December 1996 € Volume 23 € Number 6

Call for Papers

Special Issue of Interfaces

Strategy formulation and strategy decisions are the focus of major efforts of senior executives. Interfaces plans to publish a special issue devoted to the modeling and analysis that enables and supports the critical choices behind strategy formulation and strategy decisions.

Ideal papers would employ strategy frameworks and relate to strategy concepts such as sources of sustainable competitive advantage, value chain analysis, competitor and industry analysis, critical capabilities, value creation, innovation, strategic intent and portfolio of businesses. The editors are looking for papers that use or describe modeling and analysis, broadly defined to include approaches such as decision analysis, financial valuation, game theory, influence diagramming, information theory, option valuation, risk modeling, scenario analysis, and new frameworks for analysis. Application papers, cases or business history describing success or failure, tutorials on state-of-the-art practice and methods, updates on consulting and management training, are all welcome, provided they address practice rather than promote approaches that have not been used.

Submit papers by June 30, 1997, in the Interfaces format. All papers will be peer-reviewed and the applications will be verified. Submit five copies of each paper and address inquiries to either of the special issue editors:

Ą Visiting Professor Samuel E. Bodily, Dept. Of Engineering-Economic Systems/Operations Research, Stanford University; Stanford, CA 54305-4025; phone: (415) 725-1875; e-mail: BodilyS@virginia.edu

Ą Professor Elizabeth Olmsted Teisberg, Darden Graduate Business School, University of Virginia, Box 6550, Charlottesville, VA 22906; phone: 804-243-7689; e-mail: TeisbergE@virginia.edu

San Diego INFORMS Sessions

Building on the success and popularity of the Washington, D.C., sessions on teaching (with 50+ people attending the majority of the sessions) the INFORMS Education Forum is soliciting sessions and papers for the San Diego INFORMS, May 4-7, 1997.

Anything related to teaching (broadly defined) is of potential interest.

In addition, we are looking for speakers on the following specific topics:

Using projects to teach OR/MS
Teaching OR/MS with spreadsheets
Heresies and Myths
Teaching Undergraduates
Using Cases

If you are interested in contributing, please contact Tom Grossman (VP-Meetings, INFORMS Education Forum), Faculty of Management, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2N 1N4; phone: (403) 220-8478; fax: (403) 282-0095; e-mail: grossman@mgmt.ucalgary.ca

For more information, check out the INFORMED Web page at http://www. ualberta.ca/~informed

EURO Best Applied Paper 1997

EURO welcomes the submission of papers for the 1997 best applied paper competition. Submitted papers should describe a successful application of operational research in practice. The applications can be in any area of interest. The finals of the competition will be held at the 1997 INFORMS/EURO XV Conference in Barcelona, Spain. The prize, consisting of a medal and a certificate, will be awarded at the closing ceremony of the conference. Also, full papers that satisfy the editorial requirements will be published in a feature issue of European Journal of Operational Research.

Submitted papers should contain a well organized description of a case study including the operational research methodology (model formulations, algorithms) applied in the context of this study. The costs and (in)tangible benefits related to the application of operational research methodology should be indicated as clearly as possible in the paper. Papers should satisfy the instructions to the authors which can be found in most issues of European Journal of Operational Research.

Authors who want to enter the competition should submit a complete package containing three copies of the full paper (which cannot have been entered in other competitions, nor may it be submitted for publication elsewhere); a separate sheet containing the title of the paper along with the names, postal addresses, telephone numbers and e-mail addresses of the author(s); and another separate sheet containing the name(s), postal addresses, telephone numbers and e-mail addresses of contact person(s) at companies and/or institutions where the application took place. The authors agree that during the review process these persons may be contacted by the jury.

Deadline for submission is Feb. 28, 1997. Packages should be submitted to the chairman of the jury: Professor Marc Salomon, Tilburg University, Faculty of Economics, Department of Econometrics, P.O. Box 90153, 5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands. Further information regarding the competition can be obtained from Marc Salomon via e-mail: M.Salomon@ fac.fbk.eur.nl

PATAT '97

The 2nd international conference on the Practice And Theory of Automated Timetabling will be held Aug. 20-22, 1997, at the University of Toronto, Canada. This conference will serve as a forum for an international community of researchers, practitioners and vendors on all aspects of computer-aided timetable generation. The themes of the conference include (but are not limited to):

Complexity issues
Distributed timetabling systems
Experiences
Implementations
Commercial packages
Interactive vs. batch timetabling
Relationship with other scheduling problems
Techniques, including: Constraint Logic Programming, Genetic Algorithms, Graph Coloring, Expert Systems, Knowledge Based Systems, Operational Research, Simulated Annealing, Tabu-search.

All submissions should include a cover page which states clearly: the names of the authors; the contact person and address; e-mail address (if you have one); keywords; the category of submission (full paper or abstract). Deadline for submission is Jan. 15,1997. For more information, contact: Dr. E.K.Burke, Department of Computer Science, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, U.K.; e-mail: ekb@cs.nott.ac.uk

Special Issue of Transportation Science

Transportation Science seeks original contributions for a special issue focused on yield management in the field of transportation. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: seat inventory control, network revenue management, passenger demand forecasting, bid-price methods for network control, tactical pricing decisions, overbooking, group booking, revenue-based capacity planning (scheduling/network design), and emerging applications.

All papers will be reviewed in accordance with the standards of Transportation Science. Four copies of the manuscript, following the guidelines for Transportation Science, should be mailed by March 31, 1997, to either of the following:

Jeff McGill, 99 University Avenue, School of Business, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada K7L 3N6; phone: (613) 545-2357; fax: (613) 545-6589; e-mail: mcgillj@post.queensu.ca

Garrett van Ryzin, 412 Uris Hall, Columbia Graduate School of Business, Columbia University, New York, NY, 10027; phone: (212) 854-4280; fax: (212) 316-9180; e-mail: gvanryzi@research.gsb.columbia.edu

Journal of Applied Mathematics and Decision Sciences

Submissions are sought for a new publication -- The Journal of Applied Mathematics and Decision Sciences -- which is devoted to the practical problems of mathematics, operations research and statistics. The goal of the Journal is to rapidly publish carefully refereed papers treating practical problems of mathematics, operations research and statistics without compromising mathematical precision.

Topics to be covered include: theory and application of mathematical programming; heuristic methods in operations research; mathematical modeling of geothermal, environmental, socio-economic and biological systems; reliability and quality control; stochastic systems; and numerical methods and analysis.

More information may be obtained via the Journal's WWW page at: http://fims-www.massey.ac.nz/maths/jamds/

Special Issue of Computers & Operations Research

Computers & Operations Research will publish a special issue on the "Traveling Salesman Problem." Papers are sought in the broad area of the traveling salesman problem and its variations which discuss computational and/or algorithmic aspects. In particular, we are soliciting papers on computational study of exact and/or heuristic algorithms, analysis of heuristics, domination analysis and exponential neighborhoods, problems with special structures, new applications, etc.

Four copies of submitted papers, following the standard Computers & Operations Research guidelines, should be sent by March 1997 to Dr. Abraham Punnen, Department of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science, University of New Brunswick, St. John, New Brunswick, Canada E2L 4L5.

IMA International Conference

Papers are sought for the third Institute of Mathematics and Its Applications (IMA) International conference on Mathematics in Industrial Maintenance to be held April 6-8, 1998, at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.

This event will be supported by the U.K. Operational Research Society. The theme of the conference will be the application of mathematics, operational research and statistical modeling to problems of industrial maintenance, where "industrial" is given a broad definition. In addition to industry, the maintenance of assets such as vehicle fleets, high rise buildings, housing estates, rolling stock and ships will be included along with management issues, logistic support and manpower models. Of particular interest will be case-related papers where the complex issues of model validation and verification have been addressed. Theoretical papers representing a definite advance in knowledge and understanding will also be welcome.

The deadline for receipt of a two-page abstract to be used for the selection of papers is Jan. 15, 1997.

Those interested in submitting a paper for the conference should contact one of the following conference co-chairman: Professor L. C. Thomas FIMA, Department of Business Studies, University of Edinburgh, William Robertson Building, 50 George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9JY; phone: 0131 650 3798; fax: 0131 668 3053 or Professor A. H. Christer, Centre for OR & Applied Statistics, Department of Mathematics & Computer Science, University of Salford, Salford M5 4WT Lancs; phone: 0161 745 5000, ext. 4022; fax: 0161 745 5559.

Koopman Prize

The Military Applications Section of INFORMS announces the 1996 competition for the Koopman Prize. This prize honors Bernard Koopman with a $500 award and a certificate for the best military operations research paper published in calendar year 1996. "Published" is a defined very loosely to mean anything from appearance in or acceptance by a refereed journal, to appearance as an approved in-house working paper. Entrants may submit their own paper or they may be nominated by others. Entrants do not have to be a member of the Society. Send four copies of a paper to be entered by Feb. 1, 1997 to: N. Keith Womer, Department of Economics and Finance, University of Mississippi, University, MS 38677; e-mail: womer@bus.olemiss.edu; Phone: (601)232-7076.

Special issue of the Journal of Multicriteria Decision Analysis

The Journal of Multicriteria Decision Analysis is planning a special issue on sensitivity analysis.The issue will include developments in all areas of sensitivity analysis in MCDA from theoretical foundations to algorithmic developments for specific multicriteria methods. Of special interest are descriptions of case studies in which sensitivity analysis techniques have proven instrumental in improving the quality of decisions.

Submissions (four copies) should be sent by Sept. 15, 1997, to guest editor David Rios Insua, Department of Artificial Intelligence, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid Campus de Montegancedo 28660 Madrid, Spain; phone: 34-1-3366596; fax: 34-1-3524819; e-mail: drios@fi.upm.es

Submissions should conform to JMCDA guidelines. JMCDA guidelines may be obtained from the guest editor or at the back of JMCDA issues.

E-mail to the Editorial Department of OR/MS Today: orms@lionhrtpub.com

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