Peace, Humanitarism, Antropology, Food and water supplying, eg, to model probems like theese ones.

In operation research, hot topics are decision theory under different kind of uncertainties, Uncertainty modelling, Supply chain decisions

Agri-food supply chains

I think that logistics problems for huge events is a challenge. Try do find the optimun value for investments on transports to be enought for the huge event (World cup, olimpics, etc), and not so much for the rest of the year.

Formal modeling and integrating organizational, sociological, and political theory into operations management and research.

Optimization Modelling of supply chain integration of production planning activities of all the entities in the supply chain.

Integration of organizational, sociological, and political theory into operations management and research seems a huge challenge but also a really good research line for the future. Does anyone knows about any attempt so far?

1) Applications of OR in the healthcare sector.

2) Supply chain design with sustainability constraints.

3) The interface between operations, computer science and statistics (e.g. "big data" or business analytics).

System Reliability Optimization

modeling and algorithms for health-care systems is a very popular aspect both in Europe and US.

In reply to Luis Mendes about possible directions for Organizational, Political and Sociological theory. There has been significant empirical work related to survey studies integrating the various theories. But, extending some of these theories (e.g. institutional theory) would require considerations of things like regulatory policy influence on operations decisions and directions. Another possibility is to look up public choice theory and see models developed there and their applicability to operations management decisions. Most of these models are at the strategic, macro-level (for an organization), bringing them down to operations management modeling efforts is a challenge.

social sustainability in terms of empowered operators, SMEs and ICT-tools/cognitive automation to support the empowerment.

Reconfigurable systems - dynamic automation in terms of different levels of automation

Production management to handle the two first bullets!

modelling the social media netwroks, modelling the service expectations, green and sustainable supply chains will be hot topics

Operation management and sustainability in service industry.

Operations research in Health Systems Management.

"Five steps towards exploring the future of operations management" by Jan Holmström, and A. Georges L. Romme

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs12063-011-0060-8

Reducing bottlenecks with industrial automation and organizational behavior development.

In Energy Sector..OR based scheduling and optimization of large scale dynamic process industries...wind for example!

Decision making in public and private sectors

Non-linear programming

behavior OR

Including organizational behavior and individual behavior.

Here are some associated links on Behavioral Ops (not referred to as BeOR, but rather BeOps since much of the salient work is empirical not normative):

http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Behavioral_Operations

http://www.ombehavior.com/

http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Behavioral-Operations-Management-3704620?trk=my_groups-b-grp-v

CROWD SOURCING IN OPERATIONS RESEARCH

the barriers and challenges to health equity

Fitting in impact of :

"Perceptions" and "Behavior" of Human Resources in process and mechanical operations.

Robust optimization and its applications

Risk management and uncertainty analysis

Use of ICT for operations management in SME sector in developing countries

VR tools and their application/ impact on workforce

 As some respondents I believe also the sustainable supply chain is a relevant topic, but as criteria and no as constraints. Collaborative supply chain, at least for the transport, is also on today's agenda.

supply chain for clean drinking water...as they say the 3rd world war would be for water

Scheduling and optimize the uncertainty order in load balancing using mathematical modeling.

For countries aspiring to become industrilised, supply chain, production and quality management will be hot topics

Application of Operations Research in Health care industry

"portfolio optimization" is also a hot topic for operational research area

Multi-criteria decision analysis tools for sustainable development issues through service industry.

I think regarding the new topics of operations management may like operations' processes reengineering and lean operations as well as 6 sigma and TQM.

risk management

Optimization of resources for Sustainable Business

Green Supply Chain

Full Smart Manufacturing

World Class Manufacturing (VCM)

optimizing cropland allocation to maximize yield and profit

AI as a facilitating tool for future OM

Resource management and optimization.

Internet of things, health care, industry 4, environmental impact...

Adopting Artificial intelligence for continuous and proactive improvement

Job Sequencing and Scheduling.