Computers and Operations Research: A Marriage for Growth

Rapid changes in both hardware and software computer technology pose many challenges to quantitative applications, and especially to operations research. Much of the future success of OR will depend on its ability to meet these challenges by marrying its approaches to computer technology and then using this enhanced capability to reach out to important new problem areas. To support the contention that OR is moving in these directions, as it must, this paper begins by reviewing computing progress to date as it relates to OR. Then it views three facets of the expansion of OR: university enrollments (and those on nonresident aliens in particular), application opportunities, and the dispersion of OR people in large organizations. The paper is an outgrowth of a plenary lecture at the May 1991 TIMS/ORSA meeting in Nashville.