the model. That might be low recognition of our field. I bet the number of people knowing IE would be less than 1/n knowing EE, ME... Why? Because those fields bring the more value to the society. People's live get changed by those fields.

Just like the slow progress of 3G, the lack of killer application obstructs development of 3G technology. The lack of killer application of OM/OR prevents smart people entering into this area and limits the amount of funding. We need more applications using OR/OM techniques to create great value to companies or even bring new companies.

Hope one day papers in our field are not just to improve the existence practice but also bring new model which companies would look into. Like CPLEX would send people to academic conferences. If more and more companies send their employees to OM ones. Also we have more master degree program other than MBA to train manager to have more quantitive competence. Then I would think our field gets recognized.