In the United Kingdom, operations research is known as operational research; other English-speaking countries most often use the term “operations research” (OR). The idea of operations research started during World War II, when military planners in the United States and United Kingdom were searching for ways to make better decisions in the fields of logistics and training schedules. Unlike its origins, today’s applications in operations research have little to do with its traditional sense. In other words, it’s not applied to the battlefield, but to logistical, scheduling, and other such decisions in industry.