Editing Operations research (section)

===After World War II===
In 1947, under the auspices of the [[British Association]], a symposium was organized in [[Dundee]]. In his opening address, Watson-Watt offered a definition of the aims of OR:
:"To examine quantitatively whether the user organization is getting from the operation of its equipment the best attainable contribution to its overall objective."<ref name="Beginning"/>
With expanded techniques and growing awareness of the field at the close of the war, operational research was no longer limited to only operational, but was extended to encompass equipment procurement, training, [[logistics]] and infrastructure. Operations research also grew in many areas other than the military once scientists learned to apply its principles to the civilian sector. The development of the [[simplex algorithm]] for [[linear programming]] was in 1947.<ref name="pitt.edu">{{cite book|title=Principles and Applications of Operations Research|contribution=Section 1.2: A Historical Perspective|url=http://www.pitt.edu/~jrclass/or/or-intro.html#history}}</ref>

In the 1950s, the term Operations Research was used to describe heterogeneous mathematical methods such as [[game theory]], dynamic programming, linear programming, warehousing, [[spare parts theory]], [[Queueing theory|queue theory]], simulation and production control, which were used primarily in civilian industry. Scientific societies and journals on the subject of operations research were founded in the 1950s, such as the [[Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences|Operation Research Society of America]] (ORSA) in 1952 and the Institute for Management Science (TIMS) in 1953.<ref>Richard Vahrenkamp: Mathematical Management – Operations Research in the United States and Western Europe, 1945 – 1990, in: Management Revue – Socio-Economic Studies, vol. 34 (2023), issue 1, pp. 69–91</ref> Philip Morse, the head of the Weapons Systems Evaluation Group of the Pentagon, became the first president of ORSA and attracted the companies of the [[Military–industrial complex|military-industrial complex]] to ORSA, which soon had more than 500 members. In the 1960s, ORSA reached 8000 members.{{Citation needed|date=July 2023}} Consulting companies also founded OR groups. In 1953, Abraham Charnes and William Cooper published the first textbook on Linear Programming.{{Citation needed|date=July 2023}}

In the 1950s and 1960s, chairs of operations research were established in the U.S. and United Kingdom (from 1964 in Lancaster) in the management faculties of universities. Further influences from the U.S. on the development of operations research in Western Europe can be traced here. The authoritative{{Citation needed|date=July 2023}} OR textbooks from the U.S. were published in Germany in German language and in France in French (but not in Italian{{Citation needed|date=July 2023}}), such as the book by George Dantzig "Linear Programming"(1963) and the book by [[C. West Churchman]] et al. "Introduction to Operations Research"(1957). The latter was also published in Spanish in 1973, opening at the same time Latin American readers to Operations Research. [[NATO]] gave important impulses for the spread of Operations Research in Western Europe; NATO headquarters (SHAPE) organised four conferences on OR in the 1950s{{Mdash}}the one in 1956 with 120 participants{{Mdash}}bringing OR to mainland Europe. Within NATO, OR was also known as "Scientific Advisory" (SA) and was grouped together in the Advisory Group of Aeronautical Research and Development (AGARD). SHAPE and AGARD organized an OR conference in April 1957 in Paris. When [[Withdrawal from NATO#France|France withdrew from the NATO military command structure]], the transfer of NATO headquarters from France to Belgium led to the institutionalization of OR in Belgium, where Jacques Drèze founded CORE, the Center for Operations Research and Econometrics at the [[Catholic University of Leuven (1834–1968)|Catholic University of Leuven]] in 1966.{{Citation needed|date=July 2023}}

With the development of computers over the next three decades, Operations Research can now solve problems with hundreds of thousands of variables and constraints. Moreover, the large volumes of data required for such problems can be stored and manipulated very efficiently."<ref name="pitt.edu"/> Much of operations research (modernly known as 'analytics') relies upon stochastic variables and a therefore access to truly random numbers. Fortunately, the cybernetics field also required the same level of randomness. The development of increasingly better random number generators has been a boon to both disciplines. Modern applications of operations research includes city planning, football strategies, emergency planning, optimizing all facets of industry and economy, and undoubtedly with the likelihood of the inclusion of terrorist attack planning and definitely counterterrorist attack planning. More recently, the research approach of operations research, which dates back to the 1950s, has been criticized for being collections of mathematical models but lacking an empirical basis of data collection for applications. How to collect data is not presented in the textbooks. Because of the lack of data, there are also no computer applications in the textbooks.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Richard |last=Vahrenkamp |title= Nominal Science without Data: The Cold War Content of Game Theory and Operations Research |journal= Real World Economics Review |volume= 88 |date=2019 |pages=19–50 |url=http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue88/Vahrenkamp88.pdf}}.</ref>