Operations research aims to assist managers faced with problems of coordinating activities; improving the quality of care of services delivered; making optimal resource allocation decisions and generally, managing services and institutions. Operations research (or O.R.) was originally developed in response to the problems of the second World War. It was characterised then by a unifying and clear objective; clear problems that had to be solved and the use of inter-disciplinary teams to analyse and solve identified problems. This analysis often drew on mathematical techniques. After the war,...