The start of operations research took place in a military context in the United Kingdom during World War Ⅱ, and it was quickly taken up under the name operations research (OR) in the United States. After the war it evolved in connection with industrial organization, and its many techniques allowed for expanding areas of application in the United States, the United Kingdom, and in other industrial countries. It is, however, not easy to give a precise definition of operations research, There are three different representative definitions.
According to the classical definition, due to P. M. Morse and G. E. Kimball, operations research is a scientific method of providing executives with a quantitative basis for decisions regarding operations under their control.
The second definition, due to C. W. Churchman, R. L. Ackoff, and E. L. Arnoff, is as follows: operations research in the most general sense can be characterized as the application of scientific methods, techniques, and tools to the operations of systems so as to provide those in control with optimum solutions to problems.
As the third definition we mention the suggestion due to S. Beer: operations research is the attack of modern science on problems of likelihood (accepting mischance) that arise in the management and control of men, machines, materials, and money in their natural environments. Its special technique is to invent a strategy of control by measuring, comparing, and predicting probable behaviour through a scientific model of a situation.
These three definitions have several common features. In the first place, operations research serves executives by providing partial observations and advice which they can use in judging a situation. Second, the applicability of operations research is limited to areas where scientific methods can be successfully applied. This is the reason why operations research would not be considered to extend beyond only partial observation and advice. A fundamental requirement for a scientific approach is that it must have a mathematical model whose validity can be tested by actual data, Third, any operation should satisfy three necessary conditions in order that it may be an object of scientific approach: (1) the operation should be defined objectively; (2) the results, consequences, and effects of its application should be objectively measurable; (3) the operation should be capable of repetition. Fourth , operations research should aim at finding a practical strategy. Although operations research is based on scientific methodology, it does not aim at establishing general scientific assertions that are valid for all situstions.
These four points are essential to any operations research, and are implicit in each of the three aforementioned definitions.
On the other hand these three definitions emphasize differently some specific features of operations research, according to their historical positions. In comparion with the first definition, the second makes clearer the place where operations research is applied by pointing out that it is concerned with the operations of systems, and, instead of the vague mention of quantitative basis for decisions in the first definition, it states that operations research seeks optimum solutions, reflecting a stage where optimum solutions were sought by applications of mathematical programming techniques. In the third definition of operations research the notion of system is defined explicitly, the notion of operation is defined to be its special technique, and the objectives of operations research are given. It is clearly asserted that operations research belongs to the methodology of applied sciences. In operations research, operations and systems are dealt with in their intimate interconnection. The methodology of operations research therefore relies on an overall approach for which interdisciplinary cooperation is indispensable and in which the operations research team plays an important role.
In applying the operations research approach to the circumstances with which we are concerned, we concentrate our interest on mutual relationships among input and output characteristics. A black-box method by which the interrelation between input and output can be clarified without entering the actual mechanism of the transformation yielded by the system or by its subsystems plays a fundamental role in operations research. The following are major phases of an operations research project: (1) formulating the problem; (2) constructing a mathematical model to represent the system under study and deriving a solution from the model; (3) testing the model and the solution derived form it; (4) the implementation stage of establishing controls over the solution and putting it to work. It is important to construct a model of information communication in connection. With a mathematical model of any problem in operations research. Process of aliocation, competition, queuing, inventory, and production appear frequently in the mathematical models of operations research.
——From Encyclopedic Dictionary
Operations research (OR) 运筹 interdiscipline 交叉学科
Executive 行政人员 interdisciplinary cooperation 交叉学科的
likelihood 似然 合作
scientific approach 科学方法 black-box method 黑箱方法
methodology 方法论 implementation stage 实现阶段
aforementioned 前述的 queue 排队
mathematical programming 数学规划
