VANCOUVER, BC, April 12, 2007 – Five major organizations will compete for the 2007 Franz Edelman Award for Achievement in Operations Research in Vancouver at the end of this month.
The winner of the Franz Edelman competition will be announced at a special awards banquet during The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS®) Conference on O.R. Practice in Vancouver from April 29-May 1. http://meetings.informs.org/Practice07/
This is the first time since 1989 that the competition is being held in Vancouver and the first time that the competition is taking place in Canada since the 2002 competition in Montreal, where Continental Airlines won the award for an innovative disaster recovery plan that was presented in the wake of the 9-11 attacks.
Every year, the Franz Edelman competition recognizes outstanding examples of operations research (O.R.)-based projects that have transformed companies, entire industries, and people’s lives. O.R. 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, in nearly any type of organization in the public or private sector.
Previous Franz Edelman Award winners include Canadian Pacific Railway, Motorola, Merrill Lynch, and IBM.
The competition will take place throughout the day at the Sheraton Wall Centre in Vancouver on Monday, April 30. The winner will be announced at a banquet in the Grand Ballroom of the Sheraton. The banquet begins at 7:30 PM; the announcement will be made at approximately 9:15 PM.
Ranging widely in industry and geographic origin, the 2007 Franz Edelman finalists are:
- Coca-Cola Enterprises, for a project entitled “Optimizing Distribution at Coca-Cola Enterprises” (The Coca-Cola team presentation will take place April 30 at 9:10 AM in the Sheraton, Pavilion Ballroom D)
- The U.S. Coast Guard, for “Maximizing Aircraft Availability by Managing Aircraft Maintenance Throughput at the U.S. Coast Guard Aircraft Repair and Supply Center” (The Coast Guard team presentation will take place April 30 at 10:30 AM in the Sheraton, Pavilion Ballroom D)
- Hewlett-Packard, for “Procurement Risk Management at Hewlett-Packard Company” (The HP team presentation will take place April 30 at 10:30 AM in the Sheraton, Pavilion Ballroom D)
- Chrysler Group and J.D. Power and Associates for “PIN Incentive Planning System: A Decision Support System for Planning Automobile Manufacturers' Pricing and Promotions” (The DaimlerChryler team presentation will take place April 30 at 2 PM in the Sheraton, Pavilion Ballroom D)
- Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center for “Operations Research Answers to Cancer Therapeutics” (The Sloan-Kettering team presentation will take place April 30 at 3:30 PM in the Sheraton, Pavilion Ballroom D)
Operations research is the application of advanced analytical methods to help make better decisions.
Additional information about the Edelman Competition is 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.
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