OR/MS Today articles from June 2007

OR/MS Today archives from June 2007

Heavy dose of irony.(INSIDE STORY)
June 1, 2007... Another round of quick shots from the O.R. Three-Dot Lounge, where everybody knows your name but not your acronym: * When Marco Zaider, attending physicist in Medical Physics at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, and Eva...

Practice makes near perfect conference.(PRESIDENT'S DESK)
June 1, 2007... I've just returned from the INFORMS Practice Conference in Vancouver. I've attended all seven of the practice conferences, and I think this one was almost perfect. I say "almost," not because of any specific flaw, but because I lack a proof of...

Life in the blogosphere.(INFORMS ONLINE)
June 1, 2007... It has been more than six years since I wrote my last column in this space, coinciding with the end of my six years as editor of INFORMS Online. I will say that I was relieved when my term ended since that meant I did not have to think up any...

Your next teaching vehicle may be a hybrid.
June 1, 2007... Among the many challenges faced by educators in our field is shrinking real estate in MBA programs. Never has our material been more important to the needs of organizations around the world. Likewise, never has its value been more readily...

The Bullwhip Effect.(WAS IT SOMETHING I SAID?)
June 1, 2007... I had a guest speaker last month--a veteran Indian entrepreneur who had spent his entire career in the garment industry. In his informal and highly engaging style, he spoke to my students about off-shore manufacturing and how the business had...

Great unsolved problems in O.R.
June 1, 2007... (Editor's note: This is another in a series of essays on the topic, "Great Unsolved Problems in O.R.," based on a special track of sessions organized by Saul I. Gass and Arjang A. Assad and presented at last fall's INFORMS conference in...

O.R. in the O.R.: saving lives as well as money, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center earns the Edelman with breakthrough modeling and computational techniques for treating prostate cancer.(Edelman Winner 2007)
June 1, 2007... Saving money is one thing. Saving lives is another. Saving huge amounts of money and an untold number of lives through the innovative application of operations research is the stuff that Edelman Award judges' dreams are made of. Thus, despite a...

O.R. & criminal justice: together again; John S. Morgan, the National Institute of Justice's deputy director for Science and Technology, outlines new opportunities to apply operations research.(Q & A)(Interview)
June 1, 2007... LAST FALL, THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF JUSTICE (NIJ), THE RESEARCH ARM OF THE U. S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, AND WINFORMS, THE WASHINGTON, D.C., AREA CHAPTER OF INFORMS, co-organized a symposium in part to publicize NIJ's solicitation of grant...

Measuring success in 21st century conflicts: O.R. produces new method for telling who's winning in places like Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq.
June 1, 2007... IN 1994, IN AN INFORMS PANEL DISCUSSION, Dave Haut, then chief of the Analysis Division for the Department of Defense's Pacific Command, asked the question, "Suppose there are problems in country X and the ambassador has the choice of having a...

A pointer on points: given the array of residential mortgage products, should a homebuyer pay up-front points in order to lower the annual percentage rate? Introducing the notion of option adjusted APR.(annual percentage rate)
June 1, 2007... Residential mortgages today are offered to homeowners in a large variety of structures. A borrower can choose among different maturities, with 15-and 30-year mortgages being the most popular. The interest rate can be fixed, adjustable or a...

Linear programming: ninth in a series of LP surveys focuses on recent developments and trends.(SOFTWARE SURVEY)
June 1, 2007... This is the ninth 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 editor of OR/MS...

2007 INFORMS Combined Colloquia.(INFORMS NEWS)
June 1, 2007... The 2007 INFORMS Combined Colloquia will be held Nov. 2-3 (the Friday and Saturday preceding the INFORMS Annual Meeting) in Seattle and will feature the Teaching Effectiveness Colloquium, Future Academician Colloquium and Future Practitioner...

Experience the spirit of technology in Seattle.(INFORMS NEWS)
June 1, 2007... Seattle is an exciting place where you can experience a variety of things from jet aircraft to espresso machines, from high tech to orca whales. Our location in the Pacific Northwest provides opportunities in supply chain and logistics as well...

INFORMS Fellows: Class of 2006.(INFORMS NEWS)(Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences)
June 1, 2007... INFORMS honored 30 recipients of the INFORMS Fellows Award at a special ceremony held in conjunction with the INFORMS meeting in Pittsburgh last fall. The Fellows Award recognizes INFORMS members who have made significant contributions to the...

School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech.(PEOPLE)(awards to Augustine Esobgue)(Brief article)
June 1, 2007... Augustine Esobgue, a professor in the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech, was named a recipient of the Nigerian National Order of Merit for 2006. Esobgue has made valuable contributions in the development and...

National Academy of Engineering.(PEOPLE)(appointments of George E. Apostolakis, William P. Pierskalla, Eva Tardos )(Brief article)
June 1, 2007... George E. Apostolakis, William P. Pierskalla, Eva Tardos and John N. Tsitsiklis, all members of INFORMS, were among 64 new members elected to the National Academy of Engineering. Election to the National Academy of Engineering is among the...

Samirendra Sinha.(IN MEMORIAM)(University of Delhi's operational research department passes away)
June 1, 2007... Samirendra Sinha, one of George Dantzig's first Ph.D. students and founder of the Operational Research Department at the University of Delhi, passed away recently. Following is a tribute written for OR/MS Today by Jyotiprasad Medhi, professor...

Roundtable considers sustainable business.(INFORMS NEWS)
June 1, 2007... The Roundtable held its fall 2006 meeting in conjunction with the INFORMS annual meeting in Pittsburgh. Given that the meeting was held in parallel with an all-day tribute to Art Geoffrion's retirement from the Anderson School of Management at...

Simulation Society's Lifetime Professional Achievement Award.(INFORMS NEWS)(Brief article)
June 1, 2007... The Lifetime Professional Achievement Award (LPAA) of the INFORMS Simulation Society is the highest honor given by the Society. The purpose of this award is to recognize major contributions to the field of simulation that are sustained over a...

INFORMS meetings.(INFORMS NEWS)(Calendar)
June 1, 2007... INFORMS National & International Meetings 2007 July 8-11 INFORMS International Puerto Rico 2007 Westin Rio Mar Beach Resort & Spa Rio Grande, Puerto Rico Chair: Karla Hoffman, George Mason University ...

Vanguard System: powerful, flexible, scaleable decision-support platform instantly converts business models into fully functional Web applications for enterprise-level deployment.(SOFTWAREREVIEW)
June 1, 2007... DURING THE PAST 10 YEARS there has been a growing interest in quantitative decision support for business. Commensurate with this interest, there has been a proliferation of business modeling tools, each with unique advantages and disadvantages,...

Frontline Systems' Risk Solver.(INDUSTRY NEWS)(Brief article)
June 1, 2007... Frontline Systems, developer of the Excel Solver and leading-edge optimization software, is now offering leading-edge simulation software for Excel with its newly released Risk Solver, a tool for risk analysis of business models using...

Palisade's @RISK 4.5.7.(INDUSTRY NEWS)(Brief article)
June 1, 2007... Palisade Corporation announced the release of @RISK 4.5.7, an update that allows the risk analysis add-in, @RISK, to incorporate the increased capacity and capabilities of Microsoft's newly released Excel 2007. Users of @RISK 4.5.7 will...

What'sBest 9.0.(INDUSTRY NEWS)(Brief article)
June 1, 2007... LINDO Systems recently announced What'sBest 9.0, a new release of their Solver add-in for Excel that is faster and more powerful and adds support for the recently released Microsoft Office 2007. What'sBest 9.0 is an average of 80 percent...

Lamentations: what is it going to take?(ORACLE)(Column)
June 1, 2007... The O.R. analyst, usually known for his sense of humor, seemed to be in a strikingly gloomy mood. "What's the matter?" one of his friends asked after a few days of this. "What's going on?" "Virginia Tech," the analyst replied grimly....