Teaching Operational Research Using IBM-PC Compatibles

This paper compares the IBM-PC microcomputer and compatibles against the mainframe computing facilities, and discusses specifically the use of software in the areas of spreadsheets, simulation, forecasting and textbook floppies. A comprehensive set of references is given.     

Rethinking Statistics Teaching for Operational Research

Statistics is a standard component of most Management Science or Operational Research courses. This paper argues that the teaching of Statistics in such courses should emphasise the philosophical aspects of the discipline, should concentrate on developing concepts rather than techniques, should stimulate ideas and should allow each student to reach his/her own level in the discipline. A postgraduate course structured in this way is described in detail.     

运筹学教学初探

探讨了运筹学的教学现状,列举了多媒体教学、案例教学、计算机软件教学等教学方式的优势,并提出应该使各种教学方式有机结合起来贯穿于整个教学过程中.     

War Gaming as a Technique in the Study of Operational Research Problems

The last 10 years have seen an immense amount of effort, both here and abroad, concentrated on the development of war games that can be used for the study of many of the important problems that arise in military operational research. The first part of this paper describes in general terms the background to such operational problems, their difficulties and complexities, and explains why war gaming is regarded as a particularly appropriate technique in their examination.On this basis, the fundamental conceptual development of a war game representing a land battle is described, and is illustrated by reference to the Army Operational Research Establishment (AORE) War Game. Practical experience with this and other hand-played games allows some of the advantages and disadvantages of this type of war game to be enumerated, and leads naturally to a discussion of computer-assisted games, and of the relationship between games and analytical models of combat. It is concluded that each of these approaches has its own particular advantages, and that it will usually be appropriate to use combinations of them in the study of major problems.     

Supranational Operational Research

Journal of the Operational Research Society -     

Basic Operational Research

Journal of the Operational Research Society -     

Voluntary Operational Research

Operational Research has traditionally been carried out in organizations which are able and willing to pay for it; this tends to restrict it to the larger industrial, commercial or governmental bodies. In this paper we reflect on an O.R. project done on behalf of a group of charities, to whom, as with most voluntary organizations, the skills of operational researchers are not usually available.It seems likely that voluntary organizations will have an increasing role as leisure time increases, and in any case the widening scope and complex context of their activities means that they could benefit from the kind of help that operational researchers can give. At the same time, O.R. workers who care about a particular voluntary organization may want to offer their skills to it. However, the skills of operational researchers are not as obviously relevant to voluntary organizations as is the professional expertise of lawyers and accountants. Undertaking O.R. projects as a voluntary helper rather than as a paid consultant, and in voluntary organizations rather than the more usual clients for O.R., has significant implications for the approach and methods used.We discuss these issues in the light of our recent experiences of carrying out ‘voluntary Operational Research’.     

Operational Research in Chile

Since the beginning of 1963 SIGMA has had a team of operational research scientists working for Compañía de Acero del Pacífico, one of the largest steel-makers in South America. The task has been to demonstrate the value of operational research to the company by solving a series of both tactical and strategic management problems and also to train some of the company's own engineers to form an effective internal operational research team.The company has allowed us to publish the results of any of the studies made and this has made it possible to write a complete story describing not only the work done and the successes, but also the difficulties that were encountered and the mistakes that were made. This article is not intended therefore to demonstrate yet further applications of well-known techniques nor to develop original problem-solving methods; rather it is to come out in the open and reveal the really difficult practical problems that face almost any operational research men and show how we attempted to solve them.