Forces, Trends, and Opportunities in MS/OR

The purposes of this paper—a revised and extended version of the Omega Rho Lecture given at the November 1991 ORSA/TIMS Joint National Meeting—are to assess some important aspects of the current MS/OR situation and to draw some conclusions about desirable future emphases. To these ends, it identifies and discusses four forces of historic importance (the microcomputer and communications revolutions, the dispersion of MS/OR in industry, and academia's unbalanced reward structure), three major trends (rapidly disseminating MS/OR tools, declining enrollments of native-born students, and persisting management apathy toward MS/OR), and five outstanding opportunities (ride the computer and communications revolutions, support dispersed practitioners, focus on the service sector, stress embedded applications, and go into the quality business). An underlying theme is that the field will flourish in proportion to how astutely individuals, organizations, professional societies, and universities adapt to the changing realities within which MS/OR lives.