OR/MS Today articles from October 2005

OR/MS Today archives from October 2005

Discover how you can benefit from AIMMS--the world's most advanced model development environment.
October 1, 2005... Because Academics deserve the best at low cost... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ... Paragon Decision Technology offers the AIMMS 3 Educational Package for only $450*. This package includes an unlimited network license, a distributable...

Remarkable recovery effort.(Hurricane Katrina, 2005 disaster effects on the people)
October 1, 2005... The e-mails started arriving in Jim Cochran's in-box at virtually the same time Hurricane Katrina turned New Orleans into a horrific version of "Waterworld." Sadly, Katrina wasn't just another Kevin Costner movie disaster; it was the largest...

When disaster strikes!(Hurricane Katrina, 2005, Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences)
October 1, 2005... Hurricane Katrina has dominated our news stories for the past several weeks. On behalf of all INFORMS members, we extend our sympathy and support to the hundreds of thousands residents of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama whose lives were...

Premium Solver Platform: this is not your MBA student's Oldsmobile.
October 1, 2005... The Excel Solver's Big Brother Handles Industrial-Strength Models. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Over 100 million Excel users have the basic Solver we developed for Microsoft. But that's just our takeoff point for the Premium Solver...

E-pubs and E-TOCs.(INFORMS new technolgy for its PubsOnLine electronic publication )
October 1, 2005... INFORMS is continuously improving its PubsOnLine electronic publication service to better serve both its members and its institutional subscribers. To get the most from our electronic publications, you should know something about how that side...

MPL[TM] Modeling System: the fastest and most scalable modeling language for optimization.(Product/Service Evaluation)
October 1, 2005... The MPL Modeling System is a state-of-the-art optimization modeling software that allows the model developer to formulate complicated optimization models in a clear, concise, and efficient way. MPL offers a feature-rich model development...

Avoiding project headaches.(operational research work analysis)
October 1, 2005... Ah, projects. The mere mention of them gives me a headache. Projects are an integral part of an O.R. class, but they provide an interesting challenge to those of us who have to administer and grade them. After a few years and many bottles of...

Teacher as student.(college teacher's responsibilities)
October 1, 2005... "College teaching may be the only skilled profession for which no preparation or training is provided or required. You get a Ph.D., join a faculty, they show you your office, and then tell you 'By the way, you're teaching 205 next semester....

AFMC in running for manufacturing award.(Air Force. Materiel Command)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... Air Force Materiel Command units captured four of the five finalist nominations for the Shingo Prize for Excellence in Manufacturing-Public Sector category. The four Air Force finalists are: * Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center's...

Brunel 200 to celebrate life, work of famed engineer.(Isambard Kingdom Brunel)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... 2006 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, one of the most versatile, audacious and inspirational engineers of the 19th century. Brunel captured the public imagination like no other engineer, and he remains an...

Management science professor opines in The Times.(Jim Scholes)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... A recent business story in the The Times (London) on "turning strategy into reality" quotes Jim Scholes, professor of management science at Lancaster University Management School. Writes Times journalist Carol Lewis: "Strategy implementation is...

Operations management consulting: key data, trends, forecasts.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... Operations Management (OM) consulting contributed more than half of the management consulting industry's growth for 2004, according to a study by Kennedy Information. And, while the compound annual growth rate for all types of operations...

The arts and O.R.(Letter to the Editor)
October 1, 2005... To the Editor: I was interested to read again about scheduling volunteers at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival in the April issue of OR/MS Today (Gordon and Erkut 2005). Since the Interfaces article had come out last year (Gordon and Erkut...

The show goes on ... in San Francisco: INFORMS staffers, volunteers move quickly to find a new home for conference in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.(Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences)
October 1, 2005... Like so many others all the way up to President Bush, INFORMS Director of Meetings Terry Cryan thought New Orleans had dodged a bullet when Hurricane Katrina slammed into the city on Aug. 29. Winds from the powerful hurricane certainly made a...

Making skies safer: applying operations research to aviation passenger prescreening systems.(Cover Story)
October 1, 2005... THE TERRORIST EVENTS ON SEPT. 11, 2001, WILL FOREVER ALTER THE WAY OUR NATION VIEWS AVIATION SECURITY. The article by Barnett (2001) in OR/MS Today highlighted numerous important questions and issues surrounding the events of that day and how...

What problems can we help you solve?(ILOG Inc.'s services)(Brief Article)(Company Profile)
October 1, 2005... Simply incomparable [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Over 400 man-years of R & D invested in ILOG Optimization technologies Over 30 Ph.D.'s committed to Optimization R & D The most rigorous development and testing methodology employed...

O.R. for the public good: many lawyers, doctors and other professionals routinely do pro bono work for charitable organizations as a matter of company or personal policy.(Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences)
October 1, 2005... ST. JOSEPH CENTER IS A CHARITABLE ORGANIZATION--a 501(C)(3) in tax parlance--providing assistance to working poor and homeless families and individuals on the west side of Los Angeles. Two incongruent items appeared on the agenda of a recent...

O.R. in Africa: recent programs, future potential; With no shortage of problems and an emerging community of O.R. scholars, opportunities abound for INFORMS and other organizations to fuel profession's growth throughout diverse continent.
October 1, 2005... EARLIER THIS YEAR, AFRICA HELD ITS FIRST CONTINENT-WIDE CONFERENCE ON O.R. PRACTICE (ORPA-1) with partial funding support from INFORMS as well as EURO, IFORS, KPMG and other sponsors. ORPA-1 crowns five years of exciting developments, including...

COIN-OR pays off: following open-source software model, online initiative provides repository for O.R. technology.
October 1, 2005... COMPUTATIONAL O.R. RESEARCHERS HAVE LONG lacked a centralized, peer-reviewed forum where they can study and share source code and other computational tools ("software"), data and underlying theoretical models. COIN-OR was designed following the...

Frontier Analyst[R] efficiency and performance measurement.
October 1, 2005... Banxia[R] Frontier Analyst[R] is a proven tool that gives you detailed insights into how your business units are performing, so that you can quickly identify and target those critical areas which will have the greatest impact on improved...

Impact Explorer[TM] audience response system for opinion gathering.
October 1, 2005... Keypad voting systems provide a very effective means of increasing audience participation in your meetings and presentations, and now they really are more affordable than ever. The Impact ExplorerT software provides an agenda designer with full...

Distribution fitting software.
October 1, 2005... Stat::Fit[R] statistically fits your data to the most useful analytical distribution. Version 2 includes 11 additional distributions and enhanced graphics capabilities. The Auto::Fit function automatically fits continuous and discrete...

Logical Decisions[R] for Windows[TM].
October 1, 2005... Logical Decisions[R] for Windows[TM], Version 5.1 helps you evaluate choices requiring critical preference and value judgements. LDW lets you combine qualitative and quantitative concerns in a single model. LDW also lets you simultaneously...

CSIM 19 is now available!
October 1, 2005... Need to build models of highly complex systems? CSIM, the world's preferred low-cost simulation tool, just got even better. Using the popular C and C++ languages, this advanced simulation toolkit enables you to create process-oriented, discrete...

Introducing Micro Saint Sharp Version 2.0 with 3D animation!(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... Micro Analysis & Design is excited to announce the release of Micro Saint Sharp Version 2.0 and the new Animator3D! Now there are 3 ways to view your models: network diagram view, 2D animation and 3D animation. Regardless of what your needs are...

Count on Arena for enterprise-wide simulation.
October 1, 2005... Arena[R] simulation software offers the unparalleled ease-of-use, flexibility, and domain expertise required for modeling any aspect of a business enterprise. The Arena product family supports both in-depth analyses of a particular functional...

DEA SolverPro.(Data Envelopment Analysis)(Saitech Inc)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... DEA SolverPro has been widely utilized all over the world. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] With popular demands on additional features. DEA SolverPro Version 4.1 is now available. With more than 130 models in 32 clusters, Version 4.1 added such...

WordStat 5.0: content analysis software offers operations researchers valuable tool for exploring vast, untapped amounts of textual data.
October 1, 2005... SOME YEARS AGO, I WITNESSED A SOCIAL SCIENCE Ph.D. student trying to determine whether the political campaign by the Labour Party in the 1997 British election imitated the Clinton campaign in the U.S. presidential election the year before. She...

WSC 2005 simulation: mission critical.(Winter Simulation Conference )
October 1, 2005... The 2005 Winter Simulation Conference (WSC 2005) will be held Dec. 4-7 in Orlando, Fla., at the Hilton in Walt Disney World. Simulation is mission critical. With shortened product lives and the increasingly competitive nature of business,...

INFORMS Annual Meeting 2005--San Francisco Hilton: guide to exhibitors.(institute for operations research and management science)
October 1, 2005... Visit the Exhibit Hall to see innovative software products and the latest technical reference materials from these companies and organizations exhibiting at the meeting. For more information about the meeting, go to...

Richard C. Larson.(Massachusetts Institute of Technology appointed the director)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... Richard C. Larson, INFORMS president and MIT professor, was named director of the newly formed Center for Engineering Systems Fundamentals (CESF) at MIT. The Center will focus its research on the fundamentals and cross-cutting issues of...

ManMohan Sodhi.(gives his views about the operations management concepts)(Interview)
October 1, 2005... ManMohan Sodhi, head of the Operations Management and Quantitative Methods area at Cass Business School at City University in London, a member of INFORMS and a long-time contributor to OR/MS Today ("Cyberspace"), published a co-authored...

In memoriam: Charles ReVelle.(Obituary)
October 1, 2005... Charles ReVelle, a Johns Hopkins professor and INFORMS member who was world renowned for his work on reservoir design and who was credited with creating the field of location analysis, died Aug. 10 at his home in Baltimore. He was 67. ...

Roundtable members discuss O.R. at P & G, Jeppesen Sanderson.(Procter & Gamble)(Brief Article)(Panel Discussion)
October 1, 2005... The INFORMS Roundtable met at Palm Springs at a very well-attended session preceding the INFORMS Practice Meeting. For this meeting, the Roundtable established a theme of "structured networking," where discussion topics of interest to the...

INFORMS meetings.(Calendar)
October 1, 2005... INFORMS National & International Meetings 2005 Nov. 13-16 INFORMS Annual Meeting 2005 New Orleans/San Francisco San Francisco Hilton & Renaissance Parc 55 San Francisco, Calif. Chair: James J. Cochran, Louisiana Tech...

AIMMS 3.6 offers enhanced functionality.(INDUSTRY NEWS)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... With the new release of AIMMS 3.6 in October, Paragon Decision Technology has added functionality that both enhances the ease of use by developers and end-users, and increases the ability to solve complex problems through highly advanced...

A.MAZE Petroleum addresses complex needs.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... GEOCOMtms announced the general availability of A.MAZE Petroleum, the first end-to-end fleet management solution developed specifically to address the complex needs of the fuels, lubricants and fuel oil industries. A.MAZE Petroleum helps...

RIA turns to SPSS to enhance research.(Research Institute on Addictions)(Statistical Package for the Social Sciences)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... The Research Institute on Addictions (RIA) at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, is using SPSS predictive analytics software to improve survey research. SPSS has enabled RIA to increase the volume and quality of survey...

Case study: BUSTOPS makes friends.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... Art Watson, routing supervisor for the Royal Oak (Mich.) School District, has been using BUSTOPS routing software by MicroAnalytics in a novel way. BUSTOPS is a school bus routing and management program that enables districts to conduct route...

PROS in growth mode.(Price Management and Profit Optimization Solutions )(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... The analyst community recognized PROS as a standout in the pricing revenue optimization space. PROS received the highest ratings in all categories of "Price Management" and "Profit Optimization" in a new report by Yankee Group. The report is...

The ex-Marine's parable.(ORACLE)
October 1, 2005... "If only management would listen to reason," the OR/MS analyst griped over his beer. "My boss is never much help about how to do things, but after the task is done, he sure has lots of ideas about how it could have been done better, or faster...