There is no specific day Operations Research originated, like all other Science. Different articles have variety of instances mentioning efforts of great mathematicians solving complex problem related to decision making.
To list a few, In 1917, A.K. Erlang, a Danish mathematician, published his work on the problem of congestion of telephone traffic. During busy periods, telephone operators were unable to handle the calls the moment they were made, resulting in delayed calls. Few years later his work was accepted by British post office as basis of calculating circuit facilities.
In 1930, HC Levinson solved the merchandising problem by studying customers’ buying habits, response to advertising and relation of environment to the type of article sold.
Charles Babbage’s work on cost of transportation and sorting of mail led to England’s Universal “Penny post” in 1840.
Apart from these, a number of studies done by pioneers like Charles Huygens, Blaise Pascal, Ford W. Harris, Solly Zuckerman, Frank yates contributed to evolution of this field.
The term, operational research, was coined in 1940 by McClosky and Trefthen in bowdsey, United Kingdom. During World War 2, there were complicated strategic and tactical problems. Military management called on scientists from various disciplines and organised them into teams to solve these problems. The approaches they suggested showed remarkable progress.
After the World War 2, industrial managers of UK were impressed by the success of military teams. They needed solutions to their complex executive type problems. These problems were basically the same problems but in a different context. That’s how Operations research helped organisations after military around 1948 and 1950 in UK as well as in US.
Many industries including aircraft and missile, automobile, electronics, mining have made widespread use of OR in determining their tactical and strategic decision more scientifically. In India, an OR unit was opened in Regional research laboratory in Hyderabad, in 1949. Followed by its unit in Defense Science laboratory, Indian Statistical Institute, Calcutta (1953) and formation of O.R Society of India in 1957.
Prof. Mahalonobis made first important application of O.R. He formulated the second Five Year plan with the help of OR techniques to forecast the trends of demand, availability of resources and for scheduling the complex schemes necessary for developing country’s economy.
Definitions of Operations Research –
- “O.R. is the art of giving bad answers to problems which otherwise have worst answers. – L. Satty
- “O.R. is a scientific approach to problems solving for executive management.” – H.M. Wagner
- “O.R. is a scientific knowledge through interdisciplinary team effort for the purpose of determining the best utilization of limited resources.” – H.A. Taha
References –
- Operations Research, K Swarup, PK Gupta, Man Mohan, 17th Edition.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operations_research