CORMSIS Seminar "Soft OR and Practice: The Contribution of the Founders of OR" - Robert Dyson; Frances O’Brien; Devan Shah Event
- Date:
- 25 March 2021
- Venue:
- Please email Huan Yu for a link to the virtual seminar
For more information regarding this event, please email Huan Yu at Huan.Yu@southampton.ac.uk .
Event details
In our talk we summarise our research into the work of some 43 Founders of operations research whose profiles were presented in a book by Assad & Gass in 2011 called ‘Profiles in Operations Research, Pioneers and Innovators’. In particular we consider the links between soft OR and these Founders. Several of the Founders were direct influencers of the soft OR proponents whilst others related to the context, process and content of soft OR. Coupled with the deductive and inductive reasoning approaches of soft OR, we argue that soft OR is a legitimate branch of OR. Our research also focused on the embeddedness of the Founders, and the soft OR proponents, in practice and argue that, for academics, engagement with practice has been and will continue to be an important driver for the health and development of operational research.
Speaker information
Robert Dyson, emeritus professor at Warwick Business School, the University of Warwick. He is a past president of the UK Operational Research Society and has researched into cutting stock problems, stochastic programming, strategic development and data envelopment analysis. He is an editor of the European Journal of Operational Research.
Frances O’Brien, an Associate Professor at Warwick Business School, the University of Warwick. She chairs the UK OR Society’s WORAN (Women in OR and Analytics) network and has researched into OR practice, scenario planning and strategic development.
Devan Shah, a Director of Broadway Group of Companies, manufacturers and distributors of fast-moving consumer goods in Kenya. He did an MSc in Business Analytics and Consulting at Warwick Business School, the University of Warwick, and took keen interest in Soft Operations Research and Practices on which he based his dissertation.