Thomas E. White has been nominated to be Secretary of the Army and James G. Roche has been nominated as Secretary of the Air Force. Analytical and operations research ability is evident at other major academic posts. Productivity Improvement Operations research specializes in productivity improvement, a notable strength in light of a May 8 Labor Department report which shows that the productivity of American workers has declined for the first time in six years. This comes at a time when the nation is worried about an economic downturn. Edward M. Gramlich, a Federal Reserve Board Governor, recently explained that productivity growth, of all the economic statistics that analysts pore over, is surely the most important in the long run.
Productivity alone determines the long-run path of income per capita, or living standards.
It plays an important role in controlling inflation. Were national leaders able to pick one economic statistic to be favorable, he said, they would surely pick growth in productivity. Operations research is unique in its concentration on productivity improvement in all kinds of organizations, and in most functions within an organization. It is the one field that scans all the sciences for useful analytical methods and then applies them to make practical productivity improvements. While operations research usually operates behind the scenes, we see its results in current managerial trends.