The competitors include a disaster recovery team at Continental Airlines; the maker of Snickers bars, Mars, Inc.; elite auto maker Peugeot; German catalog house Rhenania; Schindler Elevator Corp; and, illustrating operations research's versatility, the agribusiness company Syngenta Seeds.
The Edelman competition will take place all day Monday, May 20 from 9 AM to 5:30 PM at the Hilton Montreal Bonaventure. The winner will be announced on Tuesday, May 21 at 8 AM. The Edelman competition recognizes outstanding examples of operations research as practiced throughout the world. The six finalists for the INFORMS Edelman Award are:
· Continental Airlines: A New Era for Crew Recovery at Continental Airlines. Continental Airlines: Anna C. White, Janet Wejman; CALEB Technologies Corp.: Gang Yu, Michael Arguello, Mark Gao Song, Sandra M. McCowan The University of Texas at Austin: Gang Yu.
· Mars Incorporated (with IBM): Combinatorial and Quantity Discount Procurement Auctions with Mutual Benefits. Mars Inc.: Gail Hohner, John Rich, Grant Reid; IBM T.J. Watson Research: Andrew J. Davenport, Jayant R. Kalagnanam, Ho Soo Lee, Chae H. An.
· PSA Peugeot Citroën: Improving Car Body Production at PSA Peugeot Citroën. PSA Peugeot Citroën: Alain Patchong, Thierry Lemoine, Gilles Kern.
· Rhenania: Dynamic Multi-Level Modeling: Profitable Growth Through Database Marketing Driven Mail Order Business. Rhenania: Ralf Elsner; WHU, Koblenz Graduate School of Management: Manfred Krafft, Arnd Huchzermeier.
· Schindler Elevator Corporation: GIS-Integrated System for Optimizing Periodic Maintenance Operations. Schindler Elevator Corporation: Fred Blakeley, Joseph Knolmajer; ESRI, Inc.: Burcin Bozkaya; Buyang Cao; Wolfgang Hall.
· Syngenta Seeds: An Optimization Model for Matching Supply and Demand for Hybrid Seed Corn. Syngenta Seeds, Inc.: Greg Kegler; University of Iowa: Philip C. Jones; Timothy J. Lowe; North Dakota State University: Rodney D. Traub. The competition is being held at an INFORMS conference, "Analyzing and Enhancing the Extended Enterprise," which takes place at the Hilton Montreal Bonaventure from May 19 - 21. Information about the conference is online at http://www.informs.org/Conf/Practice2002 Additional information about the finalists is available online at http://www.informs.org/Press/Montreal02b.htm All the finalist papers will be published in the January 2003 issue of the INFORMS publication Interfaces.
INFORMS is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. This is the 31st 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 Merrill Lynch; American Airlines; IBM; AT&T; and Sabre Technology and SNCF, the French national railroad.
The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS®) is an international scientific society with over 10,000 members dedicated to applying scientific methods to aid 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. 2002 is the 50th anniversary of organized operations research in the United States. 1952 was the year that the journal Operations Research and the Operations Research Society of America, one of the founding societies of INFORMS, were born. The INFORMS website is at http://www.informs.org.