Editorial: Operational Research – Making an Impact

The origins of Operational Research are well known. OR developed – in particular in the UK - in the early 1940s as an area in which science was applied and new research inspired by real-world challenges, primarily in military analysis and in industrial production. As OR developed, a community of academic OR scholars became established alongside OR practitioners and this has led quite naturally to the situation that, over time, much of the OR academic literature is inspired by theoretical development rather than by immediate application.