Operations research

It is often considered to be a sub-field of applied mathematics. The terms management science and decision science are sometimes used as synonyms. Employing techniques from other mathematical sciences, such as mathematical modeling, statistical analysis, and mathematical optimization, operations research arrives at optimal or near-optimal solutions to complex decision-making problems. Because of its emphasis on human-technology interaction and because of its focus on practical applications, operations research has overlap with other disciplines, notably industrial engineering and operations management, and draws on psychology and organization science. Operations research is often concerned with determining the extreme values of some real-world objective: the maximum (of profit, performance, or yield) or minimum (of loss, risk, or cost). Originating in military efforts before World War II, its techniques have grown to concern problems in a variety of industries. Operational research (OR) encompasses a wide range of problem-solving techniques and methods applied in the pursuit of improved decision-making and efficiency, such as simulation, mathematical optimization, queueing theory and other stochastic-process models, Markov decision processes, econometric methods, data envelopment analysis, neural networks, expert systems, decision analysis, and the analytic hierarchy process. Nearly all of these techniques involve the construction of mathematical models that attempt to describe the system. Because of the computational and statistical nature of most of these fields, OR also has strong ties to computer science and analytics. Operational researchers faced with a new problem must determine which of these techniques are most appropriate given the nature of the system, the goals for improvement, and constraints on time and computing power. The major sub-disciplines in modern operational research, as identified by the journal Operations Research, are: In the decades after the two world wars, the tools of operations research were more widely applied to problems in business, industry and society. Since that time, operational research has expanded into a field widely used in industries ranging from petrochemicals to airlines, finance, logistics, and government, moving to a focus on the development of mathematical models that can be used to analyse and optimize complex systems, and has become an area of active academic and industrial research. In the 17th century, mathematicians like Christiaan Huygens and Blaise Pascal (problem of points) tried to solve problems involving complex decisions with probability. Others in the 18th and 19th centuries solved these types of problems with combinatorics. Charles Babbage's research into the cost of transportation and sorting of mail led to England's universal 'Penny Post' in 1840, and studies into the dynamical behaviour of railway vehicles in defence of the GWR's broad gauge. Beginning in the 20th century, study of inventory management could be considered the origin of modern operations research with economic order quantity developed by Ford W. Harris in 1913. Operational research may have originated in the efforts of military planners during World War I (convoy theory and Lanchester's laws). Percy Bridgman brought operational research to bear on problems in physics in the 1920s and would later attempt to extend these to the social sciences. Modern operational research originated at the Bawdsey Research Station in the UK in 1937 and was the result of an initiative of the station's superintendent, A. P. Rowe. Rowe conceived the idea as a means to analyse and improve the working of the UK's early warning radar system, Chain Home (CH). Initially, he analysed the operating of the radar equipment and its communication networks, expanding later to include the operating personnel's behaviour. This revealed unappreciated limitations of the CH network and allowed remedial action to be taken. Scientists in the United Kingdom including Patrick Blackett (later Lord Blackett OM PRS), Cecil Gordon, Solly Zuckerman, (later Baron Zuckerman OM, KCB, FRS), C. H. Waddington, Owen Wansbrough-Jones, Frank Yates, Jacob Bronowski and Freeman Dyson, and in the United States with George Dantzig looked for ways to make better decisions in such areas as logistics and training schedules