Why are there so few O.R. case-studies in the literature?
From time to time, when people discovered that I taught a branch of mathematics, they would ask: "Was it pure maths, or applied maths?", no doubt thinking back to school maths lessons when these were the two prominent divisions of maths. Over the years, my replies to such questions were along the lines of: "Neither, I was teaching applicable maths." And then I had to explain a little more. Sometimes, I would add, a little mischievously, that I dealt with interesting maths. Now, I do not want to run down the applications of pure maths, nor of applied maths, but the applications of the maths of O.R. are often easy to explain, along with my interesting work with industry. And, part of the interest came from going on site visits to see people in industry or commerce who had problems to which O.R. could contribute.
On one such site visit, my student and I were taken on a walk down the production line. All was explained to us, and part way along, we were shown one machine. Our guide proudly told us that it had been invented in the factory, though it had some similarities to machines that can be found in many homes, only it had a capacity 20-30 times more. Naively, I asked if the company had a patent on it. The firm answer was that they didn't. To publish a patent would give away the ideas to a rival, and they needed to keep their developments of equipment confidential.
A few years later, I worked with an international company who had sponsored a postgraduate student. The company had an internal supervisor for the student, who spent a good deal of time in the head office. At the end of the project, the thesis was prepared. The company supervisor asked that the thesis be embargoed from being made public, once again for reasons of commercial confidentiality. I discussed it within the university, where such matters were well-known, though not very common. The university guidelines allowed for an embargo to last up to five years. The company were happy with that. For, they argued, after five years, the developments in this thesis will be part of our history - we will have moved on, so publication will allow our rivals to see where had been.
I never saw that project written up in the literature. First, because it would have been out-of-date when it went into the literature, and second, because there was so much in the work which was particular to the industry, that it would have lacked interest for non-specialists in that industry.
So that was one case-study which never appeared in the literature, and those were the reasons why. Maybe the student and I should have tried to find one part of the thesis which could be published without threatening the confidentiality. In these days of publish-or-perish in academic life, the luxury of supervising such a thesis is less likely to occur.
And, over the years, talking to practitioners, commercial concerns have often been cited as reasons for not publishing case-studies.
And there are other reasons; time is one - O.R. staff in industry are not paid to write for the literature; promotion is another - an industrial O.R. person will not gain promotion because they have published case-studies on the literature.
But it would still be nice to see more O.R. case-study material in print.
On one such site visit, my student and I were taken on a walk down the production line. All was explained to us, and part way along, we were shown one machine. Our guide proudly told us that it had been invented in the factory, though it had some similarities to machines that can be found in many homes, only it had a capacity 20-30 times more. Naively, I asked if the company had a patent on it. The firm answer was that they didn't. To publish a patent would give away the ideas to a rival, and they needed to keep their developments of equipment confidential.
A few years later, I worked with an international company who had sponsored a postgraduate student. The company had an internal supervisor for the student, who spent a good deal of time in the head office. At the end of the project, the thesis was prepared. The company supervisor asked that the thesis be embargoed from being made public, once again for reasons of commercial confidentiality. I discussed it within the university, where such matters were well-known, though not very common. The university guidelines allowed for an embargo to last up to five years. The company were happy with that. For, they argued, after five years, the developments in this thesis will be part of our history - we will have moved on, so publication will allow our rivals to see where had been.
I never saw that project written up in the literature. First, because it would have been out-of-date when it went into the literature, and second, because there was so much in the work which was particular to the industry, that it would have lacked interest for non-specialists in that industry.
So that was one case-study which never appeared in the literature, and those were the reasons why. Maybe the student and I should have tried to find one part of the thesis which could be published without threatening the confidentiality. In these days of publish-or-perish in academic life, the luxury of supervising such a thesis is less likely to occur.
And, over the years, talking to practitioners, commercial concerns have often been cited as reasons for not publishing case-studies.
And there are other reasons; time is one - O.R. staff in industry are not paid to write for the literature; promotion is another - an industrial O.R. person will not gain promotion because they have published case-studies on the literature.
But it would still be nice to see more O.R. case-study material in print.
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