Past Awards
The 2016 INFORMS Prize is awarded to General Motors for its sustained track record of innovative and impactful applied operations research and advanced analytics.
General Motors has hundreds of OR/MS practitioners worldwide who play a vital role in driving data-driven decisions in everything from designing, building, selling and servicing vehicles to purchasing, logistics, and quality. The team is constantly developing new business models and vetting emerging opportunities.
GM has developed new market research and analysis techniques to understand what products and features customers most want, to determine the ideal vehicles for their dealers to stock, and to identify the steps they can take to achieve GM’s goal of creating customers for life.
GM is also leading the industry by using data science and advanced analytics to predict failure of automotive components and systems before customers are inconvenienced. GM’s industry-first Proactive Alert messages notify customers through their OnStar system of a possible malfunction, transforming a potential emergency repair into routine planned maintenance.
“Over the last seven decades, OR/MS techniques have been used to improve our understanding of everything from traffic science and supply chain logistics to manufacturing productivity, product development, vehicles telematics and prognostics,” said Gary Smyth, executive director of GM Global R&D Laboratories. “These approaches to problem solving permeate almost everything we do.”
The impact OR/MS is now having on its business accelerated in 2007, when GM created a center of expertise for Operations Research to promote best practices and transfer new technologies. It since has expanded to include partner teams in product development, supply chain, finance, information technology and other functions.