It was founded in 1962 and it is dedicated to the development, improvement and promotion of the methods and applications of Statistics and Operations Research in its widest possible sense.

On a proposal of the members, within SEIO some working groups can be formed, based on either geographical or methodological and application affinity.

The topics covered are continuous and discrete optimization, games, decision theory, logistics, production planning, stochastic models, simulation, and OR applications.

SEIO also publishes BEIO,[8] (Boletín de Estadística e Investigación Operativa), a divulgative journal.

At every conference, SEIO announces an award for an outstanding career in the fields of Statistics and Operations research, the so-called Ramiro Melendreras price.