Education for Operational Research. A Practitioner's Viewpoint

Abstract

University education for operational research in Britain is making great and welcome strides forward, but there has been little open discussion of its aims in relation to the advance of the profession. Progress in operational research, and in its application to the really worth-while problems of industry in particular, depends primarily on strengthening the industrial operational research group in its “front line” role. We need a research study of the teaching and practice of industrial operational research, in relation to effectiveness. We need “collaborative” programmes of operational research education in which the university and the industrial operational research group each contribute, in a man's training over a period of years, in the ways in which each is most competent. We need emphasis on “breadth” as well as “depth” in operational research education, and greater attention to the mutual contributions of operational research, teaching and practice, and the teaching and development of management. An impressionist sketch of a programme which might meet these needs is put forward for discussion of principles and feasibility.