Why most of the definitions of OR are not satisfactory?

There are three main reasons why most of the definitions of OR are not satisfactory:

(i)

First of all, Operations Research is not a science like any well-defined physical, biological, social phenomena. While chemists know about atoms and molecules and have theories about their interactions; and biologists know about living organisms and have theories about vital processes, operations researchers do not claim to know or have theories about operations. Operations Research is not a scientific research into the control of operations. It is essentially a collection of mathematical techniques and tools, which in conjunction with a system approach are applied to solve practical decision problems of an economic or engineering nature. Thus it is very difficult to define Operations Research precisely.

(ii)

Operations Research is inherently inter-disciplinary in nature with applications not only in military and business but also in medicine, engineering, physics and so on. Operations Research makes use of experience and expertise of people from different disciplines for developing new methods and procedures. Thus, inter-disciplinary approach is an important characteristic of Operations Research, which is not included in most of its definitions. Hence most of the definitions are not satisfactory.

(iii)

Most of the definitions of Operations Research have been offered at different times of development of ‘OR’ and hence are bound to emphasise its only one or the other aspect. For example. Most of the above definitions are only concerned with war alone. First definition confines ‘OR’ to be a scientific methodology applied for making operational decisions. It has no concern about the characteristics of different operational decisions and has not described how the scientific methods are applied in complicated situations. Many more definitions have been given by various authors but most of them fail to consider all basic characteristics of ‘OR’. However, with further development of ‘OR’ perhaps more precise definitions should be forthcoming.

(Source – Various books of college library)

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