Operations Research

Operations Research (OR) is a research area focusing on "decision-making techniques" based on scientific "analysis."

Overview of Operations Research
Operations Research (OR) is a research area to develop reasonable "decision-making techniques" to solve problems and establish strategies by means of scientific "analysis," including mathematical methodologies.

Various themes are included, for example,
 * "How can we know the most efficient route through which we can visit multiple cities?"
 * "How can we find a way to determine the rank of the new brand?"
 * "What is the way of design that can make all triangles that are formed by the iron frames of the iron bridge identical?"

Application of Operations Research to BPM
A wide range of decision making should be supported in Business Process Management (BPM). They are often themes of Operations Research.


 * "How to determine the optimal execution order of tasks (activities), including simultaneous parallel execution (Flow Model)"
 * "How to determine the optimal manpower planning of each task (activity) (Organization Model)"
 * "How to determine the assignment of work items to each participant"
 * "What a way to identify improvements of the entire process model is"
 * "What a way to minimize the retention in the process is"

Each problem has various "evaluations" and "constraints," and it is not easy to find the solution and knowledge. Thus, quantitative measurements are important in each problem to find reasonable "decision-making techniques."

History of Operations Research

 * 1948: George B. Dantzig published Linear Programming.
 * 1951: David G. Kendall published Queuing Theory.
 * 1952: Richard Bellman published Dynamic Programming.
 * 1957: The Operations Research Society of Japan was founded. (June)

Related Article

 * BPM
 * Process
 * Process Model