Tackling hard problems: On the evolution of operations research

As we think about what impact we would like operations research (OR) to have on the world, it can be helpful to look to the past for guidance and inspiration. This talk overviews the early stages of operations research becoming a discipline and academic field of study following World War II. In this talk, I will introduce “fun facts” about OR history, including the piece of OR history that inspired a scene in the film Good Will Hunting. I will also discuss early attempts to define the field of operations research, drawing upon the writings of Philip McCord Morse. The young field of OR experienced some growing pains, when some leaders in the field expressed their concerns about the demise and possible death of OR. Ultimately, OR flourished in the following decades. A theme of the talk is that various efforts taken to tackle hard problems defined the field of OR, opened up fruitful areas for exploration, and guided the evolution of OR.

1. Tackling hard problems:
On the evolution of operations research
Professor Laura A. Albert
Industrial and Systems Engineering
University of Wisconsin- Madison
2023 INFORMS President
This work was in part supported by the National Science Foundation under Award Number 1935550

2. What’s so great about operations research?
This is a topic I explored during my Presidential term at INFORMS
in 2023in ORMS Today articles, Punk Rock Operations Research
blog posts, and LinkedIn Posts:
•Operations Research –what is it?
•10 facts about the origin of operations research
•On George Dantzig, Good Will Hunting, and Tackling Hard
Problems
•Operations research was declared dead in 1979
•Soyour mother wanted you to be a doctor, but a PhD in OR?
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3. What’s so great about operations research?
Our community tackles hard problems
Let’s take a tour through OR history
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4. OR before World War II
Historical origins go back to mathematicians such as Newton, Euler, Gauss,
Lagrange, Bernoulli, and others
By World War I, operations research was in its early phases in both the
British and the U.S. militaries
•F.W. Lanchester in the UK and Thomas Edison in US
•Neither impacted war effort / OR not adopted
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5. During World War II when OR teams tackled hard
problems to help the war effort
•British army started using OR near onset of World War II in 1939
•P.M.S. Blackett led a team of scientists called “Blackett’s circus” to tackle projects
•365 scientists engaged in OR by Victory in Europe Day
•US military adopted OR in 1940 within months of becoming aware of Blackett’s circus
•James B. Conant, chemistry advisory and member of National Defense Research Committee
•Philip McCord Morse started first OR team for the U.S. Navy
•Originally consisted of 7 scientists
•73 scientists by the end of WWII
•OR quickly spread to all branches of the US military
•By 1942 all Air Force generals required to have OR teams
•By Victory in Japan (V- J) Day in 1945, there were 26 OR groups at Air Force headquarters
•Despite the focus on decision-making, psychologists were generally not part of the teams
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6. OR quickly spread in military during WWII because
it made a difference
•Searching out Axis ships and submarines and attacking them
•Most valued contribution
•Integrating radar into operations
•Location, communication, and maintenance
•Optimal convoy size
•Criteria: loss and escort requirements
•Analysis of anti-aircraft weaponry
•Strategic bombing
•Performance under various conditions
•Anti-submarine strategies
OR teams succeeded in solving hard problems
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Anti-submarine warfare

7. Definition of OR
British Army 1939-1945
A scientific method of providing executive departments with a
quantitative basis for decisions regarding the operations under
their control
"Operational Research in the British Army 1939–1945", October 1947, Report C67/3/4/48, UK National Archives file WO291/1301
Quoted on the dust-jacket of: Morse, Philip M, and Kimball, George E,Methods of Operation Research, 1st edition revised, MIT
Press & J Wiley, 5th printing, 1954.
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8. Operations research – what is it?*
Philip McCord Morse, 1951
Morse declines to directly define OR, which is:
•Quantitative, predictive, and prescriptive
•Flexible and interdisciplinary, drawing on physics, math, biology,
psychology, and economics
•Practical – solves real problems
•Model-centric and experimental, with a feedback loop to continuously
improve models
•Data-driven and hands-on, with access to real system
•The ability to communicate up is crucial
•My impression: early OR is consistent with the OR of today
•Validation of mathematical models was emphasized more in 1950s
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Title of Philip McCord Morse paper in the Journal of Applied Physics in 1952 that is a transcript of a lecture at the conference on
Applications of Operations Research in Industry at Case Institute of Technology, 1951

9. OR becomes a field of study after World War II
•Scientific management (early 1900s)
•Data analytics for management
•“Time studies” by Frederick Winslow Taylor (“Taylorism”)
•Assembly lines
•Moving assembly line introduced in 1913
•Data and systems thinking applied to manufacturing
•Increased productivity by 500% in the US!!
•OR finds many new applications
•Resource allocation, cutting stock, game theory,
queueing theory, scientific management
•Advances in OR lead to widespread adoption
•Simplex algorithm, computing power
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplex_algorith
m#/media/File:Simplex-description-en.svg

10. on George Dantzig, Good Will Hunting, and
tackling hard problems
On solving homework problems that were
“a little harder than usual”:
“If I had known that the problems were
not homework but were in fact two
famous unsolved problems in statistics, I
probably would not have thought
positively, would have become
discouraged, and would never have
solved them”
- George Dantzig
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11. Dantzig’s simplex algorithm solved hard problems,
such as the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP)
TSP tour of 49 cities in 1954:
•1.24 x 10
61
feasible solutions
For comparison:
•There are 10
11
stars in the galaxy
•There are 10
23
stars in the universe
•G. Dantzig, R. Fulkerson, and S.
Johnson solved problem “by hand”
using the simplex algorithm
•Used Rand McNally map to estimate distances
•Proved solution was optimal
•Story in Newsweek in 1954!
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12. From transportation, logistics, and manufacturing…
…to public sector, humanitarian applications, and beyond
One sentiment in the 1960s in the United States:
“If we can land a man on the moon…”
...why can't we attack fundamental societal problems using math
and operations research?
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OR evolves

13. A golden age of public safety research began
in the 1960s
New York City / RAND Institute Collaboration spurred new
applied research
•Methods span optimization, set covering, simulation, applied
probability, queueing theory
•New York City used simulation for the first time!
Research had impact!
•Papers appeared in the best operations research journals
•Research was put into practice
•Research won major awards
•Lanchester, Edelman, NATO Systems Science Prize
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14. Soyour mother wanted you to be a doctor,
but a PhD in OR?
“I have just completed my junior year at Harvard College where I am
majoring in Applied Mathematics to Economics. I am currently in the process
of deciding whether to go to graduate school for a Ph.D. in Operations
Research.”
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15. Firsts in OR
•First course in operations research
•Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1948, nonmilitary applications
•The first university degree in OR
•Master of Science at Case Institute of Technology in Ohio (now Case Western Reserve University)
•First OR journal
•Operational Research Quarterly, 1950 (now Journal of the Operational Research Society)
•First operations researcher to be awarded a Nobel prize
•Patrick Blackett, Physics, 1948
•Jan Tinbergen, Economics, 1969 (first in OR)
•Elinor Ostrom, 2009 (first woman in OR)
•First operations researcher elected to the National Academies (in US)
•David Blackwell, National Academy of Sciences, 1965
•Also the first African American (overall, not just in OR) elected to NAS
•First woman in OR elected to the National Academies
•Margaret Wright, National Academy of Engineering, 1997
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16. Operations research was put on life support in 1978!
Operations research was declared dead in 1979!
“Operations research
is dead
even though it has
yet to be buried”
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17. OR survived and is flourishing!
•Record setting OR conference attendance
•INFORMS Annual Meeting attendance record in Seattle in 2019
•INFORMS Annual Meeting 2
nd
place attendance record in Phoenix in 2023
•Finalists for the INFORMS Franz Edelman Award have cumulatively
contributed >$400 billion since its inception and countless other
nonmonetary benefits.
•INFORMS journals downloads setting record numbers (>4M/year)
•IFORS has 54 member societies, 24 of which joined after OR declared
dead in 1979
https://www.ifors.org/national-societies/
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18. What’s so great about operations research?
 Leverage data to make smart decisions in systems
 Create operational models of systems that capture the
interconnected components and system performance
 Manage limited resources
 Study tradeoffs across multiple criteria
 We have a versatile toolbox for solving hard problems in
consequential applications
 We never back down from a challenge!
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19. Thank you!
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References
1.Florence N. Trefethen(1954). “A History of Operations Research,” in Joseph F. McCloskey and Florence N. Trefethen
(eds.),Operations Research for Management, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 3-35.
2.Articles and resources about the origins of operations research:https://www.informs.org/Explore/History-of-O.R.-
Excellence/Bibliographies/The-Origins-of-OR
3.P.M. Morse (1952). Operations research –what is it? Journal of Applied Physics 23(2), 165- 172.
https://doi.org/10.1063/1.1702167
4.Hall Jr, J. R., & Hess, S. W. (1978). OR/MS: Dead or dying? RX for survival. Interfaces, 8(3), 42-44.
https://doi.org/10.1287/inte.8.3.42
5.Ackoff, R. L. (1979). The future of operational research is past. Journal of the operational research society, 30(2), 93-104.
6.Herbert Halbrecht, (1972). Soyour mother wanted you to be a doctor, but a PhD in OR? Interfaces, 2(2), pp. 44- 49
My articles
1.L. Albert (2022). Operations research was declared dead in 1979. Punk Rock Operations Research blog post, Available at:
https://punkrockor.com/2022/04/07/operations-research-was-declared- dead-in-1979/
2.L. Albert (2023a). 10 facts about the origin of operations research. ORMS Today , Available at:
https://pubsonline.informs.org/do/10.1287/orms.2023.03.04/full
3.L. Albert (2023b). On George Dantzig, Good Will Hunting, and Tackling Hard Problems. Punk Rock Operations Research blog post,
Available at: https://punkrockor.com/2023/06/05/on-george-dantzig-good-will-hunting-and-tackling-hard-problems/
4.L. Albert (2023c). Operations Research: What is it? Punk Rock Operations Research blog post, Available at:
https://punkrockor.com/2023/07/31/operations-research-what-is-it/
5.L. Albert (2023d). Post on LinkedIn. Available at: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7132404427998597120/