Quantitative Techniques Introduction

Introduction

A person managing a production unit, where it is a farm, factory, or domestic kitchen, has to coordinate men, machines, and money against several constraints like that of time, cost and space, in order to achieve the organizations objectives in an efficient and effective manner.
The manager has to analyze the situation on a continuous basis, determine the objectives, identify the best options from the set of available alternatives, implement, coordinate, evaluate and control the situation continuously to achieve these objectives

Definitions

Quantitative techniques are those statistical and programming techniques, which help decision makers solve many problems, especially those concerning business and industry
Quantitative techniques are those techniques that provide the decision makers with systematic and powerful means of analysis, based on quantitative data, for achieving predetermined goals

These techniques involve the use of numbers symbols, mathematical expressions, other elements of quantities, and serve as supplements to the judgment and intuitions of the decision makers

Evolution

The utility of quantitative techniques has been realized long ago and the science of mathematics is probably as old as the human society
The evolution of industrial engineering, scientific methodologies the were prominent earlier in the natural sciences, were found applicable to management functions-planning, organizing and controlling of operations
19th century, Frederick W. Taylor proposed an application of a scientific method to an operations management problem- Productivity. Determined that the variable that was significant was the combined weight of the shovel (move) and its load.
Henry L. Gantt, devised a chart-to schedule production activities Classification

They can broadly be put under two groups
1) Statistical Techniques: Which are used in conducting the statistical inquiry concerning a certain