Operations research at Melbourne

The discipline of Operations Research (OR) provides a scientific approach to decision-making. Also known as Management Science or Logistics, OR involves formulating mathematical models of decision-making problems and developing or applying mathematical tools to obtain solutions.

Many businesses and all large complex organisations face difficult decisions on a daily basis, which interact with each other and may have complex repercussions that are difficult to evaluate. The mathematical techniques used in OR are drawn from areas of mathematics such as Optimisation, Optimal Control and Probability and Statistics.

Optimisation, which is concerned with the mathematical problem of minimising or maximising a function or functions subject to constraints, plays a particularly important role since the objective of many decision making problems is to determine the minimum or maximum out of a set of alternatives – for example, a production company wishing to minimise its transportation costs and maximise its workers' job satisfaction.