Operations Research and the Management Consultant

The genesis of management consulting is somewhat obscured in the mists of time. However, the profession's written history begins with the work of Frederick W. Taylor, Henry L. Gantt, Emerson, and other pioneers of scientific management, who began their work around 1885. At that time they formulated the doctrine that scientific methods of analysis and measurement could and should be used in matters of production, and that wherever possible, business decisions should be based on facts rather than on somebody's intuition or emotional reaction. The original emphasis was on work in the production area, since here facts could be readily accumulated, experiments executed and results followed within a limited area of observation.

Operations Research, ISSN 0030-364X, was published as Journal of the Operations Research Society of America from 1952 to 1955 under ISSN 0096-3984.