The Operations Research / Management Science Blog

INFORMS, the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, announced on Feb 7 the six finalists that will compete for the 2008 Franz Edelman Award for Achievement in Operations Research and the Management Sciences in Baltimore on Apr 14.

The Finalists

1. The Federal Aviation Administration
   Airspace Flow Programs
   A tool known as Airspace Flow Programs (AFP) developed by FAA in 2006 gives them the ability to control the activities in crowded airspace through different ground delays issued to different flights. AFP limits the number of flights passing through a part of airspace to manageable levels. AFP, which cost less than $2 million to develop, brought a total benefit of $50.5 million in 2006 and $67.5 million in 2007. This is another case of solving air traffic problems due to disruptions, as discussed in a previous post which was about another software called CrewSolver.
2. Netherlands Railways
   The New Dutch Timetable: The O.R. Revolution
   In response to the growing delays of the Dutch passenger railway network due to the dramatic increase in the volume of traffic in 2006, Operations Researchers developed a recurring timetable allowing the schedule to be repeated hourly. The development of the timetable falls under the category of combinatorial optimization problems. In 2007, both the number of passengers and the percentage of the trains arriving within 3 minutes of the scheduled time hit all-time high records. This resulted in more positive public opinion as well as an annual additional profit of 40 million Euros ($60 million).
3. StatoilHydro and Gassco
   Optimizing the Offshore Pipeline System for Natural Gas in the North Sea
   As the world’s largest offshore pipeline network, the network for transportation of natural gas on the Norwegian continental shelf is responsible for delivering approximately 15% of natural gas consumption in Europe. Better tools were needed to analyze the network, determine optimal operations and ensure security of the the supply of gas. OR professionals at SINTEF developed a tool named GassOpt, which is used to provide decision support for planning, checking out gas stream mixing scenarios and the annual operations and maintenance. The OR tool brought an estimated overall saving of 10 billion Norwegian kroner ($1.8 billion).
4. The City of Stockholm, Sweden
   Operations Research (O.R.) Improves Quality and Efficiency in Social Care and Home Help
   One of the problems that elderly care systems face is increased costs, due to the growing percentage of the elderly in the total population. One reason for these costs is the many customized aspects of scheduling home help care workers. A system named Laps Care which uses OR modeling was adopted throughout the City of Stockholm in 2006 and eliminated the need of manual planning around the needs of individual workers and the elderly. The scheduling and routing for 4,000 home help care workers every day is done with the system by more than 200 organizations, resulting in a 10-15% estimated increase in operational efficiency, a corresponding annul saving of 20-30 million Euros ($30-$45 million) and better service to the elderly.
5. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
   Reducing Security Risks in American Drinking Water Systems
   The drinking water system in the United States is vulnerable to terrorist acts such as contamination with deadly agents due to its layout design. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) developed a Sensor Placement Optimization Tool (TEVA-SPOT) for designing contamination warning systems to quickly detect potential terrorist threats to the nation’s water supply. The TEVA-SPOT software tool is capable of running on ordinary desktop computers in minutes to hours. The results are an up to 90% reduce in health impacts from terrorist attacks and billions of dollars of reduction on consequent economic costs.
6. Xerox
   LDP Lean Document Production - Dramatic Productivity Improvements for the Printing Industry
   The increasing demand on product variety and complexity in the printing industry called for more effective scheduling approaches that lead to higher productivity and efficiency of print shops. Xerox LDP Lean Document Production, a simulation-based print production operational framework, utilizes autonomous cells and a hierarchical dynamic scheduling architecture to route and process jobs. The framework enabled significant productivity and cost improvements for print shops and led to an estimated profit increase of $200 million.

This is the 37th year of the Franz Edelman competition, which attests to the contributions of operations research in the profit and non-profit sectors. The top finalist will receive a $10,000 honorarium at the awards banquet on April 14 at Applying Science to the Art of Business: the 2008 INFORMS Conference on OR/MS Practice in Baltimore. The video below is a nice and short introduction to the Edelman award.

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References
“World’s best analysts compete to win Edelman Prize in operations research and analytics” by INFORMS, FirstScience News, Feb 7, 2008
“Competition To Win Edelman Prize In Operations Research And Analytics” by INFORMS, Medical News Today, Feb 8, 2008
“World’s Best Analysts - Edelman Prize Competition in Operations Research & Analytics”, INFORMS, Feb 7, 2008
“Learn About O.R. and the Edelman Award” by INFORMSonline, YouTube, July 2007