UC Berkeley

The fundamental techniques of operations research are outlined. Beginning with a definition of the discipline, the authors go on to isolate its characteristic features and to explain the twin processes of model building and model solution. A serious attempt has been made to use language which non-mathematicians can understand and the paper is aimed specifically at those librarians who, although they have no scientific training, would like to know more about the seemingly esoteric activities of operations researchers. The concepts behind such techniques as “linear programming”, “queueing theory”, “statistical decision analysis’, and so on, are basically straightforward, and this is the way they have been treated in this paper.