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OPERATIONAL RESEARCH
What is Operational Research?

Operational Research (OR) is the use of advanced analytical techniques to improve decision making. It is sometimes known as Operations Research, Management Science or Industrial Engineering. People with skills in OR hold jobs in decision support, business analytics, marketing analysis and logistics planning as well as jobs with OR in the title. 1.2 Why operational research is needed? Because it makes sense to make the best use of available resources. Todays global markets and instant communications mean that customers expect high-quality products and services when they need them, where they need them. Organisations, whether public or private, need to provide these products and services as effectively and efficiently as possible. This requires careful planning and analysis the hallmarks of good OR. This is usually based on process modelling, analysis of options or business analytics. 1.3 Examples of Operational Research in Action

Scheduling: of aircrews and the fleet for airlines, of vehicles in supply chains, of orders in a factory and of operating theatres in a hospital. Facility planning: computer simulations of airports for the rapid and safe processing of travellers, improving appointments systems for medical practice. Planning and forecasting: identifying possible future developments in

telecommunications, deciding how much capacity is needed in a holiday business. Yield management: setting the prices of airline seats and hotel rooms to reflect changing demand and the risk of no shows. Credit scoring: deciding which customers offer the best prospects for credit companies. Marketing: evaluating the value of sale promotions, developing customer profiles and computing the life-time value of a customer. Defence and peace keeping: finding ways to deploy troops rapidly.

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BASIC HISTORY OF OPERATIONAL RESEARCH

Operations Research (Operational Research, O.R., or Management science) includes a

great deal of problem-solving techniques like Mathematical models, Statistics and algorithms to aid in decision-making. O.R. is employed to analyze complex real-world systems, generally with the objective of improving or optimizing performance. In other words, Operations Research is an interdisciplinary branch of applied mathematics and formal science which makes use of methods like mathematical modeling, algorithms statistics and statistics to reach optimal or near optimal solutions to complex situations. It is usually worried about optimizing the maxima (for instance, profit, assembly line performance, bandwidth, etc) or minima (for instance, loss, risk, cost, etc.) of some objective function. Operational Research aids the management to accomplish its objectives utilizing scientific methods. Based on the history of Operations Research, it is believed that Charles Babbage (17911871) is the father of Operational Research due to the fact that his research into the cost of transportation and sorting of mail resulted in Englands universal Penny Post in 1840. The name operations research evolved in the year 1940. During World War 2, a team of scientist (Blacketts Circus) in UK applied scientific techniques to research military operations to win the war and the techniques thus developed was named as operation research. As a formal discipline, operations research originated from the efforts of army advisors at the time of World War II. In the years following the war, the methods started to be employed extensively to problems in business, industry and society. Ever since then, OR has developed into a subject frequently employed in industries including petrochemicals, logistics, airlines, finance, government, etc. Thus, the Operational Research began during World War II in great Britain with the establishment of groups of scientists to analyze the strategic and tactical problems associated with military operations. The aim was to discover the most efficient usage of limited military resources by the application of quantitative techniques. At the conclusion of war different things happened to O.R. in the Great Britain and in the United States. In the UK expenses on defense research were lowered; this resulted in the discharge of numerous Operational Research workers from the military at a time when business managers were facing the need to restore much of Britains production facilities which had been ruined in war. Professionals in the nationalized basic industries, specifically, needed assistance from the OR men leaving the military organization.

To the contrary, defense research in US was increased and O.R. was expanded at the conclusion of war. The majority of the experienced workers stayed in the service of the army. The ultimate involvement of science in industrial problems of the executive type in the US is a result of the advent of Second Industrial revolution. World war II had sparked scientific advances in the study of communication, computation, & control which produced the technological grounds for automation. In early 1950s industry started to take in a few of the Operational Research workers who left the army. Thus O.R. started to spread and expand in the United States.

Several signicant contributions:

1947: George Dantzig created the Simplex algorithm, a finite method for optimizing a linear objective function subject to a finite set of linear constraints 1948: Duality (conjecture by John von Neumann and proved by Albert Tucker in 1948) 1950: The first mathematical discussion of the prisoner's dilemma appeared 1950: The Nash Equilibrium (Ph.D. of John Nash) 1951: Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) conditions are first ordernecessary conditions for a solution in nonlinear programming to be optimal 1953: Metropolis Algorithm 1953: Dynamic programming (Richard Bellman) 1956: Dijkstra algorithm for calculating shortest paths ingraphs 1956: Alan Hoffman and Joseph Kruskal: importance of unimodularity to find integer solutions 1958: Cutting Planes algorithm by Ralph Gomory 1960: (Branch-and-Bound) A.H. Land and A.G. Doig, An automatic method for solving discrete programming problems", Econometrica 28 (1960) 497-520. 1963: Linear programming and extensions", by George Dantzig.

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APPLICATIONS OF OPERATIONAL RESEARCH

Operational research has been using to guide the family planning program development and policy formulation. The process by which a population policy and family planning program evolve in a given country is influenced by many factors that combine to make each country's experience unique. One of the most influential factors among these is the role played by external technical assistance, normally provided through donor-supported mechanisms. One donor-supported mechanism that seeks to guide the operational policy and program development process is technical assistance through operations research. Many questions are raised during the design of family planning programs that are often best answered with

reference to empirical evidence collected through applied, or operational research (OR). During the early development of family planning programs in Asia in the 1960s and 1970s, a number of research studies were undertaken to find the best way to organize family planning service delivery. Many of these studies employed longitudinal, experimental research designs. From these field experiments, the concept of operations research (OR) emerged as an approach to applied research that is essentially experimental in design, and which produces results which assist managers to plan and improve the operation of their family planning programs. Evolving out of the experience gained primarily in Asia and Latin America, OR practitioners came to define OR as a problem-solving process that has five broad steps (Fisher et al. 1991): 1. problem identification and diagnosis; 2. selection or design of one or more service delivery intervention(s) to address problem; 3. experimentation to test (and compare) intervention(s), 4. dissemination of results, and 5. utilization of results.

Operations research has come to be an important mechanism within the whole array of financial and technical assistance that donor agencies offer to developing countries for strengthening family planning programs. OR process has had an impact on the formulation of programmatic policies that guide the strengthening of service delivery activities. The impact is generally achieved through three approaches - the use of diagnostic studies that identify program weaknesses and problem areas, for which solutions are then identified and

implemented; the use of small-scale quasi- experimental pilot or demonstration studies that test in field settings new ways of delivering information and services; and the use of technical assistance to develop operations research institutional capacity. These contributions are frequently indirect, in that OR studies have provided empirical evidence which has then been used by governments and/or other service delivery and donor agencies to make needed improvements in service delivery approaches. a) Diagnostic Studies

OR projects have played a major role in helping to improve this situation by conducting studies that describe the basic supply-side variables for which managers need information to be able to plan program development. For example, The Population Council's Africa OR project has developed a diagnostic methodology to assess the family planning service delivery situation in a country. Termed a 'Situation Analysis' (Fisher et al. 1992a; Miller et al. 1993), the methodology includes the collection of data to measure (1) the availability and functioning of program sub-systems (e.g., facilities/equipment, IEC, training, supervision, logistics, etc.) at the level of individual family planning service delivery points (SDPs) (both clinical and community- based); (2) the performance of these SDPs in terms of services delivered; and (3) the quality of care provided at SDPs. Situation Analysis studies, therefore, focus primarily on the first stage of the operations research process, namely, problem identification, diagnosis and definition. They have been used to provide baseline data on family planning service availability,

functioning, and quality in a number. For example, the Situation Analysis study undertaken in Zimbabwe in 1991 by the Zimbabwe National Family Planning Council (ZNFPC) led to:

1. incorporation of the majority of the study's recommendations into ZNFPC's Five-Year Strategy, 2. use of the data on equipment and training to compile a service delivery policy and to set up protocols and standards, 3. revision of procedures (CBD) manuals courses for and clinical of the and Community-Based family planning

Distribution curriculum,

training

basic

4. development of a new training module on counseling skills and interpersonal communication, 5. revision of selection criteria for clinical staff training to ensure that at least one service provider at each SDP is trained in family planning, 6. increasing the number of staff trained in long-term and permanent methods of contraception, 7. improved distribution of IEC materials to rural clinics, 8. revision of health information forms to improve record keeping, 9. development of a module on reproductive tract infections and sexually

transmitted diseases to incorporate into training for the provision of intrauterine devices, and 10. training of CBD depot-holders to re-supply pills and condoms to CBD clients. (Zinanga 1994)

In summary, diagnostic operations research studies have had a direct impact on helping to guide and direct family planning programs. This type of study has been particularly important in those settings where managers simply lack the basic information necessary to initiate family planning services or to make improvements to existing, often fledgling, service delivery systems. b) Quasi-Experimental Pilot Studies

Beyond diagnostic studies, a second important OR approach to family planning program and policy development in Africa has been the use of quasi-experimental pilot studies. Undertaking pilot and demonstration studies to test innovative service delivery strategies on a small scale before adapting them nationwide is an attractive option to government and donor agencies uncertain about how best to develop a national family planning program (Freedman 1987). Indeed, operations research was first developed as a response to the need for smallscale testing and comparing of alternative strategies for providing family planning information and services beyond the conventional health clinic system. Thus operations research was initially undertaken using quasi-experimental designs to test the acceptability and effectiveness of new information and service delivery models (Gallen & Rinehart 1986), and the perception that 'operations research' is synonymous with, and only refers experiments continues to dominate. to, family planning field

This approach to program development has proved particularly fruitful, for example, in testing various approaches to CBD, firstly in Asia and Latin America and more recently in subSaharan Africa. CBD is a service delivery approach that is extremely relevant in a continent where the clinical health infrastructure is limited and the majority of the population live in rural areas. c) Technical Assistance

To be effective in the long-term, the capacity to undertake and utilize operations research should be institutionalized within the country, possibly within the service delivery organizations (primarily the MOH and FPAs) or within university-based or private research groups that collaborate directly with the service delivery organizations. Managers should become familiar with making decisions based on empirical evidence derived from research. While these are laudable goals, to date they have proved extremely difficult to achieve. Many factors contribute to this, including the lack of local agencies and personnel with the potential capability to implement an on-going program of operations research; and the need for a longerterm perspective by both program managers and donor agencies when developing a local capacity. A preference by donor agencies for discrete, easily evaluated OR projects has meant that less attention and technical assistance have been directed at institutionalizing the OR process. There is also a pervasive suspicion of any activity labelled 'research', which is often seen as being overly complex and theoretical, taking too long, and not undertaken with the objective of producing policy or programmatic recommendations.

Approaches to institutionalizing Operational Research

1. A research capability within family planning provider agency that can continue to undertake OR projects. 2. A provider agency with organizational expertise capable of "purchasing'/contracting for the research it needs conducted. 3. A research group, knowledgeable about family planning, that is capable of undertaking appropriate research for a variety of family planning providers from both the public andprivate sectors.

4. Service providing agencies, whose MIS has been improved and made sufficiently useful through OR projects. Data flowing from the system allows managers to identify problems or assess the merits and cost-effectiveness of new delivery strategies being tested.

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CONCLUSION

The effectiveness with which OR is able to influence operational program and policy development in the short term is a function largely of the degree to which the service delivery problem identified is viewed as important by program managers, and the extent to which there is strong commitment by managers to actually use the results from an OR study when planning and implementing family planning service delivery. The long term impact of OR comes when managers routinely plan service delivery improvements using empirical evidence of what works and what does not, and the relative cost- effectiveness of different service delivery strategies. This impact is dependent on strong, local institutions (either service or research) that can institute the entire operations research process on a continuous basis from problem

identification through results utilization. Enhancing the routine utilization of the results of OR studies, particularly the findings from small-scale experimental and demonstration studies, could be achieved by focusing more attention through intensive technical assistance on facilitating the understanding and relationship between those doing the OR and those doing the planning.

REFERENCES

Askew, I. & Fisher, A., (1995). Using operations research to guide family planning program development and policy formulation in sub-Saharan Africa. Population Research and Policy Review, 14 : 373 393.

Buriol, L.S., (2013). Operational Research : historical development and current challenges. Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul Brazil.

Universal Teacher, (2013). Brief History of Operations Research. Retrieved from http://universalteacher.com/1/brief-history-of-operations-research/