OR/MS Today articles from June 2005

OR/MS Today archives from June 2005

Remembering the great GBD.(INSIDE STORY)(George Bernard Dantzig)(Obituary)
June 1, 2005... George Bernard Dantzig, widely known as the "Father of Linear Programming," passed away on May 13 at the age of 90, leaving behind a legacy of mathematical achievement and humanity that few, if any, can match. The word "legend" is often hastily...

Practice what we preach.(PRESIDENT'S DESK)
June 1, 2005... Many INFORMS members either work for or consult for firms or governmental organizations, offering O.R. advice. We bring with us a vast arsenal of tools and techniques. But perhaps even more importantly, we bring with us an O.R. perspective that...

General Motors earns Edelman honors.(Franz Edelman Award for transportation)
June 1, 2005... General Motors' innovative approach to problem-solving won the 2005 Franz Edelman Award for achievement in operations research and the management sciences. The Edelman Prize, the culmination of a rigorous competition that recognizes innovation,...

Big changes coming soon.(INFORMS ONLINE)(www.informs.org)
June 1, 2005... When INFORMS Online was started in 1995, it consisted of a few hundred HTML pages and a handful of Perl scripts. The pages were mostly maintained by hand-editing HTML source or by running scripts on flat-file databases to generate HTML pages....

The case for teaching O.R. at liberal arts institutions.(ISSUES IN EDUCATION)
June 1, 2005... Less than a decade ago, I graduated from a well-known liberal arts school in the South with an undergraduate degree in mathematics. When nearing the end of my college career, I found myself in the all-too-common state of uncertainty about my...

O.R.: the Science of Better.(FORUM)(Operations Research In Industries)
June 1, 2005... By now you may have heard the stirrings--the INFORMS Science of Better campaign is taking the word about the benefits of O.R. to the world through a powerful new tool: advertisement. The campaign has dedicated a modest $195,000 to accomplish a...

The anthropologist's parable.(ORACLE)
June 1, 2005... The crowd roared as the home team's center fielder lined a double to left center, driving in two runs and tying the game in the bottom of the seventh. "This couldn't get much better," the O.R. analyst exulted. "Honestly, I didn't think I'd...

Life, death and taxes: risk and decision analysis in patient safety.(Risk Management in Healthcare Industry)
June 1, 2005... Health care systems can be extremely complex. They consist of interacting and constantly changing human and equipment (devices, hardware, software) elements, and thus are associated with a high degree of uncertainty and are prone to failures....

Quality of journals difficult to measure.(LETTERS TO THE EDITOR)(Letter to the Editor)
June 1, 2005... To the Editor: I was interested to read ManMohan Sodhi's article in the April edition of OR/MS Today concerning journal rankings ["Journal Rankings: U.K. Perspective," p. 14]. It is certainly the case that the Research Assessment Exercise...

Fingerprinting study sets off Homeland Security alarm bells.(Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology Program)
June 1, 2005... Last fall, INFORMS member Lawrence Wein detected a serious problem in the federal government's US-VISIT program, designed to capture terrorists entering American airports by checking their fingerprints. Wein, the Paul E. Holden Professor of...

Researchers merge game theory with wireless networks to create 'smarter' garments.(REAL WORLD)(awards to Professors for their research in Wireless Communications Networks)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2005... The National Science Foundation has awarded two five-year, $400,000 Early Career Development Program (CAREER) awards to Virginia Tech professors Allen MacKenzie and Tom Martin. MacKenzie's award is funding a project to apply game theory to the...

NASA funds interplanetary supply chain management research.(REAL WORLD)(National Aeronautics and Space Administration)
June 1, 2005... The National Aeronautics & Space Administration has awarded two MIT professors--INFORMS member David Simchi-Levi and Olivier de Weck--funding to conduct research to support NASA's new vision for human and robotic space exploration...

Operations research loses a pillar of the profession: some thoughts of the late, great "Father of Linear Programming" on the past and future of operations research.(IN MEMORIAM)(George Bernard Dantzig)(Biography)
June 1, 2005... EDITOR'S NOTE: George Dantzig, a truly legendary figure in the history of operations research, passed away on May 13 at the age of 90. We had the privilege of interviewing Professor Dantzig in 1999, shortly before his 85th birthday. That...

Achievements and accolades.(IN MEMORIAM)(George Bernard Dantzig)(Obituary)
June 1, 2005... George Bernard Dantzig, professor emeritus, Department of Management Science and Engineering, Stanford University, died after a short illness on May 13, 2005, at his home in Stanford, Calif. He was 90. Dr. Dantzig, a pioneer in the field of...

My time with the great GBD.(IN MEMORIAM)(George B. Dantzig)(Obituary)
June 1, 2005... The King is dead. George B. Dantzig is with us no more. And though we rejoice for all that he gave, we cannot help but weep as well. In this magazine, in our journals, in our newspapers and our newsgroups, there will be many obituaries,...

Managing product line complexity: Hewlett-Packard's team of operations research professionals develops five-step process to measure cost/value tradeoffs.
June 1, 2005... BUSINESSES IN NEARLY EVERY INDUSTRY ARE MORE COMPLEX TODAY THAN THEY WERE JUST THREE TO FIVE YEARS AGO, AND THIS TREND SHOWS NO SIGNS OF STOPPING. Because of this, managing complexity is becoming critically important to the success of today's...

Liquidity risk management: Merrill Lynch Bank USA turns to management science to bolster its revolving credit lines and free up $4 billion in liquidity.
June 1, 2005... MERRILL LYNCH BANK USA HAS A PORTFOLIO OF REVOLVING CREDIT LINES with about 200 institutional borrowers totaling over $1.4 billion in commitments. The Bank used management science to better understand the cash needs associated with this...

Linear programming: eighth in a series of LP surveys highlights recent trends in profession's most popular software.(Software Survey)
June 1, 2005... THIS IS THE EIGHTH IN A SERIES of surveys of software for linear programming, dating back to 1990. As in the case of earlier surveys, information has been gathered by means of a questionnaire sent to software vendors by the editors of OR/MS...

Laissez les bon temps rouler! New Orleans to host INFORMS Annual Meeting Nov. 13-16.(Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences )
June 1, 2005... New Orleans, often referred to as the Isle of Orleans because it is surrounded by Lake Pontchartrain to the north, Lake Borgne to the east and the Mississippi River to the south, is preparing to host the INFORMS Annual Meeting, Nov. 13-16. You...

New interactive session track.(INFORMS NEWS)
June 1, 2005... The chair of the new interactive sessions track invites submissions for an interactive presentation for display at the 2005 INFORMS Annual Meeting in New Orleans. Interactive presentations can take several forms: * conventional poster...

2005 INFORMS Combined Colloquia.(INFORMS NEWS)(Institute for Operations Research and the Management Science)
June 1, 2005... The 2005 INFORMS Combined Colloquia will be held Nov. 11-12, the Friday and Saturday immediately preceding the INFORMS Annual Meeting in New Orleans. This year, the Combined Colloquia will feature the Seventh Teaching Effectiveness Colloquium,...

INFORMS offers summer workshop on teaching management science.(INFORMS NEWS)(Institute of Operations Research and the Management Science)
June 1, 2005... Many educators within INFORMS are aware that the management science content of the business school curriculum generally declined during the 1990s. Fewer of us may know, however, that management science is thriving at a few schools, like...

Winter Simulation Conference.(INFORMS NEWS)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2005... Discover innovative applications and see the latest advances in the field of system simulation at the 2005 Winter Simulation Conference, Dec. 4-7 in Orlando, Fla. The conference will be held at the Hilton in the Walt Disney World Resort. For...

Russell Ackoff.(PEOPLE)(International Federation of Operational Research Societies)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2005... Russell Ackoff has been honored as the latest inductee into the IFORS Operational Research Hall of Fame. In a recent article in International Transactions in Operational Research (Vol. 12, No. 1), authors Maurice Kirby and Jonathan Rosenhead...

Dimitris Bertsimas.(PEOPLE)(D2Hawkeye appoints him)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2005... Dimitris Bertsimas, the Boeing Professor of Operations Research at MIT's Sloan School of Management, has joined the D2Hawkeye Board of Directors. Bertsimas has provided guidance for D2Hawkeye's data mining research for the past year. ...

In memoriam: Leonid Khachiyan.(State University of New Jersey)(Obituary)
June 1, 2005... Leonid G. Khachiyan of South Brunswick, N.J., professor of computer science at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, died suddenly of a heart attack on April 29. He was 52. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "He was among the world's most...

Meetings.(International Federation of Operational Research Societies )(Calendar)
June 1, 2005... INFORMS National & International Meetings 2005 July 11-15 IFORS Triennial 2005 The 17th Triennial Conference of IFORS Hilton Hawaiian Village Beach Resort & Spa Honolulu Chair, Organizing Committee: Jeffrey L. Arthur, Oregon...

Frontline launches new Solver, related products.(Frontline Systems Inc.)
June 1, 2005... Frontline Systems, Inc., developer of the Solver in Microsoft Excel, has unveiled a new "flagship" product for optimization software developers, the Solver Platform SDK, and a related full product line upgrade, Version 6.5 of its Premium...

LINDO releases faster Solver Engines for custom applications.(Lindo Systems Inc.)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2005... LINDO Systems has recently announced LINDO API 4.0, a new release of its callable library of optimization solvers that is faster and more powerful. Enhancements have made the Dual Simplex solver 40 percent faster on linear models than...

Study finds declining IT spending in manufacturing.(INDUSTRY NEWS)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2005... Manufacturing is 50 percent more likely than other industries to decrease information technology spending in 2005, according to a study by research firm Info-Tech Research Group. Info-Tech claims that 21 percent of manufacturing companies plan...

GEOCOM releases A.MAZE Enterprise.(INDUSTRY NEWS)
June 1, 2005... GEOCOM, a global provider of pickup and delivery optimization solutions, announced the general availability of A.MAZE Enterprise, an advanced distribution planning and execution solution for organizations with complex pickup and delivery...

OptTek, Jada Management form alliance.(OptTek Systems, Jada Management Systems)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2005... OptTek Systems and Jada Management Systems, an Oregon high-tech firm, announced an alliance to market an optimization software module for JMS's Supply Chain Planning (SCP) solution suite. The technology, which is based on OptTek's optimization...

Project management as a capstone management science course.(LAST WORD)
June 1, 2005... Vijay Mehrotra's recent column in OR/MS Today ["Success Often Eludes Project Managers," pg. 18, April 2005] concerning his success in teaching an MBA elective course in project management makes a point that is too often missed by INFORMS...