The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS®) today announced six finalists that will compete for the 2008 Franz Edelman Award for Achievement in Operations Research and the Management Sciences in Baltimore and Washington, DC this year.
Reflecting the wide-ranging use of operations research, the finalists include a Fortune 500 company, three teams from Western Europe, and two federal agencies.
The 2008 Franz Edelman finalists are:
1. Federal Aviation Administration, for a project entitled “Airspace Flow Programs,” which gives the FAA greater ability to control the nation’s skies at times of peak consumer usage and flight congestion.
2. Netherlands Railways, for “The New Dutch Timetable: The O.R. Revolution,” a solution that improved on-time performance and capacity for more than a million daily train passengers.
3. StatoilHydro, one of the world’s largest gas producers, and Gassco, the independent Norwegian network operator, for “Optimizing the Offshore Pipeline System for Natural Gas in the North Sea.”
4. The City of Stockholm, Sweden for “Operations Research (O.R.) Improves Quality and Efficiency in Social Care and Home Help,” a program that has brought improvements to the complex scheduling of more than 4,000 providers who help the sick and the elderly.
5. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, for “Reducing Security Risks in American Drinking Water Systems.”
6. Xerox, for “LDP Lean Document Production® - Dramatic Productivity Improvements for the Printing Industry,” which has bettered production and reduced costs for print shops and document manufacturers. The total impact to date on Xerox profits from the utilization of the LDP is about $200M. Xerox has filed 48 patents on this methodology and so far 11 have issued.
This is the 37th year of the prestigious Franz Edelman competition. The winner will be announced at a special awards banquet on April 14 at Applying Science to the Art of Business: the 2008 INFORMS Conference on OR/MS Practice. The conference takes place in Baltimore from April 13-15 http://meetings.informs.org/Practice08/.
INFORMS, an international organization, is located between Baltimore and Washington, DC. The winner of the Edelman Competition will reprise the organization’s presentation at the organization’s annual meeting, which will take place in the nation’s capital from October 12-15. http://meetings.informs.org/DC08/
Every year, the Franz Edelman competition recognizes outstanding examples of operations research-based projects that transform companies, entire industries, and people’s lives. Operations research uses advanced analytical methods to help make better decisions and is a disciplined way by which management can improve organizational performance in a wide variety of situations and in nearly every type of public and private organization.
The top finalist receives a $10,000 honorarium. Past Franz Edelman finalists include Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Georgia Tech, whose 2007 team reduced both patient suffering and health care costs from the treatment of prostate and breast cancer; Travelocity; IBM; and Merrill Lynch.
The Franz Edelman competition attests to the contributions of operations research in the profit and non-profit sectors. According to a 2007 graph prepared for the competition, cumulative dollar benefits from Edelman finalist projects between 1984 and 2006 reached the $100 billion mark.
For additional information about the finalists, consult the Edelman Fact Sheet in the INFORMS News Room at www.informs.org. Additional information about the Edelman Competition can be found online at http://www.scienceofbetter.org/Edelman.
About INFORMS
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, financial engineering, and telecommunications. The INFORMS website is www.informs.org. More information about operations research is at www.scienceofbetter.org.