News Release

6 organizations vie for INFORMS Best Practices Award

Fortune 500 co's, transport, a bank, & a children's hospital

Grant and Award Announcement

Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences

LINTHICUM, MD - The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS®) today announced six finalists that will compete for the 2003 Franz Edelman Award for Achievement in Operations Research and the Management Sciences.

The competitors range widely in industry, size, and location. They include two Fortune 500 companies, Hewlett-Packard and UPS; Israel's Bank Hapoalim; Canadian Pacific Railway; Emery Forwarding, a heavyweight freight company; and Texas Children's Hospital.

The Edelman competition recognizes outstanding examples of projects that change people's lives. Last year, for example, Continental Airlines and CALEB Technology were recognized for applying a disaster recovery system that showed exceptional resiliency on September 11.

In the 1990's, a team from the city of New Haven and Yale won for preventing AIDS through an innovative needle exchange program. The six finalists for the 2003 INFORMS Edelman Award are:

  • Bank Hapoalim: Opti-Money at Bank Hapoalim: A Model-Based Investment Decision Support System for Individual Customers. Bank Hapoalim: Mordecai Avriel, Hanna Pri-Zan, Ronit Meiri, and Avi Peretz.

  • Canadian Pacific Railway, with MultiModal Applied Systems, Inc.: Perfecting the Scheduled Railroad: Model-Driven Operating Plan Development. Canadian Pacific Railway: Phil Ireland, Rod Case, John Fallis; MultiModal Applied Systems: Carl Van Dyke, Jason Kuehn, Marc Meketon.

  • Emery Forwarding: Network Routing Optimization Models For Emery Forwarding. Emery Forwarding: Vedat Akgun, Chyi-Fu Hong, and Robert C. Prior.

  • Hewlett-Packard: Designing the Supply Chain to Optimize the Profitability of Hewlett-Packard's Supply Chains. Hewlett-Packard: Corey Billington, Gianpaolo Callioni, Barrett Crane, Julie Unruh-Rapp, and Trace White; Optiant: John Ruark; Boston University: Sean P. Willems.

  • Texas Children's Hospital, with PROS Revenue Management: Contract Optimization at Texas Children's Hospital. Texas Children's Hospital: Chris Born, Monica Carbajal, Pat Smith, Mark Wallace; PROS Revenue Management: Kirk Abbott, Surain Adyanthaya, E. Andrew Boyd, Curtis Keller, Jin Liu, Wayne New, Tom Rieger, Ron Woestemeyer.

  • UPS: Planning the United Parcel Service Air Network. United Parcel Service Air Group: Keith A. Ware, Alysia M. Wilson; United States Air Force Academy: Andrew P. Armacost; Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Cynthia Barnhart.

    The competition is being held at an INFORMS conference, "Creating Value in the Extended Enterprise," which takes place at the Sheraton Wild Horse Pass Resort and Spa from May 4 - 6. The Edelman competition is on Monday, May 5. The winner will be announced Tuesday, May 6.

    Information about the conference is online at http://www.informs.org/Conf/Phoenix2003.

    All the finalist papers will be published in the January 2004 issue of the INFORMS publication Interfaces.

    This is the 32nd year that the prestigious competition has been held. The award is jointly sponsored by INFORMS and CPMS, the Practice Section of INFORMS.

    The INFORMS Edelman Award recognizes outstanding implemented work that has had a significant, positive impact on the performance of the client organization. The top finalist receives a $10,000 first prize.

    Past winners of the INFORMS Edelman Award include IBM, Sabre Technology, and Merrill Lynch.

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    The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS®) is an international scientific society with 10,000 members, including Nobel Prize laureates, dedicated to applying scientific methods to help improve decision-making, management, and operations. Members of INFORMS work in business, government, and academia. They are represented in fields as diverse as airlines, health care, law enforcement, the military, the stock market, and telecommunications. The INFORMS website is at http://www.informs.org .

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