The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS®) today announced six finalists that will compete for the 2009 Franz Edelman Award for Achievement in Operations Research and the Management Sciences in Phoenix this year.
Coming in a year of worldwide economic uncertainty, the 2009 competitors from the U.S. and Europe demonstrate that analytics and operations research give organizations the resiliency to contain spending and increase profits even in lean economic times.
The 2009 Franz Edelman finalists are:
1. CSX Transportation for "CSX Railway Cashes in on Optimized Equipment Distribution." CSX used math modeling to create a system for assigning and repositioning empty cars. The company claims approximately $2 billion total savings from car mileage reductions, car management workforce reduction, and capital avoidance, and notes other qualitative benefits of the system to the public.
2. HP for "HP Transforms Product Portfolio Management with Operations Research." HP's extensive business offerings include tens of thousands of products and millions of product configurations. The company used operations research to manage this burgeoning variety, yielding substantial cost savings over three years (from 2005-2008), as well as a more streamlined product offering, improved execution, faster delivery performance, lower overhead, better customer satisfaction and increased market share.
3. IBM for "Operations Research Improves Sales Productivity at IBM." IBM used operations research to help the company identify new sales opportunities and to better allocate sales resources to the best future revenue-generating accounts.
4. Marriott International for the "Group Pricing Optimizer." The company's operations research-aided system empowers the sales team with the information they need to profitably negotiate the price of proposed group bookings. The system automates a complex manual process to maximize revenue, hotel profitability and the quality of time spent taking care of customers. Since its implementation GPO has been used to contract over $1B in group business.
5. Norske Skog for "Norske Skog Improves Global Profitability using OR." The publication paper industry has faced declining markets and margins for several years. The Norwegian based company, with plants in 12 countries on 4 continents, used operations research to downsize and reduce manufacturing and supply chain costs, potentially $120 million per annum (~3% of turnover). Thanks to robust analysis tough decisions were made and implemented with minimal disruption.
6. Zara for "Zara Uses Operations Research to Reengineer Its Global Distribution Process." The Spanish clothing manufacturer and retailer, which achieves Fast Fashion by making millions of shipments a week to stores from its central warehouses, used operations research to optimize its distribution process and increase in-season sales by an estimated 3-4% – in excess of $230 million in 2007 and $350 million in 2008.
This is the 38th year of the prestigious Franz Edelman competition. The winner will be announced at a special awards banquet on April 27 at Applying Science to the Art of Business: the 2009 INFORMS Conference on OR/MS Practice. The conference takes place in Phoenix from April 26-28 http://meetings.informs.org/Practice09/.
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 Netherlands Railways, whose 2008 team streamlined a major mass transit system; Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center working with Georgia Tech; Motorola; and Travelocity.
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.