The development (rather than the history) of operations research as a science consists of the development of its methods, concepts, and techniques. Operations research is neither a method nor a technique; it is or is becoming a science and as such is defined by a combination of the phenomena it studies.
We may recognize the subject of management cybernetics — which is seen as a rich provider of models for doing Operations research.
The aim of management science is to display the best course of action in a given set of circumstances, and this must include all the circumstances.
Linear programming is viewed as a revolutionary development giving man the ability to state general objectives and to find, by means of the simplex method, optimal policy decisions for a broad class of practical decision problems of great complexity. In the real world, planning tends to be ad hoc because of the many special-interest groups with their multiple objectives.
The concern of OR with finding an optimum decision, policy, or design is one of its essential characteristics. It does not seek merely to define a better solution to a problem than the one in use; it seeks the best solution... [It] can be characterized as the application of scientific methods, techniques, and tools to problems involving the operations of systems so as to provide those in control of the operations with optimum solutions to the problems.
OR is the securing of improvement in social systems by means of scientific method
By the end of the war the new game theoretic methods that had been developed by von Neumann and Morgenstern were added to the toolkit and mathematical techniques that operations research scientists deployed. These proved very valuable, and game theoretic approaches took on great importance after the war.
We should no longer have trouble explaining the scope and methods of operations research to the layman. We already can say: operations research is the activity carried on by members of the Operational Research Society; its methods are those reported in our journal.
The conclusions of most good operations research studies are obvious.
It may be said that systems engineering is directed at the design and operating problems of production processes and units, while operations research is applied to problems in other areas of management such as sales, marketing, and external finance.
Herbert A. Simon's scientific output goes far beyond the disciplines in which he has held professorships: political science, administration, psychology and information sciences. He has made contributions in the fields of science theory, applied mathematics, statistics, operations research, economics and business and public administration (and), in all areas in which he has conducted research, Simon has had something of importance to say."
Operations research is a scientific approach to problem-solving for executive management.