โ Scribed by M. Dror
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
I owe the idea for this special issue on Large-Scale, High-Priced Applications to Alan Mercer. A couple of years ago, Alan came to Tucson to participate in a Marketing conference, and since we knew each other from one winter when Alan had hosted me at Lancaster in 1985, I was happy to see him in Tucson, and we spent a few enjoyable days together. We both listened to some of the presentations at the conference where one of the organizers claimed that "we all know that Operations Research is dead". As a counter-argument, I described a number of consulting projects I was involved in at the time which were driven by operations research methodologies. Alan immediately challenged me to edit a special issue completely based on such practical-theoretical applications, and here are the 'fruit' (if you will) of that seed Alan planted here in Tucson.
I was and I am convinced that good Operations Research is not dead at all and that in the last 10-15 years a nontrivially successful industry has grown up around it, appropriately linked with computational and information-management technologies. There are numerous examples of decision support software development companies started by Operations Research professionals. I am personally familiar with a number of such companies, some of which employ over a hundred highly trained Operations Research professionals with at least an M.Sc. or Ph.D. degree in Operations Research. The Operations Research companies that I know are involved in the development of large-scale software systems which support mass transit planning, airline crew scheduling, mining operations, propane
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