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 first of all to consider the history of the formation of this area of scientific research.
Main meaning
Operations Research aims to provide analysis in various managed processes. Their nature can be of a different nature: production processes, military operations, commercial activities and administrative decisions. The operations themselves can be described by the same mathematical models. At the same time, their analysis will make it possible 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 organized quite compactly in the informational sense, since the same information schemes are realized in various physical manifestations.
In cybernetics, operations research is widely used in the "Isomorphism of Models" section. If not for this section, then in eachthe emerging situation would have certain difficulties with the choice of its own unique solution method. And operations research as a scientific direction would not have been formed at all. However, due to the existence of general patterns 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 toolkit that contributes to the achievement of high efficiency in the decision-making process in various areas of human activity, makes it possible to provide the person responsible for making such decisions with the necessary information obtained by scientific methods. In other words, this methodology serves as a justification for making a decision. Models and methods of operations research will provide those solutions that will best achieve the goals of the organization.
Basic elements
So, let's look at some of the disciplines of mathematical specialization that are most often used in this field of research:
- mathematical programming, dealing with finding optimal solutions to functions with some restrictions for 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 restrictionspresented as 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 already with several functions of a target nature, which, however, may conflict with each other.
