Theory and practice in OR and town planning: a continuing creative synergy?

The paper looks at the parallel experiences of OR and town (land use) planning since the Second World War. The existence of three ‘waves of enthusiasm’ for planning in the UK is noted: from 1947; from mid-1960s to 1979; and currently from 1990 to date. The significant mutually beneficial synergy between OR and town planning theory and practice during the second of these periods is recounted. Subsequent, current, and potential future developments are reviewed, and the implications for OR and (especially) town planning of a lack of awareness of this history are discussed.     

Refocusing upstream: Operational Research for population health

This paper examines the potential for the application of OR methods to ‘upstream’ problems in health sector planning. These address the underlying causes of ill health, and stand in contrast to ‘downstream’ health service planning which addresses the consequences of ill health. The paper reviews the emergence, globally and locally, of recognition of the importance of upstream planning and policy formation for the health sectors of both developed and developing countries. It presents examples of the use of OR techniques in upstream health planning, with particular illustrations taken from the area of health impact assessment. It argues for a fuller appreciation of the potential contribution of OR in this and in other areas of upstream health sector planning.     

Operational Research for informed innovation: <Emphasis Type="Italic">NHS Direct</Emphasis> as a case study in the design,implementation and evaluation of a new public service

Delivering modern and responsive public services requires informed innovation drawing on a combination of design, planning and evaluative skills. The development of the national 24-hour telephone helpline service NHS Direct provides a case study demonstrating how, through using these skills, OR has been instrumental in achieving public service innovation. Firstly, OR analysts led strategic design and scenario-planning work, assessing the evidence on the performance of ‘direct’ services here and around the world and developing scenarios of an NHS where much greater use was made of modern communication technology, such as telephone call centres, to provide services. Secondly, we did modelling work to help determine the size, distribution and staffing of the call centres required in England to meet the likely demand and satisfy service performance targets. Thirdly, we set out evaluation criteria and developed performance-monitoring systems. NHS Direct has been one of the best-received innovations in the history of the NHS and Operational Research has made a crucial contribution to its development.     

Transportation systems and residential location

An optimization model for the spatial allocation of residents in an urban region is presented. The model allocates an exogenously given population on the basis of travel time (to workplaces) and population density criteria and subject to local and subregional capacity constraints. A way of calibrating the ‘value’ parameters of the model on a short-term plan proposal is outlined. Some applications of the model to planning problems of the Stockholm region are reported. These include sensitivity analyses of the population distribution of an adopted plan with respect to its exogenous assumptions (particularly those describing the transportation system). When evaluating investments with long life times, there is a strong need for long-term land use scenarios. Some long-range applications in the field of traffic and energy planning are reported. They can be seen as ‘prolongations’ of the adopted regional plan based on the preferences ‘revealed’ by the calibration procedure. Further extensions of the model to cover cost and energy considerations of urban developments are also outlined.     

Corporate Financial Planning in Insurance—A Case Study

ECGD's OR group has built a financial model to forecast accounts and performance indicators. This meets the need for soundly based financial planning, and its output is considered at the highest levels of the organization. The model enables senior management to evaluate the consequences of different courses of action against the background of varying world economic scenarios. Using a financial planning package has made for quick and efficient development of the model, which has been modified continually over the last 10 years. A flexible, adaptive approach has maintained the relevance of OR's contribution. The model forecasts the financial variables which underpin ECGD's quarterly financial review and annual business plan. The Department's Financial Policy and Planning Division uses the model extensively in its preparation of these documents and to explore feasible policies through ‘what-if’ analyses. Organizational changes, increasing delegation, and the introduction of strategic planning will require further adaptation of the model allowing access to a wider range of end-users.     

Oil production: A probabilistic model of the Hubbert curve

The specific distribution of hydrocarbon field sizes has a deep impact on the dynamics of the production inside a basin. This paper proposes a probabilistic model based on the field size distribution, taking into account the launching production process of the fields. This model can be seen as a ‘bottom‐up’ probabilistic method to simulate and predict oil production. The asymptotic results obtained allow us to propose relevant fitting to real production curves. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Fifty years of operational research and emergency response

Over the past 50 years, a wealth of applications has resulted from researchers turning their attention to operations such as fire suppression, law enforcement and ambulance services. The 1970s might even be argued as the ‘golden age’ of this particular effort, producing many of the seminal works in fire station location planning, unit assignment and ambulance queuing models. Such efforts naturally continue through to the present, but with a focus shifting away from earlier contexts of established urban emergency service systems. Simultaneously, current evidence from the field suggests that far more work remains. In this paper, we review the operational research (OR) foundation in emergency response so far, highlighting the fact that most of what has been accomplished addresses the well-structured problems of emergency services. This, in turn, offers an explanation for some paradoxical challenges from the field: most of emergency response itself is semi-structured, at best. While OR has traditionally focused on the management of an organization, emergency response ultimately requires the management of disorganization, suggesting an important OR growth area for the next 50 years.     

Evaluating soft OR: some reflections on an apparently ‘unsuccessful’ implementation using a Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) based approach

This paper reflects on a case study in which a soft OR problem structuring approach, based on Soft Systems Methodology (SSM), was used to help in the design of an information system for health service users providing care in the community in a part of the South and West Health Region in the UK. The paper reflects on why an apparently ‘successful’ structuring led to an apparently ‘unsuccessful’ implementation. As part of this reflective process, the paper makes a contribution to the soft OR literature by reviewing some of the approaches taken in the literature to the evaluation of success of problem structuring using soft OR. This review reveals a lack of evaluative criteria, a lack of clarity over the identification of users, and a failure to differentiate criteria associated with ‘structuring’ and ‘implementation’ issues. An evaluative framework is proposed, which is applied retrospectively to the case study.     

Analysing factors affecting the choice of emergent human resource capital

Ever since the announcement that UK higher education (HE) fees were to increase up to £9000, many universities have expressed concern about how to attract the best students while offering choice and promoting student mobility through broader access. This in turn has led to questioning how such complexity might be modelled using sophisticated operational research (OR) techniques. Because higher education institutions (HEIs) are now beginning to compete ‘against’ rather than ‘with’ each other, potential students are paying increased attention to where and what they will study, as well as graduate opportunities after their degree. Hence, the quality of education services becomes increasingly vital for HEIs in order to attract potential students. This study seeks to develop a framework of those factors affecting international (non-EU) students’ choice of institution. A number of factors were identified and collated from the existing literature providing a solid foundation on which to base this research. A survey approach was utilised to determine the importance of identified factors based on data collected from students of two different types of institutions (a university and a feeder institution). Through a better understanding of factors such as social influence, financial and career opportunities, universities should be well placed to construct models underpinned by OR principles that will promote scenario modelling and planning within HE.     

Cooperation between strands of practice: challenges and opportunities for the renewal of OR

Collaboration between OR groups following different ‘strands of practice’, namely adhering to different ways of conducting OR practice, is difficult. We demonstrate the existence of this problem in two contexts. Firstly, we found several different strands of practice within an independent, entrepreneurial OR firm. Though these strands had the potential to be highly complementary, their co-existence within one firm led to serious tensions and their potential synergy has not yet been realised. When the independent OR firm achieved successful renewal by transforming one of their strands of practice into a new approach to projects, this very success created a new set of competitive challenges. Secondly, an independent OR consulting firm working with a client's internal research group found that the latter's approach conflicted with its own, resulting in an unsuccessful project. We conclude that the ‘micro-level’ problems of collaboration between individual practitioners and between groups, though largely neglected in the OR literature, can be serious impediments to success and renewal of OR practice.     

Multimethodology in Metaheuristics

As a combination of different methodologies or parts of methodologies, Multimethodology is becoming more frequent in OR practice. This paper contributes with a new proposal and a new field of application: the employment of Multimethodology in problem solving with Metaheuristics (Mh). A convenient selection of soft and hard methods will be considered, from Soft OR, Creativity and Metaheuristics, such as Strategic Choice Approach, SWOT Analysis and Divergent and Convergent thinking. Formulating the ‘right’ optimisation problem, choosing a method based on Mh and accomplishing an effective implementation is an imprecise decision-making process, which may require skills and ideas that are beyond the ordinary boundaries of Mh practice. The relevance and success of Mh have been well-known for decades, but some open questions concerning choice and implementation strategies, for instance, still remain. If these questions are not adequately answered, they may lose credibility in the long term. The quality of solutions and computational times are not the only criteria used to analyse Mh, nor are they the most important. Very often, the effectiveness of an approach has to be evaluated from the perspective of modelling and practical problem solving. This paper investigates the advantages of Multimethodology and, furthermore, it sketches a framework for a coherent and comprehensive comparison of Mh and recommends a dynamic guiding tool for their implementation.     

Beyond methodology choice: critical systems thinking as critically systemic discourse

Professional competence in applied disciplines such as OR/MS requires both technical expertise and critically reflective skills. Yet, a widespread misconception has taken hold of the OR/MS community: ‘critical’ and ‘emancipatory’ systems methodologies are opposed to ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ ones as if they were sensible alternatives. Accordingly, adequate ‘methodology choice’ is now widely considered a key condition of reflective professional practice; critical systems thinking (CST) is understood to deal mainly with this issue. The present paper argues that this conception of CST is neither theoretically sound nor conducive to reflective practice. An examination of the two major current strands of CST suggests some basic requirements of an alternative conception: (1) Reflective practice depends more on a framework of critical argumentation and discourse than on a framework of methodology choice. (2) A well-conceived discursive systems approach will give a proper place to the public sphere. (3) The much-discussed emancipatory orientation of CST inheres in the methodological requirements of discourse rather than in an arbitrary ‘commitment’ on the part of the systems practitioner. (4) Systemic boundary critique—the methodological core concept of critical systems heuristics (CSH)—allows us to translate these requirements into practical methodology. (5) Contrary to present conceptions of methodological pluralism or ‘complementarism’, boundary critique must not be subordinated to methodology choice, for it is constitutive of all critical inquiry and practice. These considerations lead to a reconstitution of CST, and to a new view of reflective professional practice in general, as critically systemic discourse.     

Operational research in health services planning

Some of the characteristics which distinguish social planning from planning in the private sector, or in publicly owned industry, are identified. A survey of OR investigations (both tactical and strategic) in the area of health services planning supports the case that the mainstream OR contribution does violence to the nature of the system under study. In particular, problems are formulated in terms of (or transformed into) single objectives, to be optimized; aspects of the social world are subject to wholesale quantification, with resulting distortion; models make implausible data demands; project definition and execution reinforce the ‘scientisation’ of political debate; problems are formulated on the assumption of a single hierarchically powerful decision-maker; and problems are formulated as if they must be solved in toto at one point in time. It is suggested that we should look to the converse of these qualities for new directions in the application of operational research in social planning. Some examples are given of techniques and approaches, drawn both from within health services planning and from other areas, which exhibit these alternative characteristics.     

The Blackett Memorial Lecture 18 November 1997

It is argued that movement toward the ‘control’ aspects of management should be effected to expand OR/MS activities beyond their present (almost exclusive) emphasis on ‘planning’ functions. This will involve increasing the amount of empirical-inferential approaches to research (based on ex-post data) as one way to help bring this about. Examples of such empirical-inferential research activities in OR/MS are supplied by reference to the early (founding) work of PMS Blackett and others on high-level policy problems during World War II. Extensions to the control function are evidenced in the work of Robert Fetter and others in the development of Diagnostic Related Groups on which the Prospective Payment Systems are based with large and important impacts on the health care delivery systems in the USA as well as other countries. Other examples covered include the use of OR concepts in the early ‘turnaround’ of Federal Express from failure to success. Other new methods will nevertheless be needed to extend and improve presently available OR/MS approaches. Some of these possibilities are illustrated with Data Envelopment Analysis. Ways to combine DEA with commonly used statistical methods are described to show how new and old methods may be combined to further enhance their power and range. Similar relations of DEA to other OR/MS approaches are now being studied, some of which are presently occurring with ‘fuzzy sets’ and ‘multiple objective programming.’     

Drainage area maximization in unconventional hydrocarbon fields with integer linear programming techniques

The drainage area maximization problem for an unconventional hydrocarbon field is addressed with the objective of designing a development plan that optimizes total production while satisfying environmental and operating constraints. The various characteristics of the problem are presented and a solution approach is developed around an integer linear programming model applied to a discretisation of the field’s geographical area. Computational experiments show that the approach provides a practical response to the problem, generating solutions that comply with all of the constraints. The algorithm implemented under this approach has been incorporated into a software tool for planning and managing unconventional hydrocarbon operations and has been used since 2018 by two leading petroleum companies in Argentina to improve unconventional development plans for the country’s “Vaca Muerta” geological formation.

     

Experiences in Expert Systems

This paper describes some work carried out in the Scientific Research and Development Branch (SRDB) of the Home Office, intended to contribute to an overall aim of building up internal expertise in the field of expert systems. This was done by carrying out a number of pilot and demonstrator projects, two of which are described in some detail. The plan, which proved successful, was to build as far as possible on the relevant skills already possessed by an OR group in the branch. The lessons learned from these are summarized in the hope that they will be of use to other groups who wish to become involved in this important area.     

ARMS: An automated resource management system for British Telecommunications plc

Accurate demand forecasting combined with resource planning is critical to a company’s performance and profitability. This paper describes ARMS (automated resource management system), an integrated system developed for the customer service operations of British Telecommunications plc to help with the operational/tactical planning and deployment of the company’s 20,000-strong field engineer workforce. ARMS integrates a forecasting tool with a resource planning tool and a resource balancing tool providing an end-to-end automated resource management solution for the organisation. OR techniques are used throughout the system, including ARIMA for forecasting, constraint satisfaction for problem modelling, heuristic search for problem solving thus demonstrating the value and relevance of OR in solving today’s business problems.     

Overcoming the barriers: a qualitative study of simulation adoption in the NHS

This paper addresses a key issue in the health OR literature, namely the apparent failure of OR modelling to become embedded and widely implemented within healthcare organisations. The research presented here is a case study to evaluate the adoption of one particular simulation modelling tool, Scenario Generator (S:G), which was developed by the SIMUL8 Corporation in a PPI partnership with the UK's National Health Service (NHS) Institute for Innovation and Improvement. The study involved semi-structured interviews with employees of 28 Primary Care Trusts who had all been engaged in some way with the initiative, with participants classified as ‘Not Started’, ‘Given Up’ and ‘Actively Using’. This paper presents a brief summary of barriers and facilitators to the successful use of the S:G software, but its main purpose is to focus more broadly on factors influencing the successful adoption of simulation tools in general within healthcare organisations. The insights gained in this study are relevant to improving the uptake of OR modelling in general within the NHS.     

The OR worker in practice

The experience of OR workers ‘in the field’ are compared with Eilon's archetypes of OR workers. Being a change agent may be desirable for the OR worker and for the status of his/her profession, in practice it is hard to achieve because it implies sharing power with management.     

Optimal Short Horizon Distribution Operations in Reusable Container Systems

Manufacturers in many countries are facing increasing market pressures to use returnable containers. Few studies address the day-to-day operational problems of controlling production and distribution that are inherent in closed systems that reuse containers. In this paper we present a formulation of an optimal configuration of this type of system. In particular, we model the reusable bottle production and distribution activities of a large soft drink manufacturer located in Mexico City, Mexico. Two types of operational research models are combined to form the overall optimization system. A pair of linear programs (one aggregated, the other disaggregated) determines a master plan that is subsequently fined-tuned on a shift-by-shift basis using a difference equation simulation model. The simulation model mimics the heuristic ‘rules of thumb’ used by production planners for product distribution and container reuse planning. The results of our study indicate that this formulation provides a timely response in the field to key operational problems addressed by no previous approach. Included are better organizational control (through providing one-week production and distribution plans), feedback allowing modification of heuristic rules previously used in controlling the distribution of product and container reuse, and improvement in inventory behaviour such as avoiding shortages. These improvements have resulted in considerable market share gains since the models were implemented.