Introduction: A Long View of Research and Practice in Operations Research and Management Science

Operations Research (O.R.) is rooted in three fields: military operations, economics, and computer science. Operations Research (O.R.)—or, Operational Research—as a field was formally created by scientists in the UK, in particular by researchers working for the Royal Air Force. At the same time, there were parallel efforts in the US to examine ways of making better decisions in the different areas of military operations during WWII [15]. Still, research in operations already had a long history in England rooted in economics, going back to Charles Babbage’s study of the pin industry (that following Adam Smith’s “division of labor” study of the same industry) and of the postal system resulting in “penny post” that continues to be the model in most countries, thus justifiably earning Babbage the “father of operational research” [23]. It is interesting that Babbage also designed the analytic engine, essentially a programmable computer, because modern O.R.’s insistence on mathematical theory lie in the work of von Neumann and Alan Turing among others who laid down the foundations of the modern computer and of computer science. This book, with a long view of research and practice in O.R., reflects these three roots of operations research.