The facets of the modeling and valiation process in operations research

The present paper suggests a way of exploring the process of modeling and validation in Operations Research (OR). This will be achieved by providing an interpretation for each facet of the modeling-validation tetrahedron formed by the quartet ‘managerial situation’, ‘conceptual model’, ‘formal model’, and ‘decision’. Such an approach not only leads to a contextual classification of Operational Research OR problems, albeit in general terms, but also helps to identify the types of validation needed and their relative importance. The real world problems which Operational Research OR is currently trying to tackle are rather complex in nature and vast in scope. This inevitably forces Operational Research OR scientists and practitioners to position themselves somewhere on the ‘scientific perspective’-‘practice perspective’ spectrum. The proposed tetrahedron of the modelling-validation process is also instrumental in positioning Operational Research OR workers with respect to the nature of their work.