A production system involves constant and numerous decisions that greatly impact its performance. The company must need to develop certain methods to help engineers to make the best choices when designing or using production systems. Such systems range from simple machine on a production line to a complete logistic platform with many interacting industrial partners. It entails that optimization is playing a key role for specific elements of these systems. A company must work at establishing the complexity of these problems before building models and dedicated solving methods relying on operations research.
Operations Research (O.R.) has been termed The Science of Better. The term Operations Research (OR) describes the discipline that is focused on the application of information technology for informed decision-making. In other words, OR represents the study of optimal resource allocation A problem in the real world is modelled, usually in mathematical terms, then mathematical techniques, together with data analysis and computational algorithms, are applied, in order to find ways to do the job better. The word Operations derives from the many successful applications of O.R. to military operations in the 1940s. But, since then, most O.R. applications have been to peaceful activities, especially to business management, of which planning industrial production, and scheduling airlines, and other transportation, have been prominent. The name Management Science denotes the same discipline, with some emphasis on business management. Practitioners of Operations Management will find many of these techniques relevant. The areas of Logistics, Supply Chain Management, Decision Sciences, and Manufacturing Management deal with similar applications. The goal of OR is to provide rational bases for decision making by seeking to understand and structure complex situations, and to utilize this understanding to predict system behavior and improve system