The Last Mohicans of OR: OR, it Might Be in the “Genes”

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Abstract
The recent exchange of opinions among Byrd [Byrd, J., Jr. 1978. The value of queueing theory. Interfaces 8 (3) 22–26.], Kolesar [Kolesar, P. 1979. A quick and dirty response to the quick and dirty crowd: Particularly to Jack Byrd's ‘The value of queueing theory’. Interfaces 9 (2) 77–82.], and Vazsonyi [Vazsonyi, A. 1979. To queue or not to queue: A rejoinder. Interfaces 9 (2) 83–86.], although apparently significant and undoubtedly intense, deals only with the symptoms and not with the causes of a deeply felt crisis of identity emerging within the Operations Research and Management Sciences community. Queueing theory and its applications has played the role of an unfortunate scapegoat for the real issue: OR/MS is being challenged and its usefulness in modern society is questioned. One of the most serious and also most merciless challenges to OR/MS comes from one of its “founding fathers,” Russell Ackoff [Ackoff, R. L. 1979. The future of operational research is past. J. Oper. Res. Soc. 30 (2) 93–104.]. It is the issue of OR/MS as a whole, not queueing theory, which should be debated on the pages of Interfaces. Ackoff declares: American Operations Research is dead even though it has yet to be buried.

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