Talk:Operations research

External Links

I want to suggest this link to real cases of using Operations Research ( http://www.phpsimplex.com/en/real_cases.htm ). I think it's very interesting to see real data from earnings and savings obtained by the optimization.

The link to the OR blog in the external links is inadequate. There are only a handful of posts, with the time differential between the last two being 8 months. This adds little to nothing to the topic and I suggest it be removed.

On the same note, the "morphological analysis" paper is more on an alternative approach ("nonquantitative") than an example of OR, so limiting it to the "see also" rather than "external links" seems better. Mike Trick

I added a link to my own blog at http://mat.tepper.cmu.edu/blog but perhaps that is against COI, so I'll revert. I'll leave it to others to decide if it is more appropriate than the blog in place. Mtrick 00:09, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

I've removed the following external links from the article for discussion here. Please see WP:EL. If these were used as references for the text in this article, please use reference tags to link the text in the article to the source(s). See WP:Footnotes.

• INFORMS OR/MS Resource Collection (a comprehensive set of OR links)
• Operations Research: The Science of Better (marketing initiative by INFORMS)
• Operation everything "A primer on the most influential academic discipline you've never heard of" by Virginia Postrel.
• The Operational Research service for the UK government
• Operations Management Research Methods Weblog
• General Morphological Analysis: A General Method for Non-Quantified Modelling From the Swedish Morphological Society
• Michael Trick's Operations Research Blog

--SueHay 15:10, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, I've read over the external links rules, and it seems that the Resources page, the Science of Better Page, and the Postrel page seem in keeping. The others do not (except I won't comment on my own blog) Mtrick 20:05, 16 May 2007 (UTC) Ooops, I better declare further COI: I started and edit the Resources Page, I was President of INFORMS during the formation of the Science of Better, and I think I am quoted in the Postrel page. COI may prohibit me from playing any role at all on this page! Mtrick 20:09, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I believe that Mtrick has clearly and succinctly stated his bias in regrards to this article, and that he should be left free to edit this article as he sees fit, with due respect for other opinions. --SueHay 01:33, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Reinstalled some links

I've reinstalled the first two links. They seem OK to me. - Mdd 10:58, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Operations Management versus Research

Operations Research and Operations Management are related but different. Merging the two will harm the meanings of both. Operations Management focuses on managing the processes to produce and distribute products and services. Operations Research has a broader range of topics and applications that may not be focused on a product or service. -- Mike Siley

A better merge with OR would be the Management Science article. Both state that the terms OR and MS are interchangeable Davetracy 02:31, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

References

If you use inline references in an article, please be sure to also list the reference in the reference section. If any of the external links were used as source material for this article, please link the source to the information in the article. Please consider using reference tags rather than inline links, because reference tags can be used to generate a reference list without having to re-type the reference. See WP:Footnotes for how to use reference tags. --SueHay 13:49, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Definition

Is operations research really a branch of mathematics as the current definition states? I know very few mathematicians who would agree with this, and having worked for a short while in operations research I can say that many people working in this field would be reluctant to categorize the discipline as a subdiscipline of mathematics. What's a better way to word this? Mathematics is important in operations research but operations research also encompasses much more than just mathematics. It seems more like the relation between engineering and mathematics, or the relation between sociology and statistics. Cazort (talk) 16:12, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I made a small change adding the word "applied". Maybe this helps? -- Mdd (talk) 16:37, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Maybe we can also just erase the "...of applied mathematics..." -- Mdd (talk) 16:45, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I think this is more accurate, but I'd like erasing it better...something like "...is an interdisciplinary field of study". Maybe the problem is that Operations Research is used in different ways--some people use it to describe a subset of mathematics, but if you ask someone who is actually working for a large organization, they'll probably tell you it's much broader than just a branch of mathematics. Cazort (talk) 23:19, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

I do agree thinks can be improved here. Important is that with the "...of applied mathematics..." mentions some aspect of the context of OR. No matter how you say it, I think it is important that an article like this in the first sentence should refer to the context: This can be the origin or most important application or relation... You name it. A second point is, that thinks introduced in the first sentence should be explained latter on in the article. I think the argument you bring up here is important enough to mention in the article itselve. So if you erase the context in the first place, you should bring it up latter on. Good luck. -- Mdd (talk) 11:18, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Aggree with need to change and that this doesn't belong to one discipline; conceptually it is broader and that should be recognised as encompassing those disciplines and possibly more and the word logistic or with some referrence to logical construct at the center of the process of 'operations' that the field refers to. Patelurology2 (talk) 17:49, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Stochastics?

Hi all. As far as I know, stochastics, as a discipline, does not exist. Stochastic is an adjective. Perhaps is better to change it in probability, which also make the wikilink more consistent with the text surrounding it. But I'm not so sure so I didn't change the text. Jabbba (talk) 19:24, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Link removed

removed * Operations Research Custom Search Engine Nothing there, just a custom google search —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.54.190.172 (talk) 23:13, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks -- Mdd (talk) 23:26, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Merger proposal

It has been suggested above in the talk page that the OR article is a good candidate for merger with Management science. The Operations Research article is weak on its own, containing largely historical information and redundant lists of models that are present in the Management science article. The MS article has a weak history section and points to this article for historical discussion.Czyl (talk) 18:49, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose. There are lots of not very good articles on Wikipedia. Merging them is not the answer. Operational research is a recognised name, invented in the 1940s for something that is much older. Management science is, I suspect, something created by the education industry's Project Rebrand - don't worry, when the brand-name becomes tarnished, they will rebrand it something else to make it seem 'relevant' - maybe Neighbours' Science; lol.--Toddy1 (talk) 19:22, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
  • If it's a rebranding of the same concept, shouldn't the corresponding articles be merged? Czyl (talk) 21:47, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
  • I can be more direct: The two articles describe the same concept by different names and contain much of the same content. Czyl (talk) 19:48, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

• Merge parts. An early version of the MS article said (only): "Management Science refers to a wide variety of fields. It is often considered synonymous with Operations research, but can also refer to Organizational studies or even corporate strategy." Which indicates that some scope has been lost from the MS article. I suggest moving/merging much of the OR stuff to the OR article, leaving a brief summary in MS with a "main" template, then adding brief summaries of these other topics. Melcombe (talk) 16:16, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
  • This seems sensible. Operations Research is a term with a sufficient history and recognition to make it very difficult to justify the removal of the OR page. Whatever the problems of overlap, some solution other than one involving demotion of the OR page to a redirect seems much preferable. Airsplit (talk) 08:22, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
  • I suspect that "Operations Research" and "Management Science" are only synonymous within the business community. I don't think that the people who are analyzing military operations consider their jobs to be "management science." Operations Research seems to be the older and broader concept, so perhaps some or all of the content of the "Management Science" article should be merged into the Operations Research article. Ketone16 (talk) 04:41, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

• (The following movid from "Management versus Research" above as more relevant to current merge discussion here:....)

I agree with the earlier comment by Mike Siley. I also think the notion of "merging" Operations Research with anything else is questionable given that, of the examples proposed, "Operations Management" and "Management Science", both could clearly reference Operations Research as the "primary predecessor" from which OM or MS was born or derived or is a fully morphed branch of or grew directly out of.

My primary reason for this view is mainly based on approaching it from a "History of Science" point of view. My view is that Operations Research is so intimately tied to World War II, and then, as the article points out the decade afterwards (the 1950's), that one should consider putting the term "Operations Research" to a dignified death (and dating that "death" as occurring during the decade of the 1960's or 1970's) as long as it is then clearly noted that Operations Research spawned a formidable progeny of related fields such as the ones already listed in the article.

This is similar to many other examples in Science where newer fields (derived from an older field) simply invent their own term to label themselves. An analogy might be a proposal to "merge" Computer Science with Mathematics. Certainly, in the early days (1960's - 1970's), this would have sounded (and been) reasonable since virtually all Computer Science study was done from within Mathematics departments. Furthermore it is certainly true that Computer Science -- at the very least CS Theory -- is derived solely from the field "Discrete Math." But as most of us would agree today, it is simply more "appropriate" to speak of Computer Science as a field in its own right.

I would argue the same holds true for many of these other important derivative fields emanating from Operations Research such as Just-In-Time Scheduling, Traffic Flow Pattern Analysis, and a host of others including many of the examples listed in the "Scope of operations research" section of the current article. (I understand that was not exactly the intent of the author)

But to pick one derived field, even one as broad and admittedly close to the mark as Management Science with which to "merge" Operations Research, seems to me, still not the way we should proceed -- this, from a History of Science perspective which is the manner this particular argument should be approached.

Yes, I am a brand-spanking newbie (to Wikipedia) -- so spank away.

-- Frumiousfalafel (talk) 00:06, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't think that the term "Operations Research" is dead. I think it is still alive and well in the U.S. defense community, for example. There is even a large Military Operations Research Society. There are also universities that grant degrees in Operations Research. Ketone16 (talk) 04:31, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose merge, Operations Research is clearly a field of its own, with degrees offered at multiple universities.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] I note that none of these programs are called "Management science" and also suggest a revert of this article to some version from mid-2009, as it has significantly deteriorated recently. That this article is currently in bad shape is not a reason to merge it elsewhere: OR is notable on its own. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:55, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree with you entirely. The Operations Research article is important and should not be removed or merged into some other article. I think you're misunderstanding the proposed action. The proposed merger isn't a "merge into" proposal (in Wikispeak), but rather a "merge with", meaning we combine the content in some other way. A better question is whether Management Science is a notable field on its own, or is simply a synonym or subset of Operations Research. I would agree with Ketone16's suggestion that we remove the Management Science article entirely, which isn't particularly active, and merge its content here, with a redirect from the MS page to OR. Czyl (talk) 06:56, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

• Conclusion: The merger was carried out 28 Feb 2010. The management science article was removed and its content was merged with the operations research article, as per the proposal and discussion. Czyl (talk) 18:32, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Updating content

Parts of this article need substantial work, so I hope that editors interested in this article can come to a consensus as per Wikipedia policy rather than blindly reverting edits. Please remember that we are all trying to make the article better and not to take these changes personally.

Looking at several references online, the definition given for Operations Research seems to be badly out of date compared to the current definition, and the citation given for the definition is from a 1940s text. For the time being, I have moved these to a "historical definitions" section and placed in a new (cited) definition in the introduction. The definition on Wiktionary seems to match better with this one as well. Czyl (talk) 17:55, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

In general, we should avoid the direct use of large pieces of borrowed content from other sources. Where the content is useful, we should rewrite it and cite the source appropriately. This improves the article's style and is generally more appropriate for an encyclopedia.

The other main difficulty is that when reading the article, it is still difficult to get a sense of what OR practitioners and researchers actually do today. The well-written history section is dominating the article at present; the other sections should be expanded to match. Czyl (talk) 18:28, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Third question: Does the long quote by Denis Bessayou. represent a consensus view on the history of OR, or just one perspective? I can't find any other sources describing this division of the history of OR into three phases as he does. I would like to propose that this quote be replaced by a rewritten overview of the history. Czyl (talk) 18:43, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

There isn't any point in contributing good well-sourced content from definitive sources - it will only be removed.--Toddy1 (talk) 18:47, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Name

Given Operational Research was invented by the British, and given Wiki policy to use English spellings on articles for British companies and American spellings on articles for American companies. Should this not be called 'Operational Research?' --Mojo (talk) 22:08, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

You may have a point. Ketone16 (talk) 00:02, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Damaged article

This article has significantly deteriorated over recent months; I suggest a revert back to some version in mid-2009. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:42, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Opposed: The mid-2009 version was seriously deficient and should not be revived. Updates and improvements should be made to the current version. —Preceding unsigned comment added by BarryList (talk • contribs) 19:01, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

For interest

Here is an e-book I came across: Operations Research Simplified. Fintor (talk) 09:38, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Title: Operational research and the Royal Canadian Air Force Eastern Air Command's search for efficiency in airborne anti-submarine warfare, 1942–1945 Author: Ruffilli, Dean C. Place: Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON Year: 2001 http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk3/ftp05/MQ65204.pdf Keith-264 (talk) 22:56, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Management Science and Management

I was redirected to Management from a link contained on the Operations Research page. Management and Management Science are two different topics. There is a major distinction between the two fields. Management Science is a mathematical science and Management is not. Why does the management science link exist and redirect to the management page? The orginal page was merged with Operations Research last year. Management Science is NOT just Management. It is another well known name for Operations Research.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.74.192.33 (talk) 17:38, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

I've reverted the alteration to the redirect that was made 3 days ago without discussion. --Qwfp (talk) 21:26, 23 January 2011 (UTC)