Operational Research - Essay Example

The numerous techniques of operations research include mathematical optimization, statistical analysis and mathematical simulation. Because of their capability to assist in decision making, operations research techniques are more often employed in manufacturing companies. These techniques have been employed to determine the most suitable places to locate new facilities such as a factory or a warehouse, identifying appropriate development paths for sections of the telecommunications. One of the most applied operations research techniques is linear programming.

The use of linear programming was first proposed in 1951 to institute least-cost mixtures of livestock rations and food stuffs. This linear program reduces the expense of the mixture while some identified levels of nutritional necessities symbolize the model’s constraints. Additionally, in 1954, linear programming was proposed as a way of solving crop rotation problems (Hayashi, 2007: 21). In this case, the objective function symbolizes the gross margin linked to the cropping pattern while constraints link to the accessibility of capital such as land, machinery, and working capital.

The idea of the use of linear programming has been used extensively in planning and managing agricultural resources on a farm. Extension of linear programming engross binary and integer platforms for applications in which it is not reasonable to allocate incessant values to the decision variables, for instance, the number of tractors and labour workers. The inter-temporality essential to many agricultural resolutions, particularly those entailing perennial crops, has necessitated the use of multi-period models.

Risk and uncertainty calls for methods such as dynamic programming, Markov chains and Monte Carlo Simulation (Cheema, 2005: 43). Brazil is a huge producer of sugarcane, alcohol fuel and sugar. In order to keep the production