Description

ABSTRACT

This chapter will provide an overview of Operations Research (O.R.) from the perspective of an industrial engineer. The focus of the chapter is on the basic philosophy behind O.R. and the so-called “O.R. approach” to solving design and operational problems that industrial engineers commonly encounter. In its most basic form, O.R.  may be viewed as a scientific approach to solving problems; it abstracts the essential elements of the problem into a model, which is then analyzed to yield an optimal solution for implementation. The mathematical details and the specific techniques used to build and analyze these models can be quite sophisticated and are addressed elsewhere in this handbook; the emphasis of this chapter is on the approach. A brief review of the historical origins of O.R. is followed by a detailed description of its methodology. The chapter concludes with some examples of successful real-world applications of O.R..

Keywords: Operations Research, Optimization Techniques, Decision-Making Models, Resource Allocation and Systems Analysis