The technical material has been simplified, but not at the risk of distortion. In a clear and straight-forward manner, the book presents a general coverage of such topics as inventory, linear programming, waiting line, replacement, competitive and other mathematical methods useful in O.R.
Each method and model is illustrated by an interesting and lucid case example to point up the important implications of O.R. in business and industry. Emphasis is on the importance of defining management problems in terms of objectives and on the importance of administration of O.R.
Here one of the originators of systems analysis, himself a leading practitioner who has applied the systems approach in fields as varied as education, city planning, public health, and management, argues forcefully that the critics—at least some of them—have a point: there are approaches to human affairs which, although not “rational,” are nonetheless powerful and indeed desirable keys to understanding human experience. Too often, Professor Churchman concedes, such ultimate realities are ignored, with the result that planning efforts are sterile, unsatisfying, and irrelevant. Drawing on his own experience as both thinker and planner, he shows, as few have done before, that until planners learn to stand back and consider the purpose of their designs from the broadest nonplanning point of view, those designs will continue to be both “inhuman” and largely unimplemented.