Historical origins
In the 19th century, mathematicians such as Christiaan Huygens and Blaise Pascal (addressing the interrupted game problem) attempted to solve questions related to complex decisions by using probability calculus. Other mathematicians of the 18th and 19th centuries solved these types of problems using combinatorics. Charles Babbage's research into the cost of transportation and mail sorting led to England's universal "Penny Post" in 1840, and studies into the dynamic behavior of railway vehicles in defense of the gauge of the GWR.[10] Beginning in the 19th century, the study of inventory management could be considered the origin of modern operations research with the concept of economic order quantity developed by Ford W. Harris in 1913. Operations research may have originated in the efforts of military planners during World War I (convoy theory and Lanchester's Laws). Percy Williams Bridgman brought operations research to the problems of physics in the 1920s and would later try to extend them to the social sciences.[11].
Modern operational research originated at the Bawdsey Research Establishment in the United Kingdom in 1937 and was the result of an initiative by the establishment's superintendent, A. P. Rowe, who conceived the idea as a means of analyzing and improving the operation of the United Kingdom's proposed radar early warning system and its network of facilities (Chain Home) (CH). Initially, it analyzed the operation of radar equipment and its communication networks, later expanding to include the behavior of operational personnel. This revealed unappreciated limitations of the CH network and allowed corrective action to be taken.[12].
Scientists in the United Kingdom, including Patrick Blackett, Cecil Gordon, Solly Zuckerman, C. H. Waddington, Owen Wansbrough-Jones), Frank Yates, Jacob Bronowski and Freeman Dyson, and in the United States with George Dantzig looked for ways to make better decisions in areas such as logistics and training schedules.
Second World War
The modern field of operations research emerged during World War II. In this period, operations research was defined as "a scientific method of providing executive departments with a quantitative basis for making decisions about operations under their control."[13] The activity was also known as operational analysis (UK Ministry of Defense since 1962)[14] and quantitative management.[15]
During the Second World War, around 1,000 men and women participated in operational research in Britain, and around 200 scientists worked in this field for the British Army.[16].
Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett worked for several different organizations during the war. Early in the conflict, while working for the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE), he created a team known as the "Circus", which helped reduce the number of air defense rounds required to shoot down an enemy aircraft from an average of over 20,000 at the start of the Battle of Britain to 4,000 in 1941.[17]
In 1941, Blackett moved from the RAE to the Navy, having worked first with the RAF Coastal Command in 1941 and then in early 1942 with the British Admiralty. Blackett's team at the Coastal Command Operational Research Section (CC-ORS) included two future Nobel Prize winners and many others who went on to become leading figures in their fields. They led to carried out a series of crucial analyzes that contributed to the war effort. Britain introduced the convoy system to reduce cargo ship losses, but while the principle of using warships to accompany merchant ships was accepted, it was not clear whether it was better for convoys to be small or large. Convoys travel at the speed of the slowest member, so small convoys can travel faster. It was also argued that German U-Boats would be more difficult for small convoys to detect. On the other hand, large convoys could deploy more warships against an attacker. Blackett's staff showed that losses suffered by convoys depended largely on the number of escort vessels present, rather than the size of the convoy. Their conclusion was that some large convoys are more defensible than many small ones.[20].
When conducting an analysis of the methods used by the RAF Coastal Command to hunt and destroy submarines, one of the analysts asked what color the planes were. As most of them were from Bomber Command, they were painted black for night operations. At the suggestion of CC-ORS, a test was conducted to see if that was the best color to camouflage the aircraft for daytime operations in the gray skies of the North Atlantic. Tests showed that, on average, white-painted planes were not seen until they were 20% closer than black-painted ones. This change indicated that 30% more submarines would be attacked and sunk with the same number of sightings.[21] As a result of these findings, Coastal Command changed its aircraft to use white undersides.
Other work conducted by the CC-ORS indicated that, on average, if the firing depth of depth charges were changed from 100 feet to 25 feet, effectiveness rates would go up. The reason was that if a U-boat saw an aircraft shortly before it reached the target, the charges would do no harm by exploding at 100 feet (because the U-boat would not have had time to descend to that depth) and if it saw the aircraft from very far from the target, it had time to alter its course underwater, so the chances of it being within the 20-foot impact zone of the charges were small. It was more efficient to attack submarines near the surface when the locations of targets were better known than to attempt to destroy them at greater depths when their positions could only be guessed. Before the configuration change from 100 feet to 25 feet, 1% of submerged submarines were sunk and 14% were damaged. After the change, 7% were sunk and 11% damaged (if you count submarines captured on the surface, even if they were attacked shortly after submerging, the numbers increased to 11% sunk and 15% damaged). Blackett observed that "there can be few cases in which so large an operational gain has been made by so small and simple a change of tactics".[22]
The Bomber Command Operational Research Section (BC-ORS) analyzed a report from a survey carried out by RAF Bomber Command. For the survey, they inspected all bombers returning from missions over Germany during a particular period. All damage caused by the German air defense was noted and it was recommended that armor be added to the most damaged areas. This recommendation was not adopted due to the fact that the aircraft returned with these damaged areas. It indicated that these areas were not vital, and adding armor to non-vital areas where damage is acceptable negatively affects aircraft performance. Their suggestion to remove some crew members so that the loss of an aircraft would result in lower personnel losses was also rejected. Blackett's team made the logical recommendation to place armor in areas that were completely intact from the damage on returning bombers. They reasoned that the data collection was biased, as it only included aircraft that returned to Gran. Brittany. The intact areas of the returned aircraft were probably the vital points that, if damaged, would result in the loss of the aircraft.[23]
[24] A similar story is cited about a similar damage assessment study completed in the United States by the Statistical Research Group at Columbia University.[25] and was the result of work done by Abraham Wald.[26].
When Germany organized its air defenses on the Kammhuber Line, the British realized that if RAF bombers flew in a tight linear formation they could overwhelm German night fighters flying singly, directed to their targets by ground controllers. It was then a matter of statistically calculating the losses caused by collisions between the bombers versus the losses caused by the night fighters to determine the separation at which the bombers should fly to minimize RAF losses.[27]
The ratio of the rate of change of output to input was a characteristic feature of operations research. By comparing the number of flight hours of Allied aircraft with the number of submarine sightings in a given area, it was possible to redeploy aircraft to more productive patrol areas. The comparison of these rates made it possible to establish "effectiveness ratios" useful in planning. The ratio of 60 sea mines laid per ship sunk was common to several campaigns: German mines in British ports, British mines on German routes, and United States mines on Japanese routes.[28]
Operational research doubled the bombing hit rate of the Boeing B-29 Superfortresses attacking Japan from the Mariana Islands by increasing the proportion of training from 4 to 10 percent of flight hours; revealed that the wolf packs of three US submarines were the most effective number; showed that gloss enamel paint was a more effective camouflage for night fighters than the traditional dull camouflage paint finish, and that the smooth finish of the paint increased the speed of aircraft by reducing the friction of the fuselages with the air.[28].
On the ground, operational research sections of the Army Operational Research Group (AORG) of the Ministry of Supply (MoS) were deployed to the Battle of Normandy in 1944, and followed British forces as they advanced into central Europe. They analyzed, among other topics, the effectiveness of artillery, aerial bombardment and anti-tank fire.