What is a Operations Research?

Operations Research Defined:

Origin of Operations Research - History and evolution. - Particular models and techniques of OR can be traced back to much earlier origins - Generally agreed that the discipline began during World War II.

What is a Operations Research? Operations Research Defined:

How it started : - Strategic and tactical war problems too complicated - Adequate solutions from any one individual, or even a single discipline were not possible - Groups of scientists with diverse educational backgrounds were assembled as special units within the armed forces

What is a Operations Research?

Operations Research Defined:

- The teams of scientists with interdisciplinary knowledge and training applied their expertise to solve problems - Problems addressed: deployment of radars, anti-aircraft fire control, deployment of ships to minimize losses from enemy submarines, and strategies for air defense.

What is a Operations Research?

Operations Research Defined:

Each of the three wings of Britains armed forces had such interdisciplinary research teams working on military management problems. As these teams were generally assigned to the commanders in charge of military operations, they were called operational research (OR) teams. The nature of their research came to be known as operational research or operations research.

What is a Operations Research?

- The successful and effective solutions in military management led to the use of such scientific teams in civilian operations - This gained popularity in the United States, France, and Canada. - At the end of the war, many of the scientists who worked in the military operational research units returned to civilian life in universities and industries.

What is a Operations Research?

- They started applying the OR methodology to solve complex management problems in industries - Petroleum companies were the first to make use of OR models for solving large-scale production and distribution problems

What is a Operations Research?

- In the universities advancements in OR techniques were made that led to the further development and applications of OR - Much of the postwar development of OR took place in the United States - In the early 1950s introduction computers also led to the rapid growth of operations research, supported in solving problems with large data

What is a Operations Research?

Defininition by The Operational Research Society of Great Britain : Operational research is the application of the methods of science to complex problems arising in the direction and management of large systems of men, machines, materials and money in industry, business, government, and defense. The distinctive approach is to develop a scientific model of the system, incorporating measurement of factors such as chance and risk, with which to predict and compare the outcomes of alternative decisions, strategies or controls. The purpose is to help management determine its policy and actions scientifically.

What is a Operations Research?

The Operations Research Society of America has offered a shorter, but similar, description: Operations research is concerned with scientifically deciding how to best design and operate manmachine systems, usually under conditions requiring the allocation of scarce resources.

What is a Operations Research?

Some other definitions of operations research:
Operations Research is th study of administrative system pursued in the same scientific manner in which system in Physics, Chemistry and Biology are studied in natural sciences
Operations Research is Research into Operations. Operations Research is the application of scientific methods, techniques and tools to operation of a system with optimum solution to the problem Operations Research is the use of Scientific Methods to provide criteria or decisions regarding man-machine systems involving repetitive operations

What is a Operations Research?

Objective of operations research: The objective of Operations Research is to provide a scientific basis to the decision maker for solving the problems involving the interaction of various components of an organization by employing a team of scientists from various disciplines, all working together for finding a solution which is in the best interest of the organisaton as a whole. The best solution thus obtained is known as optimal decision.

What is a Operations Research?

Salient features of above said definitions are: 1- Operations Research uses Scientific Methods for making decisions. 2- It is interdisciplinary approach for solving problems and it uses the knowledge and experience of experts in various fields. 3- While analyzing the problems all aspects are considered and examined and analyzed scientifically for finding the optimal solution for the problem on hand.

What is a Operations Research?

4- As operations research has scientific approach, it improves the quality of answers to the problems. 5- Operations research provides scientific base for decision-making and provide scientific substitute for judgement and intuition

Phases of an O R study
1- Defining the problem 2- Construction of the model 3- Solution of the model 4- Validation of the model 5- Implementation of the solution

Modeling techniques of O R
1- Linear Programming 2- Dynamic Programming 3- Network Programming 4- Non Linear Programming Queuing & Simulation models

Application of O R
1- Project management 2- Traffic control 3- Hospitals 4- Industry; production, planning etc 5- Military operations