Sub-Optimization in Operations Problems

Charles Hitch
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Charles Hitch: The RAND Corporation

Operations Research, 1953, vol. 1, issue 3, 87-99

Abstract: The validity and therefore the usefulness of operations research depend upon the skill with which projects are designed and particularly upon the shrewdness with which criteria (“payoffs,” “objectives functions”) are selected. The criterion problem has been relatively neglected in operations research literature, and has apparently usually been “solved” in practice by assuming the first plausible payoff function which springs to mind; or if several spring to mind, by trying all and compromising (or letting a commander compromise) among the results of alternative computations. The problem is much too important for such casual treatment. Calculating quantitative solutions using the wrong criteria is equivalent to answering the wrong questions. Unless operations research develops methods of evaluating criteria and choosing good ones, its quantitative methods may prove worse than useless to its clients in its new applications in government and industry. Operations Research , ISSN 0030-364X, was published as Journal of the Operations Research Society of America from 1952 to 1955 under ISSN 0096-3984.

Date: 1953
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