Savita Mishra decodes Operations Research in a lucid language

This book will interest readers from different streams, be it science or commerce, and in fact this book is a handy guide for professionals in various industries.

Every industry has its own share of problems and OR is a multidisciplinary and analytical technique that can be used to assess any problem in the company and derive mathematical models of the solutions.

Such models are made only after proper evaluation of the scope of the problem, the available resources, and the limitations.

The technique of OR was developed by none other than the revered scientist Archimedes during a military war and since then this technique has evolved and become stronger.

Now it finds application in multiple fields like manufacturing, transportation, telecommunication, financial planning, public services, health care, and military operations.

When the scale of a particular company increases, the scale of the problems increases along with it. And if a single person tries to find out a solution that solution may suffer from human errors or from lack of some personal judgements.

In order to overcome such errors that can lead to massive losses, OR is being increasingly used by the professionals these days.

This methodology helps to come up with a solution that is comprehensive, viable, and effective. Using such scientific methods to solve tricky situations can only lead to the development of the company as a whole.

This book gives us a detailed idea about this method of OR—about its origin, its significance, its applications, and most importantly about the various stages involved in this elaborate process.

OR is done in four significant steps—definition of the problem, model construction, model solution, and implementation of the solution derived from the proposed model.

Now each of these four steps also has their own features.

Since OR is an interdisciplinary subject, techniques like Linear Programming, Waiting Line or Queuing Theory, Game Theory, Inventory Control Models, Simulation, Non-linear programming, Integer Programming, Dynamic Programming, etc. are used commonly.

This book is divided into various chapters and in each chapter the author has discussed an important aspect of the OR technique.

The best feature of this book is that it can be read by people from any academic background. No one will have any problem in grasping the basic ideas of OR after reading this book.

It has been written in a very lucid and comprehensive way.

Another important thing is that even if someone who has no idea about OR reads the introduction, they will understand the significance of OR and will definitely want to know more about this very relevant topic.

Also, the subsequent chapters contain various problems and their detailed solutions.

In short, this book is on a very specialized topic and yet it will appeal to people across disciplines.

(Reviewed by Priya Das)