The Blackett Memorial Lecture 18 November 1997

It is argued that movement toward the ‘control’ aspects of management should be effected to expand OR/MS activities beyond their present (almost exclusive) emphasis on ‘planning’ functions. This will involve increasing the amount of empirical-inferential approaches to research (based on ex-post data) as one way to help bring this about. Examples of such empirical-inferential research activities in OR/MS are supplied by reference to the early (founding) work of PMS Blackett and others on high-level policy problems during World War II. Extensions to the control function are evidenced in the work of Robert Fetter and others in the development of Diagnostic Related Groups on which the Prospective Payment Systems are based with large and important impacts on the health care delivery systems in the USA as well as other countries. Other examples covered include the use of OR concepts in the early ‘turnaround’ of Federal Express from failure to success. Other new methods will nevertheless be needed to extend and improve presently available OR/MS approaches. Some of these possibilities are illustrated with Data Envelopment Analysis. Ways to combine DEA with commonly used statistical methods are described to show how new and old methods may be combined to further enhance their power and range. Similar relations of DEA to other OR/MS approaches are now being studied, some of which are presently occurring with ‘fuzzy sets’ and ‘multiple objective programming.’