Background
Technology - the application of science to the everyday Physical World - has, on the
whole, changed our lives greatly for the better, particularly since the time of Industrial
Revolution. Manufacturing industry, which supplies us with and at the same time creates the
wealth, which enables other services to exist, owes its existence to Science and Technology.
Some manufactured items, aircraft for example, are both complex and expensive, and
there are great difficulties, first of all in organizing their manufacture and then, once made, in
using them efficiently. Problems of this latter kind, often called systems problems, were
studied rigorously for the first time by scientists, not in industry but in the management of
operations in the 1939 - 45 war.
A number of teams of eminent scientists were employed by the British Government to
apply their expertise to management and operational problems rather than technical problems.
One such team (the Radar Operational Research team - which gave OR its name) was
responsible for implementing the installation and operation of radar after the technical
development work was complete.
Later on another team examined the relative ineffectiveness of the Allied Forces at
destroying the German U-boats, which were sinking the food convoy ships supplying Britain.
The OR team played an important part in reducing shipping losses and in the ultimate defeat
of the U-boats. With no precedent in the application of Science to the management function,
the scientists were still able to use their scientific approach-collecting information and
developing hypothesis in order to come up with practical plans for the improvement of these
wartime operations.
After the end of the war, the same approach was used with great success in the
industrial and commercial field, developing most rapidly in Britain and the USA, followed by
Europe and the rest of the world. This has provided the basis for the evolution of Operational
Research (OR) as a separate and independent subject of Science. It is not based on any single
academic engineering, social science, economics, statistics and computing but is none of
these. Then what is OR?
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