How did computers help American businesses adopt operations research in the 1950s?

In the 1950s, the advent of the computer was a primary catalyst for the adoption of operations research within American businesses. By providing the necessary computational power to solve complex, large-scale problems, computers made scientific planning techniques—such as linear programming—feasible for industrial application.12

Key ways computers facilitated this adoption included:

• Solving Complex Models: Before the computer, performing the calculations required to minimize or maximize objective functions under various constraints was often impossible. The development of the simplex method and its subsequent programming for computers (starting with the SEAC in 1951 and later IBM systems) allowed businesses to efficiently solve practical scheduling and resource allocation problems.13
• Broad System Awareness: The availability of computing technology brought an awareness of broad system-wide problems and the potential to solve them, leading approximately half of all large U.S. corporations to begin using operations research within that decade.2
• Data Processing Foundations: While early computer use focused on data processing—such as record keeping and transaction processing—this created the infrastructure for later management information systems, which further integrated operations research into business planning.4