OR Resources
A Brief History of Modern Naval Operations Analysis
Modern Naval Operations Analysis had its beginings during World War II, with the work of the U.S. Navy Antisubmarine Warfare Operations Research Group (ASWORG) at MIT, which was later renamed the Operations Evaluation Group (OEG) after expanding its studies to include strategic mining, anti-air warfare and other areas of naval warfare. Much of this early work in Naval OR is captured in two excellent books; the Methods of Operations Research (originally OEG Report 54) and Search and Screening (originally OEG Report 56). These two fundamental Naval OR resources were re-published by MORS in the late 1990's.
- Methods of Operations Research, by Philip M. Morse and George E. Kimball, 1951, MORS reprinting 1998.
- Search and Screening, by Bernard O. Koopman, revised edition, 1980, MORS reprinting 1999.
The history of ASWORG and OEG is captured in the excellent historical account of Keith Tidman.
- Operations Evaluation Group: A History of Naval Operations Analysis, by Keith R. Tidman, U.S. Naval Institute Press, 1984.
The following is a brief downsampling of some of the more important events in modern Naval Operations Research History, starting with the establishment of ASWORG. Much of this material was first published in the October 2002 issue of OR/MS Today on the 50th anniverasry of the founding of the Operations Research Society of America (ORSA).
| Year | Key Operations Research Event |
| 1942 | U.S. Navy Antisubmarine Warfare Operations Research Group (ASWORG) established. |
| 1942 | Initial search theory concepts developed; Morse, Rinehart, Koopman and Kimball |
| 1945 | U.S. Navy Operations Evaluation Group (OEG) established. |
| 1946 | Methods of Operations Research, by Philip M. Morse and George E. Kimball |
| 1947 | Linear programming model developed; Dantzig |
| 1947 | Linear programming simplex method developed; Dantzig |
| 1948 | The RAND Corporation established |
| 1948 | First Operations Research course offered at MIT |
| 1949 | First Monte Carlo simulation, Ulam, von Neumann |
| 1950 | First simulation/wargames conducted |
| 1950 | First solution of the Transportation Problem on a computer; National Bureau of Standards |
| 1951 | Nonlinear programming method developed; Kuhn and Tucker |
| 1951 | Application of the Simplex Method to a Transportation Problem; Dantzig |
| 1951 | Naval Postgraduate School OR Department Established |
| 1955 | Traveling Salesman problem definition; Flood |
| 1956 | Quadratic programming defined; Frank and Wolfe |
| 1957 | Dynamic programming defined; Bellman |
| 1958 | Queues, Inventory and Maintenance published; Morse |
| 1960 | Decision Trees |
| 1960 | Vehicle Traffic Science; Herman, Gazis, Newell and Prigogine |
| 1962 | Center for Naval Analyses established |
| 1963 | Linear Programming and Extensions; Dantzig |
| 1965 | Complexity Theory, NP-Complete; Edmonds and Karp |
| 1971 | ORSA's Journal OR/SA Today established |
| 1978 | Lagangian Relaxation; Geoffrion |
| 1979 | Ellipsoid Method; Khachian |
| 1982 | Simulated Annealing; Metropolis |
| 1984 | Neural Networks; Hopfield |
| 1990 | Geographic information systems |
| 1995 | Data mining |
