Operations Research Management Science - Forum

<BODY bgcolor="#ffffff" link="cc0000" vlink="cc0000" text="#000000"> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=4 border=0><br>   <table border=0 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0 width=480><tr valign=top> <td width=10><img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 hspace=4 border=0></td> <td width=470> <FONT face="verdana, arial, helvetica" SIZE=2><B><I><A HREF="../../ORMS.shtml" TARGET="_top">OR/MS Today</A> - February 2004</I></B></font><BR> <hr size="1"> <img src="cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=4 border=0><br> <font face="times new roman, times"> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=4 border=0><br> <FONT face="verdana, arial, helvetica" SIZE=2><B>Forum</B></FONT><br> <IMG SRC="../barbluehook.gif" WIDTH="468" HEIGHT="4"><br> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=8 border=0><br> <FONT SIZE="+2"><B>'Better' Campaign Doesn't Go Far Enough</B></FONT><BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=2 border=0><br> <FONT SIZE="+1"><I>Promotion is fine, but the profession needs to build a better OR/MS product with more emphasis on "operations" and "management"</I></FONT><BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> <FONT face="verdana, arial, helvetica" SIZE=2><B>By Heiner Müller-Merbach</B></FONT><br> <hr size="1"> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=12 border=0><br>    <TABLE BORDER="0" CELLSPACING="0" CELLPADDING="1" BGCOLOR="#990000" width=150 align=right> <TR ALIGN="Center" VALIGN="Middle"> <TD><IMG SRC="art/shim.gif" VSPACE=1 BORDER=0 HEIGHT=1 WIDTH=1> <TABLE BORDER="0" CELLSPACING="0" CELLPADDING="6" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" width=148> <TR ALIGN="Left" VALIGN="Top"> <TD> <CENTER><font color="#990000" size="2" face="verdana, arial, helvetica"><B>Side Stories:</B></font></CENTER><BR> <font size="1" face="verdana, arial, helvetica">  <I><A HREF="forsb1.html">Operations Research Gives Profession a Bad Name</A></I><BR>      By Mathieu Balez<BR> <BR>  <I><A HREF="forsb2.html">The Science of Better:<BR> Progress report on the INFORMS initiative to market the profession</A></I><BR>      By Barry List </TD> </TR> </TABLE> <IMG SRC="art/shim.gif" VSPACE=1 BORDER=0 HEIGHT=1 WIDTH=1> </TD> </TR> </TABLE> The central topic of the December 2003 issue of <I>OR/MS Today</I> was the marketing campaign for the OR/MS profession, a campaign that touts OR/MS as the <A HREF="../orms-12-03/frmarketing.html" TARGET="_top">"The Science of Better"</A> [1]. Any such public relations initiative can only be welcomed, but most of the marketing initiatives outlined in the campaign refer only to activities <I>promoting</I> OR/MS, i.e. only one of the four Ps of marketing according to Kotler and others [2]: product, price, placement and promotion. <P>It is the mix of the four Ps rather than a single isolated P that leads to success. Certainly the OR/MS "product"  the emphasis of this paper  has to be considered with great care. Do we only need a better promotion of our current OR/MS product, or do we also need a more sophisticated OR/MS product? <BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=12 border=0><br> <FONT face="verdana, arial, helvetica" SIZE=3><B>Emphasis Within the Name</B></FONT><BR> <IMG SRC="../barbluehook.gif" WIDTH="468" HEIGHT="4"><br> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=2 border=0><br> The image of OR/MS begins with the emphasis within the name. The OR/MS publications, the OR/MS education programs and the OR/MS conferences seem to be dominated by an "operations <I>RESEARCH"</I> or "management <I>SCIENCE"</I> attitude rather than an <I>"OPERATIONS</I> research" or <I>"MANAGEMENT</I> science" attitude. Consider the following definitions and interpretations of the profession based upon the emphasis of one word over another: <UL> <LI> <B><I>operations RESEARCH (oR):</I></B> "We, the OR people, are researchers, and we are quite willing to lend our excellent mathematical tools to managers to solve their problems," versus:<br> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=4 border=0><br> <LI> <B><I>OPERATIONS research (Or):</I></B> "We are dedicated to cope with (real) operations and try to design and control them in the best possible way,"or:<br> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=4 border=0><br> <LI> <B><I>management SCIENCE (mS):</I></B> "Our profession is a science, and our collaborators are scientists as well," versus:<br> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=4 border=0><br> <LI> <B><I>MANAGEMENT science (Ms):</I></B> "Our clients are managers, and we try to support them; for this purpose, we first have to understand them and their problems." </UL> <P>The prevailing OR/MS jargon is dominated by the oR/mS attitude: We enjoy developing procedures to solve the "travelling salesman problem," without having interviewed traveling salesmen about their real problems. We like to use the term "knapsack problem," probably without having packed a knapsack according to our mathematics. We frankly refer to the "prisoner's dilemma" without having asked prisoners what their dilemmas seem to be (if at all easy to explain). Our jargon unveils the fact that the OR/MS community partly operates within a somewhat artificial mental world, the oR/mS world instead of an Or/Ms world. <BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=12 border=0><br> <FONT face="verdana, arial, helvetica" SIZE=3><B>Understanding OR/MS</B></FONT><BR> <IMG SRC="../barbluehook.gif" WIDTH="468" HEIGHT="4"><br> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=2 border=0><br> The external image of OR/MS depends strongly on the internal understanding of OR/MS within the OR/MS community. In the brochure "Careers in Operations Research," the Operations Research Society of America (ORSA) offered this definition: "Operations Research is concerned with scientifically deciding how to best design and operate man-machine systems, usually under conditions requiring the allocation of scarce resources" [3]. Is a definition like this agreeable within the OR/MS community? It says nothing about mathematics, algorithms or computation, but it says much about the purpose and the dedication of OR (and MS), namely: "... how to best design and operate man-machine systems ...". <P>Even if the definition is agreed upon, there may still remain a variety of different understandings of OR/MS. Even the scope of the problem-solving capacity may differ over a wide range, such as from: <UL> <LI> <B>Opinion 1:</B> "Systems science can contribute to (almost) any problem just by the frame of systems thinking," to: <br> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=4 border=0><br> <LI> <B>Opinion 2:</B> "Systems science has limited tools which allow only for the solution of problems within a limited range" [4], with "systems science" as a synonym for OR/MS. </UL> <P>Is the characteristic systems approach to problems (Opinion 1) the critical success factor of OR/MS? Or is the characteristic toolkit, such as mathematical programming and simulation, etc., the means to identify OR/MS (Opinion 2)? <P>Both opinions seem to have strong support within the (international) OR/MS community. Opinion 1 is close to the Or/Ms attitude, Opinion 2 close to the oR/mS attitude. However, it seems as if Opinion 2 would get much stronger support than Opinion 1 within the actual international OR/MS community today. <BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=12 border=0><br> <FONT face="verdana, arial, helvetica" SIZE=3><B>Structure of the Content</B></FONT><BR> <IMG SRC="../barbluehook.gif" WIDTH="468" HEIGHT="4"><br> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=2 border=0><br> The dominance of Opinion 2 is reflected by the structures of OR/MS textbooks and OR/MS conference programs, and by the index systems of OR/MS bibliographies, such as: graph theory, linear programming, nonlinear programming, integer programming, combinatorial optimization, stochastic processes (queuing theory included), simulation, etc. <P>Structures with an Or/Ms orientation (Opinion 1) would possibly follow the functions of the enterprise, such as: procurement, production, inventory, internal and external logistics, sales and marketing, finance and treasuring, investment, accounting and cost accounting, controlling, personnel and organization, R&D, leadership, etc. In addition to the functional view, conceptual models of the enterprise (Figure 1) could be the threshold for the development of a comprehensive understanding of enterprises. <BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> <IMG SRC="art/Forum_figure1.jpg" WIDTH="454" HEIGHT="290" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ALIGN="Left" BORDER="0" ALT=" "><BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=2 border=0><br> <FONT face="verdana, arial, helvetica" SIZE=1><B>Figure 1: Conceptual model of the enterprise, embedded into a system of markets. The arrows represent the material flow, the dotted arrows represent the usage of machinery and personnel for any processes. Another network of arrows could represent the financial flow, another network the information flow, etc.</B></font><BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=12 border=0><br> <FONT face="verdana, arial, helvetica" SIZE=3><B>OR/MS Education</B></FONT><BR> <IMG SRC="../barbluehook.gif" WIDTH="468" HEIGHT="4"><br> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=2 border=0><br> The success of OR/MS has its roots in the education programs. They ought to be a mix of oR/mS and Or/Ms orientation. A pure oR/mS orientation might lead to the attitude: "Manager, if you have a nice LP problem, please let me know, and I shall be happy to solve it for you." A pure Or/Ms orientation, however, might lack technical competence in mathematics, algorithms and computation. <P>A mix might lead to a kind of matrix orientation: <UL> <LI> The oR/mS part would, on the one hand, contribute to technical competence in mathematics, algorithms and computation, and would provide the student with a good judgment for choosing the right tools for any kind of problem. <LI> The Or/Ms part would, on the other hand, provide the student with two kinds of competence: (i) He/she would understand the problems as such (i.e. prior to the mathematical modeling) and that on the basis of a comprehensive understanding of the enterprise, and (ii): He/she should be trained in the skills of how to approach a problem, i.e. the many activities which precede and follow the modeling work. </UL> <P>OR/MS experts of this kind would possibly have the capability to "best design and operate man-machine systems," such as suggested by the ORSA definition (above). <P>Should OR/MS be offered with this matrix orientation, it might be visible everywhere and would hardly need much promotion. <P>The current OR/MS education programs seem to reproduce the oR/mS attitude. This perpetuates the dominance of the internal oR/mS understanding within the OR/MS community, and this coins the external oR/mS image of our profession. An extension of the product OR/MS toward the matrix orientation seems to be advantageous. <BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=12 border=0><br> <FONT face="verdana, arial, helvetica" SIZE=3><B>The Purpose of Promotion</B></FONT><BR> <IMG SRC="../barbluehook.gif" WIDTH="468" HEIGHT="4"><br> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=2 border=0><br> The two orientations, oR/mS versus Or/Ms, find their mirror in two possible objectives of the current marketing campaign: <UL> <LI> Objectives such as "OR/MS should become more important," or "more influential," or "better visible" are certainly acceptable, but they fit with the predominant oR/mS attitude in the sense of, "Let the sales and marketing people care for additional attention to our wonderful tools!" This is related to Opinion 2, OR/MS being the end in itself.<br> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=4 border=0><br> <LI> A competing objective lies in the question: How can the OR/MS community better help solve current problems of general concern? This is related to Opinion 1, OR/MS being a means to the end. </UL> <P> <TABLE BORDER="0" CELLSPACING="0" CELLPADDING="1" BGCOLOR="#990000" width=150 align=right> <TR ALIGN="Center" VALIGN="Middle"> <TD><IMG SRC="art/shim.gif" VSPACE=1 BORDER=0 HEIGHT=1 WIDTH=1> <TABLE BORDER="0" CELLSPACING="0" CELLPADDING="6" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" width=148> <TR ALIGN="Left" VALIGN="Top"> <TD> <CENTER><font color="#990000" size="2" face="verdana, arial, helvetica"><B>Side Stories:</B></font></CENTER><BR> <font size="1" face="verdana, arial, helvetica">  <I><A HREF="forsb1.html">Operations Research Gives Profession a Bad Name</A></I><BR>      By Mathieu Balez<BR> <BR>  <I><A HREF="forsb2.html">The Science of Better:<BR> Progress report on the INFORMS initiative to market the profession</A></I><BR>      By Barry List </TD> </TR> </TABLE> <IMG SRC="art/shim.gif" VSPACE=1 BORDER=0 HEIGHT=1 WIDTH=1> </TD> </TR> </TABLE> Several authors have predicted or stated the death of OR/MS, such as Webster in 1971: "The 70s will see the death of OR" [5]; Ackoff in 1979: "American Operations Research is dead but not yet buried" [6], and Eilon in 1980: "If I had to nominate the fastest growing subject in the Operational Research world, it would be 'O.R. in crisis', a theme seized upon not only by outside observers who look at O.R. and find it wanting, but also by O.R. people themselves, who, for one reason or another, have become disenchanted with the progress of their profession and its standing" [7]. <P>Any crisis of this kind can be overcome. It requires change, based upon self-criticism, self-reflection and the view at the product (OR/MS) from a distance and with the eyes of the potential clients. To look upon OR/MS from the outside might be the key for a successful marketing campaign.<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=12 border=0><br> <FONT face="verdana, arial, helvetica" SIZE=3><B>References</B></FONT><BR> <IMG SRC="../barbluehook.gif" WIDTH="468" HEIGHT="4"><br> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=2 border=0><br> <OL> <font size=1> <LI> Horner, Peter, <A HREF="../orms-12-03/frmarketing.html" TARGET="_top">"The Science of Better,"</A> <I>OR/MS Today,</I> Vol.30, No. 6, pp. 20-23. <LI> Kotler, P., 2002, "Marketing Management," Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. <LI> ORSA (ed.), 1977, "Careers in Operations Research," Operations Research Society of America, Baltimore. <LI> Bayraktar, B.A.; H. Müller-Merbach; J. E. Roberts; M. G. Simpson (eds.), 1979, "Education in Systems Science," Taylor & Francis, London. <LI> Webster, R., 1971, "The 70's will see the death of OR," <I>Operational Research Quarterly,</I> Vol. 22, Special Conference Issue, p. 128. <LI> Ackoff, R.L., 1979, "The future of Operational Research is past," <I>Journal of the Operational Research Society,</I> Vol. 30, No. 2, pp. 93-104. <LI> Eilon, S., 1980, "The role of Management Science," <I>Journal of the Operational Research Society,</I> Vol. 31, No. 1, pp. 17-28. </font> </OL> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=4 border=0><br> <IMG SRC="../barbluehook.gif" WIDTH="468" HEIGHT="4"><br> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=2 border=0><br> <FONT face="verdana, arial, helvetica" SIZE=2><I><B>Heiner Müller-Merbach</B> is a professor of Betriebsinformatik and Operations Research, Technische Universität-Kaiserslautern, Germany, and a former (1985/86) member of TIMS Council.</i></font><BR>  <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=5 border=0><br>  <img src="../barblue.gif" width=468 height=1 border=0 alt=" "><br> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=8 border=0><br> <font face="verdana, arial, helvetica" size="1"> <CENTER><script type="text/javascript"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js"> </script></CENTER><br> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=8 border=0><br> <LI> <A HREF="tocfr.html" Target="_top"><I>Table of Contents</A><br> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=4 border=0><br> <LI> <A HREF="../../ORMS.shtml" TARGET="_top"><I>OR/MS Today</I> Home Page</A><br>  <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=8 border=0><br> <img src="../barblue.gif" width=468 height=1 border=0 alt=" "><br> <b><i>OR/MS Today</i></b> copyright � 2004 by <A HREF="http://www.informs.org/" target="_new">the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences</a>. 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