EXPOSED
The daily work — pulling and cleaning data, coding optimization and simulation models in Python/R, running scenario analyses, and writing up findings in decks and memos — sits squarely in the zone current AI handles at usable quality. What persists is upstream: correctly framing a messy business problem as a solvable model, choosing which constraints and objectives actually reflect what the organization wants, and defending a recommendation that reroutes a supply chain or reshapes a staffing plan. There is no license and no signature requirement, so nothing regulatory slows the substitution; the modal analyst's output is an artifact, not a relationship.
Mixed — a routine tier and a judgment tier. Writing the LP formulation, tuning solver parameters in Gurobi/CPLEX, building discrete-event simulations, and generating sensitivity tables are all things an LLM now does at first-draft quality; the 9 rather than a 5 reflects that the problem-framing step — deciding that a nurse-scheduling complaint is actually a demand-forecasting failure, and that the constraint the client insists on is the one to relax — still requires sitting in rooms with operations staff who cannot state their own objective function.
Fully desk- and screen-based. A 3 rather than 0 accounts for the occasional plant walkthrough, warehouse time-and-motion observation, or ride-along to see why the routing model's assumptions don't match how drivers actually load the truck — real, but a few days a quarter against a full-time seat in front of a solver and a BI tool.
No licence, no signature requirement. There is no state license, no PE-style stamp, and no statutory sign-off on an optimization recommendation; the 2 rather than 0 is only for the narrow slice working under DoD/FFRDC clearance requirements or SOX-adjacent model-governance regimes, where the barrier is the clearance and the model-validation paperwork, not the analyst's credential.
Some relationship component. An 8 rather than a 3 recognizes that internal analysts who have earned the plant manager's or the CFO's confidence get their recommendations adopted while equally correct models from outside consultants get shelved — but the deliverable is still a deck and a model file that can be handed to a successor, so the relationship accelerates adoption rather than constituting the product.
Meaningful discretion. A 12 sits above procedural work because you choose the objective — minimize cost, or minimize worst-case delay, or keep the union contract intact — and that choice is a value judgment nobody hands you in a spec; it stops short of 14+ because the executive who approves the network redesign owns the consequence, and your name appears on the analysis, not the decision.
Has AI actually changed your work?