OPERATIONS RESEARCH

also called operational research, application of scientific methods to the management and administration of organized military, governmental, commercial, and industrial processes. also called Operational Research, the application of scientific methods to the management and administration of organized military, governmental, commercial, and industrial systems. Operations research began as a distinct discipline in the early years of World War II in Britain when scientists cooperated with personnel in the Royal Air Force to improve the efficiency of radar to detect enemy aircraft. That specific task led to joint efforts to improve the entire system of early warning and coordinated defense, and by the early 1940s, operations research sections were established throughout the British armed services to evaluate, test, and maintain military systems. U.S. military groups began to employ operations research in 1942, and in 1948 the discipline was acknowledged as an academic pursuit with the introduction of a course in nonmilitary techniques at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In the early 1950s, American industry adapted programs of operations research to improve the management of particular industrial systems. The discipline is characterized by a systems orientation, the use of interdisciplinary teams of researchers, and the adaptation of scientific method to the conditions under which research is conducted. Because laboratory experimentation is inappropriate to large systems, for each system under study a representative model is devised. The solutions that are derived from scientific testing of models are recommended to the system manager, who bears responsibility for their subsequent implementation and control. Prototypical operational problems studied by research teams include allocation of resources (such as manpower, machines, money, products, or facilities); control of inventory; replacement and maintenance of resources; and queuing, or dealing in sequence with people or items waiting for a service or product. Computers have become an increasingly important tool of operations research. Management information systems (MIS) allow operations researchers to manipulate computerized company records to analyze trends and cycles and monitor company performance against projections or budgets. Decision support systems allow analysts to manipulate the variables of a computerized model of a real system to test and evaluate the consequences of alternative programs before they are implemented. Additional reading History J.G. Crowther and R. Whiddington, Science at War (1948); Florence N. Trefethen, A History of Operations Research, in Joseph F. McCloskey and Florence N. Trefethen (eds.), Operations Research for Management, vol. 1, pp. 335 (1954); and Great Britain, Air Ministry, The Origins and Development of Operational Research in the Royal Air Force (1963). General texts Russell L. Ackoff and Maurice W. Sasieni, Fundamentals of Operations Research (1968); Stafford Beer, Decision and Control: The Meaning of Operational Research and Management Cybernetics (1966); David W. Miller and Martin K. Starr, Executive Decisions and Operations Research, 2nd ed. (1969); Harvey M. Wagner , Principles of Operations Research (1969); David R. Anderson, Dennis J. Sweeney, and Thomas A. Williams, An Introduction to Management Science: Quantitative Approaches to Decision Making, 4th ed. (1985); Elwood S. Buffa and James S. Dyer, Management Science/Operations Research: Model Formulation and Solution Methods, 2nd ed. (1981); Gilbert Gordon and Israel Pressman, Quantitative Decision Making for Business, 2nd ed. (1983); and G.D. Eppen and F.J. Gould, Quantitative Concepts for Management: Decision Making Without Algorithms, 2nd ed. (1985). Methodology Russell L. Ackoff, Shiv K. Gupta, and J. Sayer Minas, Scientific Method: Optimizing Applied Research Decisions (1962, reprinted 1984); C. West Churchman, Prediction and Optimal Decision: Philosophical Issues of a Science of Values (1961, reprinted 1982); Peter C. Fishburn, Decision and Value Theory (1964), and Utility Theory for Decision Making (1970, reprinted 1979); and D.J. White, Decision Theory (1969). Marilyn Taylor Thompson, Management Information, Where to Find It (1981), is an annotated bibliography of resources. General techniques Burton V. Dean, Maurice W. Sasieni, and Shiv K. Gupta, Mathematics for Modern Management (1963, reprinted 1978); James R. Emshoff and Roger L. Sisson, Design and Use of Computer Simulation Models (1970); Howard Raiffa and Robert Schlaifer, Applied Statistical Decision Theory (1961, reprinted 1970); Thomas L. Saaty, Mathematical Methods of Operations Research (1959); and Clayton J. Thomas and Walter L. Deemer, Jr., The Role of Operational Gaming in Operations Research, Operations Research, 5:127 (1957). Examples of operations research models and applications: Specific techniques are addressed in the following: on programming, Richard E. Bellman, Dynamic Programming (1957, reprinted 1972); Richard E. Bellman and Stuart E. Dreyfus, Applied Dynamic Programming (1962); Saul I. Gass, Linear Programming: Methods and Applications, 5th ed. (1985); Ronald A. Howard, Dynamic Programming and Markov Processes (1960, reprinted 1964); and G. Hadley, Linear Programming (1962), Nonlinear and Dynamic Programming (1964); on inventory control, Kenneth J. Arrow, Samuel Karlin, and Herbert Scarf, Studies in the Mathematical Theory of Inventory and Production (1958); G. Hadley and T.M. Whitin, Analysis of Inventory Systems (1963); and Fred Hanssmann, Operations Research in Production and Inventory Control (1962); on replacement and maintenance, Richard E. Barlow and Frank Proschan, Mathematical Theory of Reliability (1965); D.R. Cox, Renewal Theory (1962, reissued 1967); and John J. McCall, Maintenance Policies for Stochastically Failing Equipment: A Survey, Management Science, 11(5):493524 (March 1965); on queuing, D.R. Cox and Walter L. Smith, Queues (1961, reprinted 1979); Thomas L. Saaty, Elements of Queueing Theory, with Applications (1961, reprinted 1983); and Lajos Takacs, Introduction to the Theory of Queues (1962, reprinted 1982); on sequencing and coordination, James E. Kelley, Jr., Critical-Path Planning and Scheduling: Mathematical Basis, Operations Research, 9(3):296320 (MayJune 1961); Robert W. Miller, Schedule, Cost, and Profit Control with PERT: A Comprehensive Guide for Program Management (1963); and Roger L. Sisson, Sequencing Theory, in Russell L. Ackoff (ed.), Progress in Operations Research, vol. 1, pp. 293326 (1961); on network routing, L.R. Ford, Jr., and D.R. Fulkerson, Flows in Networks (1962); E.L. Lawler and D.E. Wood, Branch-and-Bound Methods: A Survey, Operations Research, 14(4):699719 (JulyAugust 1966); and John D.C. Little et al., An Algorithm for the Traveling Salesman Problem, Operations Research, 11(6):972989 (NovemberDecember 1963); on competitive problems, Nigel Howard, The Theory of Meta-Games, General Systems, 11:167186 (1966), and The Mathematics of Meta-Games, General Systems, 11:187200 (1966); J.C.C. McKinsey, Introduction to the Theory of Games (1952); A. Rapoport, N-Person Game Theory: Concepts and Applications (1970); and John Von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern, Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, 3rd. ed. (1944, reissued 1980); and, on search problems, Russell L. Ackoff and Maurice W. Sasieni, Fundamentals of Operations Research, especially ch. 14 (1968); B.O. Koopman, The Theory of Search, Operations Research, 4(3):324346 (June 1956), 4(5):503531 (October 1956), and 5(5):613626 (October 1957); and James B. Macqueen, Optimal Policies for a Class of Search and Evaluation Problems, Management Science, 10(4):746759 (July 1964). Planning and implementation Russell L. Ackoff, A Concept of Corporate Planning (1970); H. Igor Ansoff, Corporate Strategy: An Analytic Approach to Business Policy for Growth and Expansion (1965, reissued 1968); James C. Emery, Organizational Planning and Control Systems: Theory and Technology (1969); and Jan H.B.M. Huysmans, The Implementation of Operations Research (1970).