IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/pal/jorsoc/v61y2010i1d10.1057_jors.2009.141.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Why modelling and model use matter

Author

Listed:
  • M Pidd

    (Lancaster University Management School)

Abstract

When OR/MS analysts develop a model, how are they intending this model to be used? There are many different ways in which OR/MS models may be classified and one important categorisation is the intended use of the model. Some models are intended for routine use on a frequent basis, with little or no human intervention. Others form part of human decision process and provide support to that process. Considering model validation, data requirements, added value and possible pitfalls leads to a theory of model use based on four categories: decision automation, routine decision support, investigation and improvement, and generating insights for debate. A pilot investigation in an OR/MS group demonstrates that this categorisation could provide the basis for empirical research into a theory of model use in operational research. A theory of model use would be of value to academics, who could prioritise their work, and to practitioners, who could place their own work in a broader landscape.

Suggested Citation

  • M Pidd, 2010. "Why modelling and model use matter," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 61(1), pages 14-24, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:jorsoc:v:61:y:2010:i:1:d:10.1057_jors.2009.141
    DOI: 10.1057/jors.2009.141
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1057/jors.2009.141
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1057/jors.2009.141?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. M M Günal & S Onggo & M Pidd, 2008. "Improving police control rooms using simulation," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 59(2), pages 171-181, February.
    2. Guillermo Gallego & Garrett van Ryzin, 1994. "Optimal Dynamic Pricing of Inventories with Stochastic Demand over Finite Horizons," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 40(8), pages 999-1020, August.
    3. Salhi, Said & Rand, Graham K., 1989. "The effect of ignoring routes when locating depots," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 150-156, March.
    4. Gabriel Bitran & René Caldentey, 2003. "An Overview of Pricing Models for Revenue Management," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 5(3), pages 203-229, August.
    5. S Robinson, 2001. "Soft with a hard centre: discrete-event simulation in facilitation," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 52(8), pages 905-915, August.
    6. K Chelst & S E Bodily, 2000. "Structured risk management: filling a gap in decision analysis education," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 51(12), pages 1420-1432, December.
    7. Wiles, Peter G. & van Brunt, Bruce, 2001. "Optimal location of transshipment depots," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 35(8), pages 745-771, September.
    8. A Fletcher & D Halsall & S Huxham & D Worthington, 2007. "The DH Accident and Emergency Department model: a national generic model used locally," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 58(12), pages 1554-1562, December.
    9. George B. Kleindorfer & Liam O'Neill & Ram Ganeshan, 1998. "Validation in Simulation: Various Positions in the Philosophy of Science," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 44(8), pages 1087-1099, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gregory, Amanda J. & Atkins, Jonathan P. & Burdon, Daryl & Elliott, Michael, 2013. "A problem structuring method for ecosystem-based management: The DPSIR modelling process," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 227(3), pages 558-569.
    2. Alberto Franco, L., 2013. "Rethinking Soft OR interventions: Models as boundary objects," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 231(3), pages 720-733.
    3. Shahab Shoar & Nicholas Chileshe, 2021. "Exploring the Causes of Design Changes in Building Construction Projects: An Interpretive Structural Modeling Approach," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(17), pages 1-23, August.
    4. Janová, Jitka & Hampel, David & Nerudová, Danuše, 2019. "Design and validation of a tax sustainability index," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 278(3), pages 916-926.
    5. Lund, Henrik & Mathiesen, Brian Vad, 2012. "The role of Carbon Capture and Storage in a future sustainable energy system," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 44(1), pages 469-476.
    6. Maria Ljunggren Söderman & Ola Eriksson & Anna Björklund & Göran Östblom & Tomas Ekvall & Göran Finnveden & Yevgeniya Arushanyan & Jan-Olov Sundqvist, 2016. "Integrated Economic and Environmental Assessment of Waste Policy Instruments," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(5), pages 1-21, April.
    7. Keshtkaran, Mahsa & Churilov, Leonid & Hearne, John & Abbasi, Babak & Meretoja, Atte, 2016. "Validation of a decision support model for investigation and improvement in stroke thrombolysis," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 253(1), pages 154-169.
    8. Stephan Onggo & Michael Pidd & Didier Soopramanien & Dave Worthington, 2010. "Simulation of Career Development in the European Commission," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 40(3), pages 184-195, June.
    9. Gogi, Anastasia & Tako, Antuela A. & Robinson, Stewart, 2016. "An experimental investigation into the role of simulation models in generating insights," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 249(3), pages 931-944.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Schulte, Benedikt & Sachs, Anna-Lena, 2020. "The price-setting newsvendor with Poisson demand," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 283(1), pages 125-137.
    2. Dasci, A. & Karakul, M., 2009. "Two-period dynamic versus fixed-ratio pricing in a capacity constrained duopoly," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 197(3), pages 945-968, September.
    3. Yiwei Chen & Vivek F. Farias, 2013. "Simple Policies for Dynamic Pricing with Imperfect Forecasts," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 61(3), pages 612-624, June.
    4. Yuri Levin & Jeff McGill & Mikhail Nediak, 2008. "Risk in Revenue Management and Dynamic Pricing," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 56(2), pages 326-343, April.
    5. Adam J. Mersereau & Dan Zhang, 2012. "Markdown Pricing with Unknown Fraction of Strategic Customers," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 14(3), pages 355-370, July.
    6. Talebian, Masoud & Boland, Natashia & Savelsbergh, Martin, 2014. "Pricing to accelerate demand learning in dynamic assortment planning for perishable products," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 237(2), pages 555-565.
    7. Sabri Çelik & Alp Muharremoglu & Sergei Savin, 2009. "Revenue Management with Costly Price Adjustments," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 57(5), pages 1206-1219, October.
    8. Lingxiu Dong & Panos Kouvelis & Zhongjun Tian, 2009. "Dynamic Pricing and Inventory Control of Substitute Products," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 11(2), pages 317-339, December.
    9. Wei Shi Lim, 2009. "Overselling in a Competitive Environment: Boon or Bane?," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 28(6), pages 1129-1143, 11-12.
    10. Goker Aydin & Serhan Ziya, 2008. "Pricing Promotional Products Under Upselling," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 10(3), pages 360-376, June.
    11. Jin Qin & Wenxuan Qu & Xuanke Wu & Yijia Zeng, 2019. "Differential Pricing Strategies of High Speed Railway Based on Prospect Theory: An Empirical Study from China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(14), pages 1-17, July.
    12. Graziano Abrate & Giampaolo Viglia & Javier Sanchez García & Santiago Forgas-Coll, 2016. "Price Competition within and between Airlines and High-Speed Trains: The Case of the Milan—Rome Route," Tourism Economics, , vol. 22(2), pages 311-323, April.
    13. Christian Borgs & Ozan Candogan & Jennifer Chayes & Ilan Lobel & Hamid Nazerzadeh, 2014. "Optimal Multiperiod Pricing with Service Guarantees," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(7), pages 1792-1811, July.
    14. Christopher S. Tang, 2017. "OM Forum—Three Simple Approaches for Young Scholars to Identify Relevant and Novel Research Topics in Operations Management," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 19(3), pages 338-346, July.
    15. Nathan C. Craig & Ananth Raman, 2016. "Improving Store Liquidation," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 18(1), pages 89-103, February.
    16. Athanassios N. Avramidis & Arnoud V. Boer, 2021. "Dynamic pricing with finite price sets: a non-parametric approach," Mathematical Methods of Operations Research, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research (GOR);Nederlands Genootschap voor Besliskunde (NGB), vol. 94(1), pages 1-34, August.
    17. Helmes, Kurt L. & Schlosser, Rainer, 2013. "Dynamic advertising and pricing with constant demand elasticities," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 37(12), pages 2814-2832.
    18. Omar Besbes & Assaf Zeevi, 2009. "Dynamic Pricing Without Knowing the Demand Function: Risk Bounds and Near-Optimal Algorithms," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 57(6), pages 1407-1420, December.
    19. Pavithra Harsha & Shivaram Subramanian & Joline Uichanco, 2019. "Dynamic Pricing of Omnichannel Inventories," Service Science, INFORMS, vol. 21(1), pages 47-65, January.
    20. Athanassios N. Avramidis, 2020. "A pricing problem with unknown arrival rate and price sensitivity," Mathematical Methods of Operations Research, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research (GOR);Nederlands Genootschap voor Besliskunde (NGB), vol. 92(1), pages 77-106, August.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:jorsoc:v:61:y:2010:i:1:d:10.1057_jors.2009.141. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.