Inside Story
Unsolved Mysteries
— Peter Horner, editor
horner@lionhrtpub.com
Many years ago, when I was first introduced to the term "operations research," I recall someone telling me at an ORSA/TIMS meeting (or was it TIMS/ORSA?) that O.R. was doomed. The doomsday theory went something like this: All the really good operations research problems have already been solved, leaving modern-day O.R. whiz kids nothing but toy problems to tinker with. In the absence of important problems to work on and solve, the theory continued, operations research would simply wither away and die.
So all the great O.R. problems have been solved, have they? Try telling that to Saul Gass, Arjang Assad and the all-star O.R. lineup of speakers Gass and Assad assembled for a special track of sessions at last fall's INFORMS annual meeting in Pittsburgh. The name of the track: "Great Unsolved Problems in O.R."
Gass and Assad spent two years organizing "GUPOR," and their hard work was evident in Pittsburgh. The list of speakers included such O.R. heavyweights as George Nemhauser, Harvey Greenberg and Martin Starr, and the topics ranged from disaster management and health care delivery to real-time mixed integer programming and computational biology.
A year or so ago, Gass brought his plans for GUPOR to my attention, and we briefly discussed the possibility of using the sessions as the basis for an article in OR/MS Today. I subsequently had the pleasure of attending several GUPOR sessions in Pittsburgh, including a wrap-up panel discussion in which Gass again broached the idea of putting together an article for OR/MS Today. I embraced the idea along with the audience.
Shortly after the conference, Gass sent out e-mails to the speakers, inviting them to submit short essays describing their respective "great unsolved problems in O.R." The response was overwhelming to the point that I decided to turn the GUPOR "article" into a three-part series. The first in the series begins on page 20, and features essays by Nemhauser ("The Need and Potential for Real-Time Mixed-Integer Programming"), Michael Ball ("Increase in Flight Delays Calls for Better Air Traffic Management") and Starr ("Responsibility of O.R. for Disaster Management"). More great unsolved O.R. problems will appear in future issues of OR/MS Today.
Taken as a whole, the series should help dispel the notion that the O.R. profession is doomed due to a lack of "great problems." Clearly, there are plenty of great O.R. problems out there, they're becoming more complex, and they're popping up in areas like the services sector where O.R. rarely ventured in the past.
As INFORMS President Brenda Dietrich of IBM said in an interview in the last issue of OR/MS Today, "In my own company, O.R. has never been as important as it is now. Math has never been as important as it is now."
The question, then, isn't whether or not the world has run out of "great O.R. problems." The real question is, Can the operations research community rise up to the challenge and become engaged in solving the plethora of great O.R. problems the world now faces?
More than anything else, the answer to that question will determine if O.R. is doomed.
OR/MS Today copyright © 2007 by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. All rights reserved.
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