3 THE COMPUTER BECOMES A DATA PROCESSING DEVICE

It wasn't just scientific laboratories that decided to build their own computers rather than wait for the arrival of commercially produced models. One remarkable, and remarkably impatient, company did the same thing. J. Lyons and Company ran a chain of British tea shops and a catering and food distribution business. It had long been a proponent of what in Britain was called organization and methods work. That meant empowering experts to study and systematically redesign business procedures, forms, and other administrative systems to optimize the overall efficiency of an organization. Lyons focused on what would later be called operations research: the application of statistics and mathematical models to improve the efficiency of its distribution and production networks.
1