OPERATIONS

RESEARCH
Introduction to OR

Presented
BY
SAID HASSAN ABDULKASIM
 CONTEXT:
• Terminology
• The Methodology of O.R
• History of O.R
• Basic O.R concepts
• Two Mines Example
• Review Exercise
 Terminology

 The British and Europeans refer to

Operational Research
 The Americans to Operations Research
 But Both are often shortened to just “OR”
( which is the term we will use)
 Terminology
 Another term which is used for this field is
"management science" ("MS").
 The Americans sometimes combine the terms OR
and MS together and say “OR/MS” or “ORMS”.
• Other terms sometimes used are:
• “Industrial Engineering” (“IE”)
• “Decision Science” (“DS”)
• “Problem Solving”
 Terminology
 In recent years there has been a move towards a
standardization upon a single term for the field,
namely the term "OR".
 ―Operations Research (Management Science) is a
scientific approach to decision making that seeks to best
design and operate a system, usually under conditions
requiring the allocation of scarce resources.
 A System is an organization of interdependent
components that work together to accomplish the goal
of the system.
THE Methodology of OR
OR is used to solve a problem of an organization, the
following seven step procedure should be followed:
 1) Formulate the Problem

• OR analyst first defines the

organization’s problem which
includes
• Specifying THE
Organization’s
OBJECTIVES
• And the systems that must be
studied before the problem
solved.
2) Observe the System

• Next, the analyst collects the

DATA to estimate the values
of the parameters that effect the
organization’s problem
• These estimates are used to
develop in (Step 3) and
evaluate (Step 4) a
mathematical model of the
organization’s problem.
 3) Formulate a Mathematical
Model of the Problem

• The Analyst, then, Develops a

Mathematical Model of the
problem
• We describe many mathematical
techniques that can be used to
model systems
 4) Verify the Model and Use the
Model for Prediction
• The Analyst now tries to
Determine if the mathematical
model developed in Step 3 is an
accurate representation of the
reality.
• Define how well the model fits
reality
• Determine how valid the model
is for the current situation.
5) Select a Suitable Alternative
• Given a model and a set of
alternatives, the Analyst chooses
the alternative (if any) that best
meets the organization’s
objectives.
• Sometimes the set of alternatives
is subject to certain restrictions
and constraints.
• In many situations, the best
alternative may be impossible or
too costly to determine.
 6) Present the Results and
Conclusions of the Study

• The analyst or the decision maker

presents the model and the
recommendations from Step 5 to
the decision making individual or
group.
• In some situations, one might Present
several alternatives and let the
organization choose the one that best
meets their needs.
7) Implement and Evaluate the
Recommendation

• If the decision maker(s)has

accepted the study, the analyst
aids in implementing the
recommendations
• The System must be constantly
monitored and updated to ensure
that the recommendations are
enabling decision maker(s) to
meet the objectives.
 HISTORY OF OR

 The field of Operational Research (OR), also known as

Operations Research, began in a systematic fashion in the late
1930s, primarily in the United Kingdom. The origins of OR can
be traced back to the development of radar systems and their
integration into military operations.
 In 1936, the Royal Air Force (RAF) Fighter Command was
established with the responsibility of defending Britain's airspace.
However, at that time, the RAF lacked effective fighter aircraft
such as Hurricanes or Spitfires, and radar data was not yet
integrated into their warning and control system.
 HISTORY OF OR
— Experiments began in late 1936 at Biggin Hill in Kent to explore
the effective use of radar data for fighter interception. These early
efforts aimed to integrate radar data with ground-based observer
data for fighter interception. This work marked the beginning of
OR.
— In the following years, several major air-defense exercises were
conducted to test and improve the radar system. The exercises
demonstrated the technical feasibility of radar for detecting
aircraft, but operational achievements still fell short of
requirements.
 HISTORY OF OR
— In July 1938, after a major air-defense exercise, A.P. Rowe, the
Superintendent of Bawdsey Research Station, proposed a crash
program of research into the operational aspects of the radar
system.
— As World War II broke out in 1939, the OR teams' contributions
became increasingly apparent. They were attached to the
headquarters of RAF Fighter Command and played a significant
role in analyzing and providing strategic insights.
 HISTORY OF OR
— One notable contribution was the analysis of a French request for
additional fighter squadrons in May 1940.

— The OR teams demonstrated through graphs and analysis that

sending additional aircraft would deplete fighter strength rapidly.

— This analysis influenced the decision not to send the requested

aircraft, which ultimately contributed to the successful air defense
of Britain during the Battle of Britain.
 HISTORY OF OR

— By the end of the war, OR became well-established in the armed

services of both the UK and the USA. It involved teams of scientists
from various disciplines, including:
— A Physicists
— Two Physiologists
— Two Mathematical physicists, and
— A Surveyors.
— Scientific analysis of the operational use of military resources had
never taken place in a systematic fashion before the Second World
War.
 HISTORY OF OR
— What such people brought to their work were:
— “Scientifically trained" minds,
— Used to querying assumptions,
— Logic,
— Exploring hypotheses,
— Devising experiments,
— Collecting data,
— Analyzing numbers, etc.
— Many too were of high intellectual caliber (at least four wartime
OR personnel were later to win Nobel prizes when they returned to
their peacetime disciplines).
 HISTORY OF OR
— After the war, OR expanded and evolved in both the UK and the
USA.

—In the UK, it continued to be applied in military and defense contexts,

—While in the USA, it found applications in business and industry.
— The growth of OR has been greatly facilitated by the increasing
power and availability of computers, as many OR techniques involve
complex numerical calculations that would be impractical without
computational support.
 HISTORY OF OR

—Today, OR remains a vibrant field that uses quantitative

techniques and analytical methods to optimize
decision-making and improve the efficiency and
effectiveness of systems in various sectors, including
logistics, transportation, healthcare, finance, and
manufacturing.
 What are models?

—An approximation of real world including its essential

elements, which is constructed by establishing
relationships among various variables of the system, is
called a model.
 What is Operations Research?

— Operations
The activities carried out in an organization.
— Research
Research is a systematic, scientific, controlled and empirical.

—Systematic → (step and step)

—Scientific → (has a logical step to follow)
 Advantages of Models

Generally, experimenting with models

(compared to experimenting with the real
situation):
• Requires less time

• Is less expensive

• Involves less risk

 Basic OR Concepts
 OR is the representation of real-world systems by mathematical
models together with the use of quantitative methods (algorithms)
for solving such models, with a view to optimizing."
 a mathematical model as consisting of:
 Decision variables: are the unknowns to be determined by the
solution to the model.
 Constraints: represent the physical limitations of the system
 An objective function
 An optimal solution to the model: is the identification of a set
of variable values which are feasible (satisfy all the
constraints) and which lead to the optimal value of the
objective function. (maximize or minimize)
 Formulating the Problem:
 Hence we have the complete mathematical
representation of the problem:
Minimize
• 180x + 160y Objective Function
Subject to
• 6x + y ≥ 12
• 3x + y ≥ 8
• 4x + 6y ≥ 24 Constraints
• x≤5
• y≤5

• x, y ≥ 0 Non-Negativity Constraints
 Formulating the Problem:
 Variables
 Constraints
 Objective
 Variables:
 These represent the "decisions that have to be made" or
the "unknowns".
 We have two decision variables in this problem:
x = number of days per week mine X is
operated
y = number of days per week mine Y is
operated
Note here that x ≥ 0 and y ≥ 0.
 Some Notes
• The mathematical problem given above has the form
 all variables continuous (i.e. can take
fractional values)
 a single objective (maximize or minimize)
 the objective and constraints are linear i.e. any term is
either a constant or a constant multiplied by an unknown
(e.g. 24, 4x, 6y are linear terms but xy or x² is a non-linear
term).
 Any formulation which satisfies these three conditions is called a linear
program (LP).
 We have (implicitly) assumed that it is permissible to work in fractions of
days –
 problems where this is not permissible and variables must take integer
values will be dealt with under Integer Programming (IP).
 Discussion
 This problem was a decision problem.
 We have taken a real-world situation and constructed an
equivalent mathematical representation - such a
representation is often called a mathematical model of
the real-world situation (and the process by which the
model is obtained is called formulating the model).
 "OR is the representation of real-world systems
by mathematical models together with the use of
quantitative methods (algorithms) for solving such
models, with a view to optimizing."
 Review Exercise

1) Differentiate Operations Research and model.

2) What are Operations Research models?
3) Discuss the various steps used in solving
Operations Research problems.
4) What do you mean research?
THANKS FOR LISTENING 