The Operations Research / Management Science Blog

One of the questions that most Operations Research (OR) professionals are afraid of being asked is probably “What is OR?”. It is difficult, even for a seasoned OR professional, to describe the field to a person with little or no relevant background. One of the main causes of this problem is that the term “Operations Research” is not as easily understandable as terms such as “Mechanical Engineering”, so people won’t be able to quickly construct a mental image of an OR person working with LINGO after hearing the term “OR”. The term “Management Sciences” can be a bit more easily visualized by people but it is also a bit too broad to define the area that is covered by ORMS, in my opinion. If I were to rename the field, I would probably use the name “Decision Sciences”, but even this term can be blurry as well and will cause some other types of confusions.

Therefore, I believe that the reason why it is difficult to describe OR to the general public lies in its nature. The nature of OR is broad and dynamic. The applications of OR can be found in almost any type of “operations” that are carried out in almost any type of systems, be it physical systems such as manufacturing plants or organizational systems such as express package delivery companies. Unlike Mechanical Engineering, which can only be applied to systems that obey the rules of physics, OR is broadly applicable. This is because OR deals with the hidden mathematical principles of human society and how we can increase the efficiency and effectiveness of what we do.

If you wish to learn about OR, I would suggest that you start your journey by watching the video posted on the IEOR department at Columbia University. For one thing, the video made OR sound difficult and fun, which are pretty much what OR is like to me. Then you could proceed to the Wikipedia article on OR to find more relevant information. The definition of OR taken from the article is shown below.

Operations research (in the US) or Operational Research (in the UK) is an interdisciplinary branch of mathematics which uses methods like mathematical modeling, statistics, and algorithms to arrive at optimal or good decisions in complex problems which are concerned with optimizing the maxima (profit, faster assembly line, greater crop yield, higher bandwidth, etc) or minima (cost loss, lowering of risk, etc) of some objective function. The eventual intention behind using operations research is to elicit a best possible solution to a problem mathematically, which improves or optimizes the performance of the system.

Yep, it’s quite a mouthful to say and I think it is a very good definition. However, I wouldn’t recommend any OR professional to memorize the paragraph above and repeat it word by word when they are asked the question “What is your job?” by someone at a cocktail party, not only because it will make you less attractive, but also because that an OR professional is far more complicated than the field itself. Let me explain why. I believe that, in order to become a good OR person, you need to know not just applied math but also economics, business, politics and even psychology and have good common sense, high emotional quotient, strong interpersonal skills and, most importantly, the experience of understanding the human mind, because the purpose of OR is to solve real-world problems, not just Sudoku. Real-world problems involve strategies, politics and even greed. You need to be more than just a mathematician. You need to understand people and how man-made systems reflect the ways people’s minds work. This is where an experienced OR person differs from a newbie.

I believe that the most effective way to understand the concept of OR is to learn about the OR way of solving a real-world problem, which involves the following steps:

1. Identify the problem or the cause of a series of symptoms (e.g. increasing costs) in a system (e.g. a factory).
2. Formulate a mathematical model that describes the problem by indicating the mathematical relationships among variables that we would like to optimize / maximize / minimize (e.g. transportation costs) and those that we could change (e.g. the route which the trucks follow).
3. Validate the model. This can be done by feeding it with the inputs of a problem whose outputs are already known.
4. Solve the model by finding out the optimal or near optimal values of the variables that we are interested in (e.g. finding the route that minimizes the transportation costs which could be a sum of the driver’s pay and money spent on gas)
5. Implement the solution. This is the most difficult part and is the part where the OR professional needs to be more than just a mathematician. According to Dr. Beasley:

It is believed that many of the OR projects which successfully pass through the first four phases given above fail at the implementation stage (i.e. the work that has been done does not have a lasting effect). As a result one topic that has received attention in terms of bringing an OR project to a successful conclusion (in terms of implementation) is the issue of client involvement. By this is meant keeping the client (the sponsor/originator of the project) informed and consulted during the course of the project so that they come to identify with the project and want it to succeed. Achieving this is really a matter of experience.

Therefore, interacting with the clients is an important part of an OR professional’s job. Not only do you have to possess strong communication skills to describe your analytical work to your clients, but you also need experience and knowledge in your clients’ business style, culture, personality and minds in order to customize your solutions to fit their needs and preferences. After all, making the clients happy is one of the key factors to a successful business. If you do possess some of these abilities, maybe they are what you should brag about in a cocktail party.

References
“What is IEOR” by the IEOR department at Columbia University
“Operations Research“, Wikipedia
“Phases of an OR project” by J E Beasley, OR-Notes