The very concept of “operations research” is borrowed from foreign literature. However, the date of its occurrence and the author cannot be reliably determined. Therefore, it is advisable to first consider the history of the formation of this area of scientific research.
Basic meaning
Operations research is aimed at conducting analysis in various controlled processes. Their nature can be of a different nature: production processes, military operations, measures of a commercial orientation and administrative decisions. The operations themselves can be described by the same mathematical models. Moreover, their analysis will allow to better understand the essence of a certain phenomenon, as well as to predict its development in the future. The world, it turns out, is arranged in the information sense quite compactly, since the same information schemes are implemented in various physical manifestations.
In cybernetics, the study of operations is widely used in the section “Model Isomorphism”. If not for this section, then in each situation that would arise there would be certain difficulties with choosing your own unique method of solution. A study of operations as a scientific direction would not have formed at all. However, due to the existence of general laws in the formation and development of various systems, it became possible to study them using mathematical methods.
Performance
The study of operations in the economy as a mathematical tool that contributes to the high efficiency of the decision-making process in various fields of human activity, allows us to provide the person responsible for making such decisions with the necessary information obtained by scientific methods. In other words, this methodology justifies the adoption of a decision. Models and methods of operations research will allow you to get those solutions that will best allow you to achieve your organization's goals.
Basic elements
So, we will consider some disciplines of mathematical specialization that are most often used in this field of research:
- mathematical programming involved in finding optimal solutions to functions with some restrictions on the arguments;
- linear programming is a fairly simple and best-studied section of the first method, it allows you to solve problems containing optimality indicators in the form of a linear function, and the constraints are presented in the form of linear equalities;
- network modeling - the solution is presented in the form of network algorithms that allow you to get the right solution more efficiently than using linear programming tools;
- target programming, represented by linear methods, but with several functions of a targeted nature, which, however, may conflict with each other.