Clergyman's

The conclusions of most good operations research studies are obvious.
- Robert E. Machol

Management has a design and operation function, as does engineering. The design is usually done under the heading of organization. It should be noted first that the performance of a group of people is a strong function of the capabilities of the individuals and a rather weak function of the way they are organized. That is, good people do a fairly good job under almost any organization and a somewhat better one when the organization is good. Poor talent does a poor job with a bad organization, but it is still a poor job no matter what the organization. Repeated reorganizations are noted in groups of individuals poorly suited to their function, though no amount of good organization will give good performance. The best architectural design fails with poor bricks and mortar. But the payoff from good organization with good people is worthwhile.
- Robert E. Machol

The lack of formal definition does not prevent us from noting the characteristics which are frequently present in large scale systems. Each such system has a certain integrity. It may or may not be rigidly controlled from some central point, but in every case, all the parts of the system have some common purpose; in some sense, they all contribute to the production of a single set of optimum outputs from the given set of inputs, with respect to some appropriate measure of effectiveness.
- Robert E. Machol