Operations Research and Operations Management: from Selective Optimization to System Optimization

ORIGINS OF OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT AND OPERATIONS RESEARCH comparison of the origins of operations management and operations research reveals that both are an innovation of the 20th century. The origin of operations research was in England, circa 1937, and has its roots in scientific management, with its first significant applications to military operations in both World War I and World War II. Operations management had its origins in the early factory system, and was more associated with physical production in a factory environment and it too was strongly influenced by the scientific method. (Chase, Aquilano and Jacobs, 2001). Operations management however, by way of distinction, is more commonly applied to the management of organizational resources in terms of both effectiveness and efficiency and has equal application in the service sector as well as the manufacturing sector. Both OR and OM are mathematically oriented, utilize the scientific method, and produce information output for managerial decision making.
CONCEPTUAL/PHILOSOPHICAL BRIEF DISCUSSION
At the conceptual or philosophical level, OM and OR differ substantially. OM is mainly concerned with the managing of production resources critical to strategic growth and competitiveness of a company or organization. It entails the design, operation, control, and updating of systems responsible for the productive use of human resources, equipment, and facilities in the development of a product or a service (Chase, Aquilano, Jacobs, 2001). Philosophically, therefore, OM is managerially and activity oriented while OR is mainly technique and mathematically oriented involving modeling a situation or a problem and finding an optimal solution for it (Anderson, Sweeney, Williams, 2002).
Decision support models of OR and OM are frequently utilized on an ad hoc basis. This may be true more so for OR than OM models, since OM models tend to be integrated into functional areas of the organization such as in statistical