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ASP, the art and science of practice: direct advisors vs. tool developers--implications for practice.

Article Excerpt
The operations research market may be shifting from the direct provision of advice to clients to the development of tools that clients can use themselves. Driving this change is the commodification of information processing. Practitioners will find new opportunities in providing the expert software components within decision-support systems.

Key words: decision analysis: systems; professional: OR/MS implementation.

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"Experience has shown that successful use of such [operations research] personnel ... requires (a) that the officer to whom they are detailed definitely wants them; (b) that they be allowed access to such information as they may need for their work; (c) that they be allowed reasonable freedom as to the way in which they do their work; and (d) that they be responsible to the Commanding Officer and make their reports and recommendations to him, distribution of such reports within and beyond the Command to be subject to his approval." Vannevar Bush, 1943 (quoted in Baxter 1968, pp. 410-411). [Italics added.]

"The relation between the scientists and Staff was one of almost unblemished cooperation and trust. If this had failed on either side, ... it would have been impossible. If the scientists had not been taken completely into the Commander-in-Chief's confidence, if they had not sat in at his most professional and confidential conferences but had been fobbed off at lower level discussions, they would have learnt only too late of the importance of many of the subjects to which they made contributions of some value.... " (Waddington 1973, p. 246) [Italics added.]

"OA [Operations Analysis] can contribute to the planning and decision processes in all parts of the HQ and hence analysts need a degree of freedom to work across the HQ. In general, the OA should be responsible to a single senior individual as high up the command chain as possible. There are good examples of OA cells formally reporting to the Chief of Staff (COS) of an HQ, even if the specific tasks may have originated within branches (logistics, planning, engineers, etc.)." (RTO Studies 2004, p. 2.3) [Italics added.]

Operations research (OR) practitioners can and do take considerable pride in the historical accomplishments in the field. Underpinning this success has been the practitioner's position close to the center of influence, be this in the headquarters reporting to the commander (but not bound by rank) (Baxter 1968, Waddington 1973), or in business reporting to the chief executive officer (O'Shea and Madigan 1997). With proximity to the client being axiomatic, the idea that OR practitioners could lose such proximity will be unpopular and worth considering all the more for it.

The market for OR is undergoing a subtle yet fundamental shift, from directly advising clients to developing tools that clients can use on their own. The driver of this change is the commodification of information processing and hence the ability to build expert OR into software. In the future, OR practitioners might continue to be close advisors to decision makers, but the growth opportunities will lie in influencing and aiding the construction of computerized decision support systems. (In the following discussion, I use language and concepts from the military practice of OR, but I believe the observations to...