OR/MS Today articles from June 2003

OR/MS Today archives from June 2003

Opportunity knocks. (Inside Story).
June 1, 2003... Amid all of the doom and gloom of the struggling economy and lousy job market this spring, a ray of sunshine from an unexpected source brightened the landscape for those who toil in the fields of operations research and the management sciences....

Revised MBA guidelines. (President's Desk).
June 1, 2003... I want to discuss a very important issue that has critical relevance to both our academia members and to those who practice OR. Many of you know that prior to 1991, OR/MS was a required course for all AACSB-accredited MBA programs. In 1991,...

Intellectual property, INFORMS Online and you. (INFORMS Online).
June 1, 2003... This is the first of an intermittent series of columns on issues relating to intellectual property (IP). There have been a number of items in the news recently relating to IP matters that I believe are of concern to INFORMS Online, and also to...

Teach the process. (Issues in Education).
June 1, 2003... I'm a real nut about apprenticeship! I always believed there had to be lessons in an ages-old approach to education. My studies showed that some techniques, such as demonstrating tools, are already part of modern education. My quest to...

The problem with supply chain software. (Cyberspace).
June 1, 2003... A recent article by Eric Hellweg titled "Is supply-chain software the next CRM?" sees parallels between problems afflicting the customer relationship management (CRM) software industry and those afflicting the supply chain management software...

A test of strengths. (Was it Something I Said?).
June 1, 2003... Nearly 20 years ago, I had a summer job at a sales office for a large, multinational company. My assignment was to figure out how personal computers might be applied to make our sales team more productive. Indeed, several people in the office...

The interim leader. (Oracle).
June 1, 2003... John was unhappy. An excellent analyst by background, and somewhat a natural leader, he had risen through a couple of supervisory ranks. Now, with the sudden departure of a senior executive, he had been thrust into that person's former...

Math model: fewer cops, more patrols. (Real World).
June 1, 2003... Buffalo, N.Y, expects to significantly increase police patrols throughout the city with 25 percent fewer officers - ultimately saving local taxpayers an estimated $12 million a year - thanks in part to a study conducted by INFORMS member Ken...

IFORS' Operational Research Hall of Fame.
June 1, 2003... There has been an emphasis in recent years on recording and celebrating the history of operational research. INFORMS has celebrated 50 years of operations research with lectures and a party at its meeting in San Jose, Calif., in November 2002....

Nagurney to 'Network' at Bellagio Center. (Real World).
June 1, 2003... INFORMS member Anna Nagurney (University of Massachusetts-Amherst), Patrizia Daniele (University of Catania, Sicily) and Monica Cojocaru (Queens University, Canada) have been invited by the Rockefeller Foundation to conduct research at the...

Study: market for SCM IT services expanding. (Real World).
June 1, 2003... The supply chain management IT services market will expand from $26.1 billion in 2002 to $40.5 billion in 2007, representing a five-year compound annual growth rate of 9.2 percent, a new study from IDC reveals. Due to the economic downturn...

Houston buses due for 'intellectual overhaul'. (Real World).
June 1, 2003... "Smart" buses that can announce approaching bus stops, count passengers and even change traffic lights to speed their way through the city may soon by rolling down the streets of Houston as part of a $20 million project designed to improve the...

The netwar in Iraq.
June 1, 2003... U.S.-led Coalition's swift victory demonstrates that "in an information-rich environment, networks tend to defeat hierarchies." THE U.S.-LED COALITION'S SWIFT VICTORY IN IRAQ WAS more than a military campaign. It was also a test of a new...

On the right track: Canadian Pacific Railway earns Edelman Award for innovative operating system that saves millions of dollars while improving customer service. (Edelman Award).
June 1, 2003... IN THE MID-1990S, CANADIAN PACIFIC RAILWAY (CPR) WAS struggling -- if not to survive, then certainly to ensure its long-term financial health. Faced with high operating costs, low productivity and rising service requirements, CPR needed, well,...

Supply chain management: despite persistent implementation problems, SCM remains a top priority for companies eager to optimize operations. (2003 Software Survey).
June 1, 2003... This supply chain management (SCM) software survey has been prepared with operations research professionals in mind and includes software products for supply chain planning and execution--excluding products that are solely for execution. Such...

Software Product Listing.
June 1, 2003... SOFTWARE PRODUCT LISTING Year Platforms Supported Product ...

A.MAZE Routes & Zones: transportation management system offers fleet scheduling solutions for large organizations. (Software Review).
June 1, 2003... THERE ARE A NUMBER OF CHALLENGES AND barriers to adoption of routing and scheduling technology. Most private fleets still manually route their individual trucks per fixed-regions or skeleton routes, or rely on legacy systems and drag-and-drop...

The founding fathers of TIMS: historical re-examination of humanity inspired the development of the management sciences.
June 1, 2003... THE MANAGEMENT SCIENCES AND RELATED FIELDS OF KNOWLEDGE AND DISCIPLINES HAVE made important contributions to all of mankind for more than half a century. Since 2003 marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of The Institute of Management...

Is Georgia on your mind? (INFORMS News).
June 1, 2003... Over the past 135 years, Atlanta has grown from a transportation hub to the capital of the new South to a major international city. It is the home of many Fortune 500 businesses including UPS, The Coca-Cola Company, The Home Depot Inc. and...

INFORMS awards recognize professional excellence and contributions to society. (INFORMS News).
June 1, 2003... What is great OR/MS? Is it a deep theoretical result that resolves a longstanding open question? Is it an innovative and widely used textbook? Is it an implementation of OR/MS methodology that saves a company millions of dollars? Is it a career...

War on terrorism. (Operations Research in the News).
June 1, 2003... Planning the best response to an anthrax attack on a U.S. city is the subject of a study by Lawrence M. Wein, editor in chief of the INFORMS journal Operations Research, Yale's Edward H. Kaplan, the recipient of the 2002 INFORMS Presidents...

Dance Card. (Operations Research in the News).
June 1, 2003... Want a jump on who's headed to the NCAA tournament? Two university professors can help. Using a complicated formula and computer software, they say they can all but predict which men's college basketball teams will be happy today. ...

Mortality rate. (Operations Research in the News).
June 1, 2003... Using information technology may lead to lower patient mortality rates and increased profitability in the hospital sector, according to findings published in Management Science, a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the...

Combined Colloquia nominations due.
June 1, 2003... The 2003 INFORMS Combined (Doctoral and Teaching Effectiveness) Colloquia will be held Oct. 17-18 in Atlanta, immediately preceding the INFORMS Annual Meeting. Participation is by nomination only. See the call for nominations at...

2003 JFIG Paper Competition.
June 1, 2003... The Junior Faculty Interest Group (JFIG) Forum invites submissions to the first JFIG Paper Competition. JFIG Forum was created in 2001 to promote, through many means, the career development of tenure-track faculty in INFORMS. The goals of the...

In memoriam: George Kozmetsky. (INFORMS News).(Obituary)
June 1, 2003... George Kozmetsky, a legendary figure in the lofty worlds of high-tech business and higher education, died April 30 in Austin, Texas, at the age of 85. Dr. Kozmetsky was a charter member of TIMS who served as the Institute's fifth president in...

Meetings.(Calendar)
June 1, 2003... INFORMS Meetings 2003 July 6-10 EURO/INFORMS Joint International Meeting Conrad Business and Conference Center Istanbul, Turkey Chair: Gulay D. Barbarosoglu Bogazici University Program Co-Chair: Murat...

Calendar.(Calendar)
June 1, 2003... 2003 July 14-17 ISIPTA '03 (Third International Symposium on Imprecise Probabilities and Their Applications) University of Lugano, Switzerland The ISIPTA meetings are one of the primary international forums to present and...

Linear programming. (Books).(Book Review)
June 1, 2003... Linear programming represents one of the major applications of mathematics to business, industry and economics. It provides a methodology for optimizing an output given that it is a linear function of a number of inputs. George Dantzig is...

Managing the supply chain: the definitive guide for the business professional. (Books).(Book Review)
June 1, 2003... In today's environment of tight budgets and even tighter turnarounds, effective supply-chain management has become a core business requirement. "Managing the Supply Chain" adapts the No. 1 supply chain book on the college market to examine how...

Supply chain management, second edition. (Books).(Book Review)
June 1, 2003... This book has grown from a course on supply chain management taught to second-year MBA students at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management. The goal of this class is to cover not only high-level supply chain strategy and concepts, but also to...

Modeling the supply chain. (Books).(Book Review)
June 1, 2003... With an emphasis on data, models and modeling systems, this text teaches professionals and students how to analyze supply chain planning problems. It overviews IT developments related to improving supply chain performance, introduces...

Marketing logistics: customer service & supply chain strategy. (Books).(Book Review)
June 1, 2003... This interface is being recognized by business organizations as a key priority for management, and both practitioners and academics alike have placed a greater emphasis on the need to view the supply chain as a whole as the vehicle by which...

Introduction to applied optimization. (Books).(Book Review)
June 1, 2003... Most of the books in optimization are devoted to details of one or two aspect of the subject: they either focus on a particular methodology such as linear and nonlinear programming, stochastic programming, optimal control, stochastic dynamic...

Topics in optimal transportation. (Books).(Book Review)
June 1, 2003... This is the first comprehensive introduction to the theory of mass transportation with its many - and sometimes unexpected - applications. In a novel approach to the subject, the book both surveys the topic and includes a chapter of problems,...

Operations research in space and air. (Books).(Book Review)
June 1, 2003... The material within the book provides both the basic backgrounds for the novice modeler and a useful reference for experienced modelers. It represents the exploitation of recent mathematical tools and methods to solve large optimization models...

Operational research in war and peace: the British experience from the 1930s to 1970. (Books).(Book Review)
June 1, 2003... This is the first of two projected volumes on the history of operational research (OR) in Britain commissioned by the UK Operational Research Society. Based upon a vast array of published and unpublished sources, the book provides an original...

Applied Bayesian Modelling. (Books).(Book Review)
June 1, 2003... The use of Bayesian statistics has grown significantly in recent years, and will undoubtedly continue to do so. Applied Bayesian Modelling" is the follow-up to the author's best-selling book, "Bayesian Statistical Modelling," and focuses on the...

Simulation-based optimization: parametric optimization techniques and reinforcement learning. (Books).(Book Review)
June 1, 2003... Gosavi, Abhijit This book introduces the evolving area of simulation-based optimization. Since it became possible to analyze random systems using computers, scientists and engineers have sought the means to optimize systems using...

Rapid visual quantitative modeling. (Industry Update).
June 1, 2003... Ushar Enterprises Inc (www.ushar.com) recendy released NMOD ([Hierarchical] Network-Structured Modeler), the first component of their ORMSware Suite for rapid visual quantitative modeling and spreadsheet reverse-engineering. Reginald...

ECI picks A.AMAZE Solution. (Industry Update).
June 1, 2003... EOCOMtms, architect of the A.MAZE technology that simultaneously optimizes the routing and scheduling of fleet operations, announced that Express Courier International (ECI) has chosen the A.MAZE solution. ECI will deploy the A.MAZE Solution to...

Alyuda releases new Forecaster. (Industry Update).
June 1, 2003... Alyuda Research, Inc. has released v. 1.3 of Alyuda Forecaster, a neural networks forecasting software for Windows 98/Me/2000/XP. Neural networks are promising technology in the field of artificial intelligence that lets users automatically...

Continuity of care standard. (Industry Update).
June 1, 2003... ASTM International, the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) and the Massachusetts Medical Society (MMS) have joined forces to establish a standard for the continuity of care record (CCR) that will enable healthcare...

Case study: environment assessment. (Industry Update).
June 1, 2003... Before a new mine can be developed, it is necessary for an environmental assessment (EA) to be completed and accepted by the regulatory agencies responsible for project approvals and licensing. Recently, De Beers Canada Mining Inc. (DeBeers)...

A second bite at biz school apple. (The Last Word).
June 1, 2003... AACSB International, the organization of business school deans that accredits business schools, recently approved new standards for accreditation that require coverage of statistical data analysis and management science in MBA and undergraduate...