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MANAGEMENT SCIENCE APPLICATIONS 5

countries. This development was in part facilitated by the huge explosion in
computing facilities and computer power. In the twenty-first-century management
science techniques are now a standard part of popular computer software, such as
Excel, and management science techniques are routinely taught across university
business and management programmes. Many countries now have their own
professional society for management scientists with the International Federation
of Operational Research Societies (IFORS) acting as an umbrella organization
IFORS was founded in comprising the national management science societies of over forty five countries
1959 with a total combined membership of over 25 000. Welcome to the club!

1.3 Management Science Applications

At this stage it will be worthwhile providing an overview of some of the decision
areas where MS is applied. Later on in the chapter, we shall examine the more
common management science techniques that are applied across these application
areas and that we shall be developing in detail through the text.

Assignment

Assignment problems arise in business where someone has to assign resources or
assets (like people, vehicles, aeroplanes) to specific tasks and where we want to do this
to minimize the costs involved or to maximize the return or profit we earn. A simple
example of this situation arises when an ambulance depot has a given number of
emergency ambulances available throughout the day. Based on past experience it
expects a number of emergency calls throughout the day to which it has to respond
swiftly. Each of its ambulances has a dedicated crew but the crews have differing
expertise and experience. The depot has to decide which individual ambulance to
assign to each emergency call. It may try to do this to minimize the time taken to
reach the location or to minimize the travel distance covered, or to send the ‘best’
crew to each type of emergency call. Whilst assignment problems often look simple,
in real life they can be extremely complex and difficult to get right. Examples of
assignment problems include: assigning referees to World Cup soccer matches;
assigning students to classes; assigning airline crews to aircraft; assigning surgical
teams to patients; assigning construction equipment to different construction proj-
ects. Management science has developed special techniques to help formulate and
solve such assignment problems.

Data Mining

Largely because of the technology now available, many organizations are collecting
large volumes of data about sales, customers, spending patterns, lifestyles and the
like. Think about what happens when you use your credit card to buy groceries at
the supermarket. The supermarket knows what you’ve bought (and can track trends
in your purchases over time); the supermarket’s suppliers know which products are
selling and which are not; your bank knows your spending profile across the year.
Used smartly, this data can allow organizations to understand better what is happen-
ing and to tailor and adapt their strategies, products and services accordingly. The
supermarket can send you details of special offers on the items you normally buy (or
perhaps on the ones that you don’t buy); your bank knows when you might need a
loan. Data mining is concerned with sifting through large amounts of data and
identifying and analyzing relevant information. Historically, its use has been con-
centrated on business intelligence and in the financial sector, although its use is

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