My optimization class was one of the most interesting classes of my undergrad (industrial engineering). My professor was trying to explain why optimization was

My optimization class was one of the most interesting classes of my undergrad (industrial engineering). My professor was trying to explain why optimization was important. "Optimizing your solution ensures someone else can't come into your industry, get the same suppliers and contract terms, and beat you" We then went through an example for an oil refinery with different sources of oil (differing proportions of sweet and sour, and quantities available), refinery production constraints, and market prices for different end products. He showed the difference between a "naive manual optimization" and the mathematical optimal. Ever since that class, I'm particular about what "optimize" means. Factories talk about optimizing many things at the same time (on-time delivery, profit, throughput on a machine, throughput on the bottleneck machine, minimizing labor). I can't tell you how many times I've said "pick one thing to optimize - you're not going to hit them all at once". You can make an objective function a weighting of all those factors, but they won't all be at their best possible values.