According to the history of Operations Research it is said that Charles Babbage (1791-1871) is the father of Operational Research. The name of Operations Research evolved in 1940 during the World War II. This was established in Great Britain with the establishment of groups of scientists to analyze the strategic and tactical problems associated with military operations. The main objective of Operations Research was to find the most efficient usage of limited military resources by the application of quantitative techniques.
Different things happened in the Operations Research in Great Britain and in the United States in connection with the war. When managers need to restore much Britain production facilities, discharged …show more content…
Not only that it is important to understand the characteristics of Operation Research as described below;
Characteristics of Operation Research
Operation Research is an Interdisciplinary Team Approach
People have various disciplines and required to understand the Operation Research problem. Heterogeneous in nature is the main problem faced by Operations Research Analysts. They have to involving number of variables and constraints when making decisions that are beyond the analytical ability of one person. The team approach will reduce the risk when making decision.
Increases the Creative Ability of Decision Maker
Operations Research used mathematical tools, techniques and numerous model to analyses the problem and to evaluate the result of numerous alternatives and make a best choice. It will support to create superior and fast decision. If managers not use these techniques they have to make decisions by thumb rules or by guessing. It will take some time and getting many time in trouble. Managers who use Operation Research techniques will have a better creative ability than who does not use …show more content…
But as I explained earlier Operations Research is more than mathematical modeling. When solving the critical problem it is need to ability of analyzing and also use of computer programme for critical computation. I can give you good example in connection with my working place. We are an Engineering Consultancy firm. These days we are carrying designing for major bridges in road network system in Sri Lanka. So Engineers getting the data after visiting the site area and Quantity surveying section build rate analysis. The rate analysis process includes most critical equation and finally they have to input those data in to excel file through computer. Also for the design of bridges Auto CAD draftsman are drafting the sketches using computers. Finally management decides which values should be included, what the problems are and how to get correct decisions. My question is if mathematical modeling is the keystone of Operations Research, how we can produce the solutions for our problems through without computer, analyzing skill and other network programmes. Hence we can understand that for the decision making process in Operation Research, it is needed to have mathematical modeling as well as ability of analyzing and computer system