Strategic operational research

Operational researchers have been slow to define and claim a strategic role for operational research (OR). This article discusses the OR activities of a number of leading-edge organisations, and argues that in several instances these activities have sustained a competitive advantage over a significant period of time, and are seen as a ‘strategic asset’ to the parent corporation. Finally, it is argued that OR people should begin talking about OR as a strategic asset, and that recognition of this strategic role provides a vision of a very exciting future for OR.     

International publishing in operational research

The primary literature in OR, as defined in International Abstracts in Operations Research, has grown by 47 per cent between 1975 and 1985. EURO and North-America together account for 85 percent of the primary literature. The USA is more than three times as productive per capita as EURO. English has become the standard language; its share in the primary literature increased from 86 to 93 per cent. Most primary journals are nationalist and many cannot be called international. These and more detailed results are presented in this cross-section analysis of the OR primary literature.     

Systems approaches and operational research

It is often stated that OR embodies a systems approach. What is meant by this varies widely from simple holism to abstract philosophy. This paper considers the impact that a systems orientation can have on the practice of OR by providing a language for analysis. As a language or framework it has severe limitations which are set out in the paper. Nevertheless, the paper concludes by arguing that a pragmatic systems viewpoint can be valuable.     

Management accounting and operational research

We discuss some topics relating to management accounting and operational research. Because of the wide area of application of operational research techniques in management accounting we had to make a choice and limited us to budgetting through input-output analysis, cost-volume-profit analysis and transfer prices in decentralized organisations.     

Facilitated modelling in operational research

The traditional way of employing operational research in organisational interventions has been the expert mode. In this mode, the problem situation faced by the client is given to the operational research consultant, who then builds a model of the situation, solves the model to arrive at an optimal (or quasi-optimal) solution, and then provides a recommendation to the client based on the obtained solution. An alternative mode of engagement is to conduct the whole intervention together with the client: from structuring and defining the nature of the problem situation of interest, to supporting the evaluation of priorities and development of plans for subsequent implementation. In this latter mode, the operational researcher works throughout the intervention not only as an analyst, but also as a facilitator to the client. This paper discusses this latter mode of engagement with clients, with particular emphasis on the use of facilitated modelling as the intervention tool. Drawing on research scattered across a range of publications and domains, the review presented here provides a formal definition of facilitated modelling, together with a general framework that allows the conceptualisation of a wide variety of facilitated modelling approaches to organisational intervention. Design issues in facilitated modelling and their practical implication are discussed, and directions for future research identified.     

Model legitimisation in operational research

This paper suggests that model validation and model legitimisation are two overlapping but nevertheless distinct activities, and that it takes more than being valid for an OR model to be organizationally acceptable: it has to be legitimate. The paper forwards the idea that the implementation of a model is necessarily part of a change process and hence has impact on the organization. It discusses how organizational contract and legitimacy are related to one another, and how, in a change process, a model can be used in different modes by different stakeholders. Concrete suggestions for model legitimisation are proposed. The paper concludes by linking model legitimisation and model validation.     

Independent learning and operational research in the classroom

While Operational Research and Education are common keywords in OR journals, most work focuses on course content. Relatively little has been written about processes of education and learning in OR. This paper adds to this important area by considering the use of more Independent Learning (IL) in Operational Research education. Included is an explanation of IL and justification for using it. Activities which encourage IL are described and supported by three case studies which give examples of how an academic might introduce IL into a range of OR education settings. Other topics include IL and assessment, arguments against the use of IL, and critical success factors.     

Strategy,performance and operational research

This paper explores the nature of operational research and its interactions with performance measurement and strategy. It is argued that operational research (OR) is well fitted to handle strategic issues as the modelling approach of OR facilitates understanding and learning, and the evaluation of strategies prior to action. The development of problem structuring methods is also a key aid to strategy and policy formulation. OR is also beginning to play a role in performance measurement and there is an opportunity for OR to lead in the improvement of performance measurement systems.     

Half a century of operational research in the RAF

The original Operational Researchers conducted scientific analyses of operational data to help solve operational problems. Following the success to this essentially empirical process, a general belief has grown that all forms of decision problems can be assisted by similar scientific analysis using ‘a priori’ models, even when the issues are beyond experience and the models can never be validated. In this paper the author describes the evolution of Operational Research in the RAF at Command level over half a century, reflects on the value of techniques and concludes that the adaptive OR group itself has proved to be the most enduring and useful “tool” of all.     

Some observations on practising successful operational research

Much has been written about the decline of Operational Research. In the 1960s it had already been proclaimed dead and the decreasing number of OR departments in industrial enterprises seems to support this thesis. The question seems to be: ‘Why is OR apparently disappearing at a time when the major obstacles to OR applications in the past, namely lack of computer-readable data, lack of software and hardware have been overcome?’ I report on 30 years of successful external OR activities and offer some observations which I have made while being active at a university and in OR companies in Germany.     

The practice of operational research in Taiwan

This paper presents the results of a questionnaire survey of operational research/management science (OR/MS) practices in Taiwanese companies. The survey was addressed to the current status and future perspectives of OR/MS in Taiwan. During the spring of 2001, 2000 questionnaires were mailed to the top 1000 domestic manufacturing firms and top 1000 domestic service organizations. These asked questions concerning specific OR/MS techniques being used, application areas of OR/MS, reasons for using OR/MS, reasons for not using OR/MS, difficulties encountered practically, and future perspectives. Results from 262 valid respondents provided several informative findings. Compared with the 1995 survey of Kao et al, it found that the percentage of companies that have used OR/MS techniques increased from 62.7% in 1995 to 76.7% in 2001. Also, the percentage of companies that have never heard of OR/MS decreased from 16.1% in 1995 to 11.1% in 2001. Because of the Taiwan government recently developing educational and training programs in OR/MS, it found that the importance of OR/MS has been recognized by Taiwan companies as an efficient management tool for economic development, and the usage of OR/MS will continuously increase.     

Enhancing management's understanding of operational research models

The problem of the gap between management's understanding of a model and the model builder's insight is a large one. This problem continues to challenge the practice of operational research and plague contemporary modelling efforts. This paper offers an approach to enhancing a manager's understanding of the model with respect to an application. It sets out a procedure whereby (a) the reasons for the management's judgements are uncovered, and (b) the sources of disagreement with the recommendations obtained from the model are identified. The manager, learning from the model, may then change his or her judgements. Alternatively, the model builder may modify the model parameters or assumptions, leading to convergent understanding. The procedure is based on the framework of social judgement theory. An illustrative example is offered in the context of facility planning in the cement manufacturing industry.     

Reflections on fifty years of operational research

This paper provides a particular perspective on developments in operational research (OR) over the past 50 years and attempts to pick out significant milestones in that trajectory. Emphasis is placed on the UK experience (rather than taking a supposed perspective independent of interactions with any specific social context); on the significance of techniques and where they came from; and on the role of social, political, intellectual, and economic factors in what has been happening to and within OR.     

Forecasting and operational research: a review

From its foundation, operational research (OR) has made many substantial contributions to practical forecasting in organizations. Equally, researchers in other disciplines have influenced forecasting practice. Since the last survey articles in JORS, forecasting has developed as a discipline with its own journals. While the effect of this increased specialization has been a narrowing of the scope of OR's interest in forecasting, research from an OR perspective remains vigorous. OR has been more receptive than other disciplines to the specialist research published in the forecasting journals, capitalizing on some of their key findings. In this paper, we identify the particular topics of OR interest over the past 25 years. After a brief summary of the current research in forecasting methods, we examine those topic areas that have grabbed the attention of OR researchers: computationally intensive methods and applications in operations and marketing. Applications in operations have proved particularly important, including the management of inventories and the effects of sharing forecast information across the supply chain. The second area of application is marketing, including customer relationship management using data mining and computer-intensive methods. The paper concludes by arguing that the unique contribution that OR can continue to make to forecasting is through developing models that link the effectiveness of new forecasting methods to the organizational context in which the models will be applied. The benefits of examining the system rather than its separate components are likely to be substantial.     

A note on notions around operational research

In order to get a better grasp of the spread of notions adjacent to, or overlapping with, Operational Research, British, American and international organizations and university education programs are surveyed using a list of ten key concepts. It appears that professional organizations, of engineers, etc., are more nationally oriented, whereas scientific organizations are more internationally oriented. Further evidence is obtained that the professional world is not organized as science and the universities are.     

McNaughton and Canadian operational research at Vimy

One of the defining events of Canadian history was the celebrated Canadian Corps victory at Vimy during World War I. In this paper we outline the counter-battery work of Andrew McNaughton and his operational research team. In particular we detail their scientific approach to determining the location of German artillery.     

Consumer finance: challenges for operational research

Consumer finance has become one of the most important areas of banking, both because of the amount of money being lent and the impact of such credit on global economy and the realisation that the credit crunch of 2008 was partly due to incorrect modelling of the risks in such lending. This paper reviews the development of credit scoring—the way of assessing risk in consumer finance—and what is meant by a credit score. It then outlines 10 challenges for Operational Research to support modelling in consumer finance. Some of these involve developing more robust risk assessment systems, whereas others are to expand the use of such modelling to deal with the current objectives of lenders and the new decisions they have to make in consumer finance.