A Survey of Operational Research Groups in Great Britain

This paper surveys the turnover of staff in Operational Research groups. It suggest that surveys based on the membership of the Operational Research Society may be misleading as the majority of O.R. scientists do not belong to the Society. The paper gives data on the age range, length of service and qualifications of O.R. scientists in Industry, in Government and in Consulting.     

The intellectual journey of Russell Ackoff: from OR apostle to OR apostate

Russell Ackoff has had a distinguished career in operational research both as an academic and practitioner. His influence on the development of the discipline in the US and Britain in the 1950s and 1960s was considerable. Yet during the 1970s Ackoff registered increasing disillusion with the course and conduct of OR on both sides of the Atlantic. His rejection of the established mathematical paradigm and appeal for a wider social and political remit for the discipline was writ large at the UK Operational Research Society's conference in 1978. This paper, stimulated by the author's research into the history of British OR, analyses the evolution of Ackoff's thought in order to explain the sources of his disillusion and the short and longer term reactions to his recantation.     

The initiation,evaluation and selection of operational research projects

This paper discusses the problems involved in conducting successful Operational Research within a large organisation and suggests ways of overcoming them. It describes ways in which Operational Research projects arise, methods of assessing their relative merits, and methods used by the authors to obtain a suitable portfolio of projects. It is argued that an Operational Research Group should apply to its own project planning the scientific approach that it advocates for others.     

Of Kings and Men,Especially O.R. Men: A Methodological Tale

Operational Research is defined as the application of the methods of science to problems arising in the direction and management of systems of men, machines, materials and money in industry, business, government and defence. This article argues, by way of a story set in ancient Greece, that if Operational Research is to provide practical and helpful advice in these areas, then such a definition is grossly misleading by its failure to spell out the basic necessity of having to apply the methods of technology to these problems. In particular this paper deals with the primary need for Operational Researchers to draw upon the heuristic principles governing technological innovation and creativity. It is further argued that such heuristic activity has an important bearing on just what meaning can be attached to the phrase ‘the application of the methods of science’ referred to in the definition of O.R.     

Scheduling sports competitions at multiple venues—Revisited

In this work, we study scheduling sports competitions at multiple venues, a problem recently introduced by Urban and Russell [T.L. Urban, R.A. Russell, Scheduling sports competitions on multiple venues, European Journal of Operational Research 148 (2003) 302–311]. The distinguishing feature of the problem is that venues come into play when scheduling. We develop beam search and simulated annealing approaches to the problem and its extension. Computational experiments were conducted and algorithms compared and analyzed. We found that the simulated annealing algorithm with specialized neighborhood moves achieved superior solutions in significantly shorter times than the method of Urban and Russell.     

Assessing problem complexity

The difficulty of objectively measuring the decision-making load imposed by a complex decision problem on a human decision maker is identified. It is suggested that a technique for such measurement would be useful in Operational Research. The secondary task technique, a method much used by psychologists and ergonomists to assess the mental processing load presented to subjects by a variety of tasks, is discussed. It is observed that the type of complex problem often of interest in Operational Research is characterised by the involvement of model building in the process of solution. An experiment is presented to compare the mental load presented by a number of different chess problems using a mental arithmetic secondary task, and it is shown that the method appears to be valid for the study of complex problems.     

O.R. in the National Coal Board

The organisation and philosophy of the ‘Area Service’ of the National Coal Board's Operational Research Executive is described, with special reference to factors which assist the Executive's O.R. scientists to develop good working relationships with managers.     

Bridging the gap between clinicians and health managers

This contribution is about bridging the gap between professionals and managers in health care: clinicians on the one hand and managers on the other hand. The paper looks at the problems along the road ahead: those that confront the governmental authorities and those that confront the health care sector. It identifies the driving forces that confront the health care sector and shows in what direction they are pushing management. Three steps are indicated to bridge the gap between clinicians and managers: (1) New discussion forums; (2) patient information systems; (3) communication tools. Operational Research can and should contribute. However, some shifts in emphasis are necessary. Three propositions are put forward: (1). Operational Research should infiltrate the discussion forums on health care; (2) Operational Research should orient itself to the “operationalisation” of the thousands of basic concepts and indicators used in health care rather than to the formulation of models which take all these concepts and indicators for granted; (3) Operational Research can contribute by helping to master the voluminous data in sensible ways in order to arrive at information on health, health care and health care management… under any type of constraint, resource or otherwise. This information needs, however, to be communicated.     

Facilitating problem definition in teams

The problems that a team comes to define as needing to be worked on depend upon idiosyncratically defined subjective, qualitative and organizationally political factors affecting the individual members of the team. In this paper we shall argue that Operational Research tends to pay little attention to the process of problem definition and that when it does, the emphasis is towards determining an accurate or correct interpretation of the external situation that the team confronts and the organizational objectives which have been laid down for the team. We suggest, however, that Operational Researchers are particularly well placed to act in a way which pays attention to both these fields. This paper is addressed to those Operational Researchers who predominantly work with complex policy problems belonging to a team of decision-makers. We shall demonstrate that group techniques, new computer simulation technology, and attention to process can lead to a team negotiating a definition and redefinition of a problem so that solutions have a greater commitment from the team, and therefore a higher chance of being implemented.     

Housing in the Dearne Valley: Doing Community OR with the Thurnscoe Tenants Housing Co-Operative Part 1 — The Involvement of the Community OR Unit

In this paper we describe the work of the Community Operational Research Unit with the Thurnscoe Tenants Housing Co-operative. We discuss the various stages through which this work has progressed, from the initial contacts with the Co-operative, through a period of acting as external consultants, to a continuing process of working as, essentially, internal consultants. A variety of the projects with which the Unit has been involved are outlined. These demonstrate the breadth and eclecticism of community operational research. No attempt is made to evaluate the involvement and contribution of the Community Operational Research Unit in a systematic way in this paper. This will be the subject of a subsequent paper.     

Strategic Level MS/OR Tool Usage in the United Kingdom: An Empirical Survey

A survey of the practitioner members of the United Kingdom Operational Research Society was conducted to identify current levels of MS/OR tool usage at the strategic level. In this paper details of the survey will be outlined, the framework of strategic tasks will be described, and the MS/OR tool usage results for these strategic tasks will be presented and discussed.     

Trends in transportation and logistics

Problems in transportation and logistics had to be tackled long before computers and Operational Research (OR) became available to support decision making. After the first optimization models were developed, OR has substantially contributed in making transportation systems efficient and companies with complex transportation and logistics problems competitive. Over the years, technology has evolved and the same has done OR. In this paper, the history of problems and OR contributions in transportation and logistics will be shortly reviewed together with the evolution of technology. Then, the future trends in this area will be discussed together with potential OR contributions.     

Social Limits to Planning

Professor Ackoff's planning paradigm of participation, continuity and holism is reviewed in terms of the practical problems of attempting to implement these ideal principles. His proposal of using the paradigm to design ideal-seeking systems is compared with the market-based approaches advocated by Professor Friedman. That comparison draws on Professor Hirsch's critique of the efficiency and moral content of the market and uses that critique on Professor Ackoff's suggested alternatives.     

A Role for Operational Research in Health Care Planning and Management Teams

This paper describes a research team's effort in which a formal mathematical model played an integrating and coordinating role for a multidisciplinary team which included operational researchers, economists, nurses, social workers, social scientists and psychiatrists. It is an interpretative history of the OARS project, its development and results which emphasizes the role of the formal model in the conduct of the project.This is an application of Operational Research to a significant social problem which also suggests an important role for Operational Researchers in Health Care Planning and Management Teams.     

Some Experiences in Planning a Distribution System

This paper describes the background against which the Operational Research Group in a large retail organisation became involved in (physical) ‘distribution’.The various stages of involvement are described and some examples of requests for assistance are discussed. The final section of the paper attempts to draw from the experiences some conclusions on how Operational Research should be conducted.     

A Kuhnian Crisis in Management Science?

A survey of the Journal of the O.R. Society in 1978 shows that Ackoff's papers were part of a quite widespread and often pessimistic debate about the practical success of O.R. A similar survey for 1968 shows, on the other hand, a widespread mood of optimism. It is suggested that O.R. is now in a period of crisis analogous to that described by Kuhn in the Natural Sciences, when the dominant framework of assumptions appears to fail in relation to important problems. When such failures persist, alternative frameworks are proposed challenging the hitherto accepted view, and an increasingly wide-ranging debate develops. Many of the features of such debates, as outlined by Kuhn, seem to be present in the current controversy within O.R. More specifically, it seems possible in O.R. and related fields to identify three rival sets of proposals, which may be labelled official, reformist (e.g. Ackoffian) and revolutionary. However, the debate in O.R. differs from that in the Natural Sciences because it is not just about the best means of understanding the empirical world. It is also about the type of social world to be constructed through the framework of assumptions adopted. Our view is that in the current debate, proponents of the reformist stance will probably win. However, this may be very much an interim solution.     

The Changing Role of O.R.

The authors set out to consider the activities of their own O.R. group at British Airways in the light of Russ Ackoff's papers delivered at the 1978 ORS Conference, but the paper has developed into a discussion of Ackoff's ideas from the viewpoint of an in-house industrial O.R. group that has had considerable success in implementation and has thought a great deal about what it is trying to do. Particularly relevant is the emphasis placed by this O.R. group on highly interactive planning models and systems and on an evolutionary approach to development. Some attempt is made to put Ackoff's ideas into an historical perspective and his main points are discussed one by one. The authors are in sympathy with the direction Ackoff is pressing, but not with the gloom his paper has generated in some quarters.     

A Branch and Bound Procedure for a Class of Discrete Resource Allocation Problems with Several Constraints

Journal of the Operational Research Society - A branch and bound algorithm is developed in this paper for a class of discrete resource allocation problems with many constraints. The algorithm...