Operational Research Group Research Articles

Application of Operations Research to Managerial Decision Making

Beyond the routine actions of the industrial executive are the decisionmaking or planning activities. Operations research has been successful in developing and applying scientific methods to aid decision makers. This article has a fivefold purpose: to outline the decision-making process and the role of the decision maker in this process; to indicate the utility of operations research in solving decision-making problems, to show how analytic models are constructed and solved, to note some tools and techniques for solving such models; and to forecast some possible future developments of operations research techniques and their possible effects upon decision making. Burton V. Dean is associate professor in the operations research group, Department of Engineering Administration, Case Institute of Technology.

Education in Operations Research at the Ohio State University

The Educational Program in Operations Research at Ohio State is centered in the Department of Industrial Engineering, within which the academic aspects of the program are organized, and in the Operations Research Group of the Engineering Experiment Station, which engages in contract research and serves as a laboratory for the academic program. The Operations Research Group was established in 1954 to provide opportunities for actual experience in operations research as an essential aspect of training in this area, and to provide conditions under which a program of basic research could be developed.

The Analysts' Bookshelf

Book Reviews —Herbert A. Simon, Models of Man–Social and Rational, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 1957, 287 pp., $5.00—reviewed by Michael Halbert; —Proceedings of the Conference on Case Studies in Operations Research—A Cross Section of Applications in Business and Industry, Operations Research Group, Engineering Administration Department, Case Institute of Technology, 1956, 64 pp., $5.00—reviewed by Charles D. Flagle; —Dudley J. Cowden, Statistical Methods in Quality Control, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1957, 727 pp., $12.00—reviewed by Alfred Blumstein; —Eugene M. Grabbe (ed)., Automation in Business and Industry, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 1957, 611 pp., $10.00—reviewed by William J. Platt; —Automatic Coding, Proceedings of the Symposium held January 24–25, 1957 at The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, Journal of the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, 1957, 118 pp., $3.00—reviewed by George E. Clark, Jr.; —George Kozmetsky and Paul Kircher, Electronic Computers and Management Control, McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., New York, 1956, 296 pp., $5.00—reviewed by Robert J. Schubach; —H. W. Kuhn and A. W. Tucker (eds.), Linear Inequalities and Related Systems, Annals of Mathematics Studies No. 38, Princeton University Press, Princeton, N. J., 1956, 344 pp., $5.00—reviewed by Thomas L. Saaty; —Historical Review of Epidemic Theory—reviewed by E. G. Field; —Operations Research in France—reviewed by Herbert Glazer; —Two Recent Operations-Research Articles—reviewed by W. J. H.

Trends in Operations Research

The field of operations research has been rapidly growing this past year. The Operations Research Society of America has been founded and now has about 500 members. More and more large companies—aircraft and electrical manufacturers, railroads and oil companies, insurance companies and department stores—are forming their own operations-research groups or are buying consulting services in operations research. It will not be long before more positions will be open in industrial than in military operations research. We should no longer have trouble explaining the scope and methods of operations research to the layman. We already can say: Operations research is the activity carried on by members of the Operations Research Society; its methods are those reported in our Journal. Very soon this definition will be more instructive and convincing than any number of special explanatory articles and talks. Operations Research, ISSN 0030-364X, was published as Journal of the Operations Research Society of America from 1952 to 1955 under ISSN 0096-3984.

Radar and Ice

The need for investigations into the detection of ice by radar became apparent when merchant ships started reporting that ice formations were inconsistent radar targets, and that ships relying upon radar to navigate through ice areas could, in some circumstances, have their safety endangered.Certain investigations, notably those carried out by the U.S. Coast-guard Service and by the Swedish Defence Research Institute, resulted in the publication of a great deal of useful descriptive information but it was not accompanied by measurements of the actual echoing power of ice targets. With the object of carrying the matter further, a special enquiry was made during the 1950 and 1951 North Atlantic ice seasons, when a number of British ships plying North Atlantic routes completed questionnaires in which the sizes and shapes of ice formations were noted together with their radar detection ranges. This enquiry was instituted by the Operational Research Group in the Marine (Navigational Aids) Division of the British Ministry of Transport, which later analysed the data collected and issued a report. There were, however, certain limitations in this investigation. For example, the performance of the radars was not known, because of their inherent differences and the fact that none of the ships carried instruments, such as echo-boxes, for checking performance; further, propagation conditions at the time of making the observations were not established.

A Survey of Requirements for Port Radar

In 1947 it was felt by the Ministry of Transport that although the radar to be installed by the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board at Liverpool would demonstrate the suitability of this type of equipment in meeting the requirements of the larger ports, it was probably beyond the resources of many small ports and indeed was too elaborate for their needs. It was therefore decided that the Ministry's Operational Research Group should survey representative small ports in the United Kingdom in order to estimate the advantages that could be expected if shore radar were to be fitted and to discover what limitations there were likely to be in such fittings. As a sequel to this inquiry, it was proposed to select one port as the site for a trial, to be sponsored by the Ministry, in which a simple radar installation would be employed. The vital importance of having direct radio communication between ship and radar station was fully recognized from the start, and it was assumed throughout the investigation that this facility would be ancillary to the radar, the pilots probably carrying portable transmitter-receivers.

Radar Observation of the Giacobinid Meteors

SINCE the general occurrence of transient radio reflexions the E region of the ionosphere, at frequencie exceeding the critical frequencies for normal or abnormal E layers, was noticed by Sir Edwam Appleton and R. Naismith, in their observations during the International Polar Year, 1932–33, much work has been carried out which has shown that echoes of this type can be associated with visually observed meteors. When high-powered transmitters are used, the number of radio echoes may greatly exceed that of the visible meteors. As a result of experiments in which the directional characteristics of radar sets were utilized to investigate the aspect sensitivity of the transient echoes, Hey and Stewart have shown that the majority of the echoes at five metres wave-length must be of meteoric origin. Assuming that the most favourable aspect for reflexion is perpendicular to the meteor train and hence to the radiant, they were able to show not only that the frequency of occurrence of echoes reached a maximum at the times of the big meteor showers, but also that radiants of the streams could often be deduced and these coincided with known meteor streams. This work has been carried out in close liaison with the Slough Radio Research Station of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, where Sir Edward Applet on and R. Naismith have continued their studies of the transient ionospheric echoes at longer wave-lengths. The recent Giacobinid shower provided an excellent opportunity for the various investigators working in this field. J. S. Hey and his team at the Operational Research Group, Ministry of Supply, maintained a continuous watch during October 7–11 with the help of operators loaned from A.A. Command. This revealed a marked rise in meteor activity between 0100–0600 hr. on October 10, which reached a tremendous peak between 0330 and 0430 hr. G.M.T., when the echoes were too numerous to count on the cathode ray tube display. A detailed report must await analysis of the photographic recordings. Even at wave-lengths so short as 1½ metres, a number of these echoes could detected.

Detection of Birds by Radar

PERMISSION has now been obtained to publish the fact that birds can reflect radio waves with sufficient strength to be detected by radar sets. Evidence of this was given to us in the summer of 1941 by Dr. E. S. Shire, then developing centimetric radar equipment at the Air Defence Research and Development, Establishment, Ministry of Supply. Confirmation was obtained by G. C. Varley in September 1941, when echoes observed on an operational centimetric set at Dover were established by visual checks to come from gannets (Sula bassana) flying singly above the sea. The facts were published in a secret report of the Army Operational Research Group, Ministry of Supply, in April 1942. Much fuller details, with numerous further records, were published in a secret report dated February 1945.