OR/MS Today articles

Recent articles from OR/MS Today

Goodbye to a good guy.(INSIDE STORY)(Obituary)
October 1, 2007... As is so often the case in this age of text messaging, e-mail and assorted instant communication, the news arrived multiple times--swift, cold and harsh--like a couple of slaps across the face. Lloyd Clarke had died the day before in a bicycling accident in Incline Village, Nev. Lloyd and...

Profession faces tough questions.(PRESIDENT'S DESK)
October 1, 2007... I recently attended the 40th anniversary celebration of the Institute for Operations Research at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. I was asked by the organizers to speak on the challenges facing the field of operations research, specifically the health and future of...

By integration by differentiation.(INFORMS ONLINE)(Column)
October 1, 2007... In my August 2007 column, I wrote about the growing expectations of, but also growing, complexity at INFORMS Online (IoL). I focus on a more tangible issue here: integration. Integration is an IT consulting buzzword in industry and usually vacuous, so I first explain what I mean by it. Then I...

Building, operating a hybrid course.(ISSUES IN EDUCATION)
October 1, 2007... This month's column concludes a short series on the notion of a "hybrid" course. The first installment, "Your Next Teaching Vehicle may be a Hybrid" (OR/MS Today, June, 2007) discussed the pressures that OR/MS courses face in the MBA Core and the increasing need for a range of allied...

Six Sigma operations: from manufacturing to pricing.(QED)(Column)
October 1, 2007... The other day someone said that operations refer essentially to manufacturing. In today's economy, it is worthwhile to discuss how operations underlie everything a company does--manufacturing, finance, human resources, IT, marketing and even pricing. Not only do all these functions have...