Introduction to OR

Dr. Anupam Saxena

The art of winning war

without actually fighting
it

History of OR
British Government employed a number
of teams of eminent scientists to apply
their expertise to
management and operational problems
rather on technical problems
radar operational research team

AFTER WORLD WAR II

The same approach was used
in industrial and commercial
field.
First developed in Britain and
simultaneously in USA followed
by Europe and rest of the world.

What is Operations
Research?
Operations
The activities carried out in an organization.

Research
The process of observation and testing
characterized
by the scientific method. Situation, problem
statement, model construction, validation,
experimentation, candidate solutions.

Model
An abstract representation of reality.
Mathematical, physical, narrative, set of rules
in computer program.

OR SOCIETY OF
UK DEFINES
Operational Research is the
application of the methods of science
to complex problems arising in the
direction and management of large
systems of men, machine, materials
and money in industry, business,
government and defense.

OR SOCIETY OF
USA DEFINES

Operations Research is concerned

with scientifically deciding how to
best design and operate manmachine system usually under
conditions requiring the allocation
of scarce resources

Shorter Definition

Operations Research is the

application of quantitative
methods to decision making

OBSERVATION
PROBLEM DEFINITION
MODEL CONSTRUCTION
SOLUTION
IMPLEMENTATION

OBSERVATION
PROBLEM DEFINITION
MODEL CONSTRUCTION
SOLUTION
IMPLEMENTATION

OR
T
E
C
H
N
I
Q
U
E
S

 Mathematical Linear
Programming (MLP)
Probabilistic
Inventory
Network
Others

LP Models
Simplex
Transportation
Assignment

Decision Analysis
Markov Analysis
Queuing Theory
Simulation
Forecasting

Certain Demand
Uncertain
Demand

 Critical Path Method

(CPM)
Program Evaluation and
Review Technique (PERT)
Network Flow

 Non LP
Dynamic Programming
Break Even Analysis
.

Operations Research Software

Software
Lingo (LINDO)
MPL for Windows
XPRESS (FICO)
CPLEX (IBM ILOG)
AIMMS
AMPL
Gurobi
NEOS
MS Excel (FRONTLINE
SOLVERS)
SIMPROCESS
SIMUL 8
Matlab

Formulation of LP
Observe the given situation and define the objective function
which is represented by Z in OR
Next we have to find out the constraints for the solution
Than, Formulate them into equations