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From: Empower to the People
OR/MS Today - June 2001
By Les Foulds and Cherian Thachenkary
"Operations research (OR) had its beginnings in World War II, when British military authorities
faced pressing problems that were not amenable to any known scientific methods. These
problems arose from the development of new technology and its application to military
operations, such as the location of radar installations and the detection of submarines. To make
the best use of the hardware and to analyze the data that it produced, British officials created
teams of scientists from a wide variety of backgrounds.
After the war, British and American scientists realized that this approach of creating diverse
teams to build and optimize models could be used to great effect in the world of commerce and
public administration. The practice spread throughout the developed world. With spectacular
increases in computer power, more complex models have been progressively analyzed over the
decades.
The 1990s saw a revolution in computer and information technology that has had a significant
effect on OR practice. Today, there are less specialized OR groups within organizations and
very few groups with the diverse range of skills that were seen in the 1940s. A much wider
range of individuals are now considered OR practitioners, even if they themselves do not realize
it. In the last decade, we have also seen the rise of the spreadsheet, easy access to
inexpensive OR software, simple communication and the spread of OR knowledge via the
Internet and other forms of modern information technology".
Life science industry business faces the same problems as other
industries such as resources allocation, capacity planning, portfolio
selection, etc. However, well known OR tools and techniques need to be
adapted due to industry specifics associated with long planning horizon,
significant qualitative component in decision making, uncertainty related to
clinical outcome and many others.
OR/MS Today - June 2001
By Les Foulds and Cherian Thachenkary
"Operations research (OR) had its beginnings in World War II, when British military authorities
faced pressing problems that were not amenable to any known scientific methods. These
problems arose from the development of new technology and its application to military
operations, such as the location of radar installations and the detection of submarines. To make
the best use of the hardware and to analyze the data that it produced, British officials created
teams of scientists from a wide variety of backgrounds.
After the war, British and American scientists realized that this approach of creating diverse
teams to build and optimize models could be used to great effect in the world of commerce and
public administration. The practice spread throughout the developed world. With spectacular
increases in computer power, more complex models have been progressively analyzed over the
decades.
The 1990s saw a revolution in computer and information technology that has had a significant
effect on OR practice. Today, there are less specialized OR groups within organizations and
very few groups with the diverse range of skills that were seen in the 1940s. A much wider
range of individuals are now considered OR practitioners, even if they themselves do not realize
it. In the last decade, we have also seen the rise of the spreadsheet, easy access to
inexpensive OR software, simple communication and the spread of OR knowledge via the
Internet and other forms of modern information technology".
Life science industry business faces the same problems as other
industries such as resources allocation, capacity planning, portfolio
selection, etc. However, well known OR tools and techniques need to be
adapted due to industry specifics associated with long planning horizon,
significant qualitative component in decision making, uncertainty related to
clinical outcome and many others.
