Article ID: | iaor19982530 |
Country: | United States |
Volume: | 43 |
Issue: | 6 |
Start Page Number: | 916 |
End Page Number: | 932 |
Publication Date: | Nov 1995 |
Journal: | Operations Research |
Authors: | Willemain Thomas R. |
Keywords: | model building |
Model formulation is a critical craft skill that deserves more attention from OR practitioners and educators. As a step toward understanding how experts formulate OR models, I conducted an experiment in which twelve skilled analysts generated think-aloud protocols while working model formulation exercises 60 minutes long. The coded transcripts tracked the modelers' attention to five topics corresponding to stages in the usual OR paradigm: problem context and model structure, realization, assessment, and implementation. Analysis of the transcripts yielded these conclusions: topics other than structure attracted a significant proportion of modelers' attention; modelers frequently switched their attention among the topics; the switching was usually an alternation between structure and the other topics, especially assesement; on average, the modelers progressed through the topics in the given order; there was limited support for the notion of modeler-specific and problem-specific effects influencing the attention given to each topic; and there was support for the idea of individual modeling styles.