MTH601 Handouts Lectures 1-45

Background

Technology - the application of science to the everyday Physical World - has, on the whole, changed our lives greatly for the better, particularly since the time of Industrial Revolution. Manufacturing industry, which supplies us with and at the same time creates the wealth, which enables other services to exist, owes its existence to Science and Technology.

Some manufactured items, aircraft for example, are both complex and expensive, and there are great difficulties, first of all in organizing their manufacture and then, once made, in using them efficiently. Problems of this latter kind, often called systems problems, were studied rigorously for the first time by scientists, not in industry but in the management of operations in the 1939 - 45 war.

A number of teams of eminent scientists were employed by the British Government to apply their expertise to management and operational problems rather than technical problems. One such team (the Radar Operational Research team - which gave OR its name) was responsible for implementing the installation and operation of radar after the technical development work was complete.

Later on another team examined the relative ineffectiveness of the Allied Forces at destroying the German U-boats, which were sinking the food convoy ships supplying Britain. The OR team played an important part in reducing shipping losses and in the ultimate defeat of the U-boats. With no precedent in the application of Science to the management function, the scientists were still able to use their scientific approach-collecting information and developing hypothesis in order to come up with practical plans for the improvement of these wartime operations.

After the end of the war, the same approach was used with great success in the industrial and commercial field, developing most rapidly in Britain and the USA, followed by Europe and the rest of the world. This has provided the basis for the evolution of Operational Research (OR) as a separate and independent subject of Science. It is not based on any single academic engineering, social science, economics, statistics and computing but is none of these. Then what is OR?

DEFINING OPERATIONS RESEARCH:

OR has been defined in various ways and it is perhaps too early to define it in some authoritative way. However given below are a few opinions about the definition of OR which have been changed along-with the development of the subject.

In 1946 Morse & Kimbel has defined as; "OR is a scientific method of providing executive departments with a quantitative basis for decision regarding the operations under their control"

In 1948 Blackett defined as; "OR is a scientific method of providing executives with any analytical and objective basis for decisions"

Another definition is due to Morse who defined in 1948 as; " The term OR, has here-to fore been used to connote various attempts to study operations of war by scientific methods. From a more general point of view, OR can be considered to be an attempt to study those operations of modern society which involved organizations of men or men and machines".

Later on in 1957, Churchmen Ackoff and Arnoff defined; "OR is the application of scientific methods, techniques and tools to problems involving the operations of systems so as to provide those in control of the operations with optimum solutions to the problem".

In 1958 Saaty defined OR as; " The art of giving bad answer to problems to which, otherwise, worse answers are given".

The Operational Research Society of U.K. defines OR as: " 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 measurements of factors, such as chance and risk, with which to compare the outcome of alternative decisions, strategies and controls. The purpose is to help management determine its policies and actions scientifically."

In the USA, where it is called Operations Research, the OR Society of America says more briefly; "OR is concerned with scientifically deciding how to best design and operate man-machine systems, usually under conditions requiring the allocation of scarce resources".