Introduction—Special Focus and Decision Support Systems (DSS)

The history of Operations Research has been intertwined with computation and decision making. If we examine the fundamental methodologies that have become associated with operations research, we see that each has resulted from the need to make decisions, and that many of them require considerable numerical computation to obtain results that can support decision makers. Notice the phrasing that is almost ingrained in the way we think of operations research work: support decision making. We do not, as a profession, claim that we are the decision makers but we believe the importance of our work comes from helping, or supporting decision makers, in making the best choice based on the information available.