Economics And Operational Research

Economics and Operational Research explores the possible connections of the organization of human and material resources by concentrating on the interpretations of management decisions at various levels in the economy. This book discusses economics and mathematics as an analytical tool. Organized into 10 chapters, this book begins with an overview of how consumers manage their own budgets and how manufacturers select their production processes. This text then described generally how consumers and producers react to each other. Other chapters consider the problem of the transportation of goods through busy road networks and the efficiency attained through central planning. This book discusses as well the control of congestion that arises through decentralization and the construction of an overall planning model. The final chapter discusses the important aspects of national planning, wherein the collection of all consumers and producers makes up one large economic system. This book is a valuable resource for management and engineering personnel.

Since the 1960s, operations research (or, alternatively, management science) has become an indispensable tool in scientific management. In simple words, its goal on the strategic and tactical levels is to aid in decision making and, on the operational level, automate decision making. Its tools are algorithms, procedures that create and improve solutions to a point at which optimal or, at least, satisfactory solutions have been found. While many texts on the subject emphasize methods, the special focus of this book is on the applications of operations research in practice. Typically, a topic is introduced by means of a description of its applications, a model is formulated and its solution is presented. Then the solution is discussed and its implications for decision making are outlined. We have attempted to maximize the understanding of the topics by using intuitive reasoning while keeping mathematical notation and the description of techniques to a minimum. The exercises are designed to fully explore the material covered in the chapters, without resorting to mind-numbing repetitions and trivialization.

Operations Research: A Practical Introduction is just that: a hands-on approach to the field of operations research (OR) and a useful guide for using OR techniques in scientific decision making, design, analysis and management. The text accomplishes two goals. First, it provides readers with an introduction to standard mathematical models and algorithms. Second, it is a thorough examination of practical issues relevant to the development and use of computational methods for problem solving. Highlights: All chapters contain up-to-date topics and summaries A succinct presentation to fit a one-term course Each chapter has references, readings, and list of key terms Includes illustrative and current applications New exercises are added throughout the text Software tools have been updated with the newest and most popular software Many students of various disciplines such as mathematics, economics, industrial engineering and computer science often take one course in operations research. This book is written to provide a succinct and efficient introduction to the subject for these students, while offering a sound and fundamental preparation for more advanced courses in linear and nonlinear optimization, and many stochastic models and analyses. It provides relevant analytical tools for this varied audience and will also serve professionals, corporate managers, and technical consultants.

Martin Beckmann is going to celebrate his sixtieth birthday. This is almost unbelievable considering the vitality, ingenuity, and activity which he continues to show as he always did. It is an honor able and pleasant duty for the whole economics community to show hirn the respect, gratitude, and affection which he deserves. Thus, those' who have contributed to this festschrift may be thought of as a dele gation from a much larger community in which all of us are joined; the editors in particular feel deeply connected with and enriched by the personality and scientific work of Martin Beckmann. Martin Beckmann is one of those rare scholars who are not narrow minded specialists in one field; he has been active in many areas of economics and operations research which rapidly developed since World War 11, and he has contributed original and fruitful ideas in almost all of them. The variety of topics treated in this volume aims to re flect the impressive width of his scientific interests.

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Operations Research: 1934-1941," 35, 1, 143-152; "British The goal of the Encyclopedia of Operations Research and Operational Research in World War II," 35, 3, 453-470; Management Science is to provide to decision makers and "U. S. Operations Research in World War II," 35, 6, 910-925; problem solvers in business, industry, government and and the 1984 article by Harold Lardner that appeared in academia a comprehensive overview of the wide range of Operations Research: "The Origin of Operational Research," ideas, methodologies, and synergistic forces that combine to 32, 2, 465-475. form the preeminent decision-aiding fields of operations re search and management science (OR/MS). To this end, we The Encyclopedia contains no entries that define the fields enlisted a distinguished international group of academics of operations research and management science. OR and MS and practitioners to contribute articles on subjects for are often equated to one another. If one defines them by the which they are renowned. methodologies they employ, the equation would probably The editors, working with the Encyclopedia's Editorial stand inspection. If one defines them by their historical Advisory Board, surveyed and divided OR/MS into specific developments and the classes of problems they encompass, topics that collectively encompass the foundations, applica the equation becomes fuzzy. The formalism OR grew out of tions, and emerging elements of this ever-changing field. We the operational problems of the British and U. s. military also wanted to establish the close associations that OR/MS efforts in World War II.

This proceedings volume contains extended abstracts of talks presented at the 18th Symposium on Operations Research held at the University of Cologne, September 1-3, 1993. The Symposia on Operations Research are the annual meetings of the Gesellschaft fiir Mathematik, Okonometrie und Operations Research (GMOOR), a scientific society providing a link between research and applications in the areas of applied mathematics, economics and operations research. The broad range of interests and scientific activities covered by GMOOR and its members was demonstrated by about 250 talks presented at the 18th Symposium. As in l'ecent years, emphasis was placed on optimization and stochastics, this year with a special focus on combinatorial optimization and discrete mathematics. We appreciate that with sections on parallel and distributed computing and on scientific computing also new fields could be integrated into the scope of the GMOOR. This book contains extended abstracts of most of the papers presented at the con ference. Long versions and full papers of the talks are expected to appear elsewhere in refereed periodicals. The contributions were divided into sixteen sections: (1) Theory of Optimization, (2) Computational Methods of Optimization, (3) Combinatorial Optimization and Dis crete Mathematics, (4) Scientific Computing, (5) Decision Theory, (6) Mathematical Economics and Game Theory, (7) Banking, Finance and Insurance, (8) Econometrics, (9) Macroeconomics and Economic Theory, (10) Stochastics, (11) Production and Lo gistics, (12) System and Control Theory, (13) Routing and Scheduling, (14) Knowledge Based Systems, (15) Information Systems and (16) Parallel and Distributed Compu ting.

This invaluable book provides an account of Operational Research in Britain, the country of its inception, from the late 1930s to 1970. Originating in response to the country's air defence needs against the Luftwaffe, Operational Research had outstanding achievements as part of the 'secret war' against Nazi Germany. After 1945, the discipline began to be adopted in an increasing range of industries and services. In the 1960s -- by which time it was being incorporated in to university curricula -- the discipline began to penetrate into civil government departments. The history of Operational Research provides unique insights into the conduct of modern warfare, the professionalisation of business management and the modernisation of the civil service. The chronological coverage, from the late 1930s to 1970, coincides with 'golden age' of Operational Research, when the discipline was presented as a means of achieving optimum solutions to complex managerial problems. The book will be of interest to military and business historians, as well as to historians of public administration and higher education.