OR/MS Today - February 2001

February 2001

INFORMS News:
OR In The News

What They're Saying About Operations Research

Several articles in the media last fall examined the often unheralded contributions made by operations researchers and the OR field. Some examples:

"Today more than ever, OR techniques are impacting the corporate bottom line. And IT managers can deliver the technology to make it happen.

"The term operations research dates to the late 1930s, when British and U.S. mathematicians developed ways to conduct research on military operations. For decades afterward, these powerful OR techniques saw little use at most firms.

"But that's changing, as more companies use OR to improve operational efficiencies and increase revenue yields. Two forces are driving the surge in use: OR practitioners have gotten smarter at applying their tools, and corporate IT is now giving OR specialist the computational resources and databases they need. Indeed, experts say, the most successful companies will be those where OR and IT have established strong bonds of collaboration."

— Computerworld, Nov. 20, 2000

"U.S. trucking companies will compete successfully with Mexican trucking companies. A recent study by Arizona State University Industrial Engineering Professor J. Rene Villalobos reports that U.S. trucking companies can move a typical load of 45,000 pounds 500 miles per day at a cost of $1 per mile.

"The cost in Mexico is $1.60 per mile, Villalobos said during a presentation in San Antonio at the conference held last month by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences."

— San Antonio Express News, Dec. 6, 2000

"TransGuide might not seem so smart to motorists when they're simply told about congestion. But such systems will get much more sophisticated, said Hani Mahmassani, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin. "Mahmassani, in San Antonio for a convention of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, is on a team working on the next evolution of traffic management.

"They're taking data collected by TransGuide — a system Mahmassani said is probably the best in the world — and other systems in Houston and Fort Worth and are creating ways to integrate the vast number of variables."

— San Antonio Express News, Nov. 7, 2000

"Individuals at risk for myocardial infarction displayed an understanding of the symptoms of an impending MI and were more likely to initiate emergency medical care after playing a virtual reality computer game designed to improve heart attack recognition and response skills.

"In the 15-minute 'Heart-Sense' game, users enter a village where people display different complaints and conditions and some are having heart attacks, said Professor Barry G. Silverman, of the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia. 'The user recognizes the symptoms and acts to help…by initiating [virtual] 911 calls,' Silverman explained on Monday at a convention of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Science (INFORMS) in San Antonio, Texas.

— Reuters Health, Nov. 7, 2000

"An experimental interactive game could save lives by teaching potential heart attack victims to react swiftly at the first sign of a heart attack, according to a paper being presented at a convention of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS).

"The paper, 'The use of virtual worlds and animated personas to improve health care knowledge & self-care behavior: The Heart Sense Game,' is by Barry G. Silverman and John Holmes of the University of Pennsylvania. They spoke at the conference on Nov. 6, 2000.

— NewsRx.com, Nov. 19, 2000

"Planes running into each other at U.S. airports could kill up to 800 passengers in the next 20 years, a result of too much traffic, poor visibility and other problems, researchers announced today.

"Based on the report's findings, the Federal Aviation Administration is already making changes that may reduce the number of projected deaths, says the study's lead author, Arnold I. Barnett, George Eastman Professor of Management Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management. But no one knows how the changes will affect problems like dramatically increased airport traffic and low visibility, which are projected to cause 15 runway collisions between 2003 and 2022.

— HealthScout, Nov. 6, 2000

"Runway collisions similar to the Taiwan jumbo-jet crash last week could kill hundreds of people at major American airports over the next two decades, two experts warn in a study being presented today.

" 'Recent patterns indicate roughly 15 fatal runway collisions over 2003-2022 at towered U.S. airports. Most of these accidents would involve at least one large jet plane,' said management experts Arnold Barnett and Gary Paull.

"Given the recent good safety record of U.S. domestic flights 'it's conceivable that U.S. runway crashes during this period could cause more deaths (between 700 and 800) and serious injuries (more than 200) than all others causes combined,' the researchers said in a report prepared for the Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences meeting being held in San Antonio this week."

— The Plain Dealer, Nov. 6, 2000

" 'Those who warn about runway collisions are not crying wolf; rather they reflect the foresight that has made aviation safety in Westernized nations the eighth wonder of the world,' Barnett said. 'There is no doubt that the threat of runway collisions is receiving urgent attention by government and industry.' "

— New Haven Register, Nov. 6, 2000

"To figure out how to distribute a line of construction machines aimed at what is, for [Caterpillar], a new market populated by very impatient customers, the company asked a university's operations research professors to find answers using arcane algorithms and high-speed computers. The calculating resulted in a speedy, inventory-saving delivery system."

— Fortune, Oct. 30, 2000

" 'The field we represent is called operation research and it really dates back to World War Two when people began look at systems for code breaking, developing radar or getting troops to the right place at the right time,' said Professor Martin Puterman, the director of the [Centre for Operations Excellence] at UBC's commerce department.

"The program is a 16-month masters of science course for students with high skills in computer science, math, statistics, engineering or economics and has been operating for three years.

" 'It's the most exciting thing we have going,' Puterman said.

" 'These students are solving major problems for large companies and any company would drool at the opportunity to hire them,' he said."

— The Vancouver Sun, Oct. 4, 2000

"Large companies that adopt strict global environmental standards in developing countries are rewarded with higher stock market performance, according to a study published Thursday in a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). These finds run contrary to the widespread belief that multinational corporations suffer from environmental regulation.

"… The researchers examined 89 manufacturing and mining companies headquartered in the United States that are included in the Standard and Poor's 500 Index. Only multinational enterprises that had production operations in countries with Gross Domestic Product per capita below $8,000 were included in the study.

"Of the companies examined, firms choosing to employ their own strict global environmental standard abroad are found to have an individual value of $10.4 billion higher than those using less stringent U.S. standards."

— Environmental News Service, Sept. 1, 2000

" 'This paper refutes the idea that adoption of global environmental standards by multinational enterprises constitutes a liability that depresses market value,' the authors write. 'On the contrary, the evidence from our analysis indicates that positive market valuation is associated with the adoption of a single stringent environmental standard around the world.'

"The study also warns developing countries that using lax environmental regulations to attract foreign direct investment may bring them poorer quality, less competitive firms."

— Knight-Ridder Tribune Business News, Sept. 10, 2000

"A proposed new system for assigning kidneys to patients waiting for transplants would reduce the median waiting time for transplantation from approximately 24 to 14 months and improve equity for blacks and women, according to the author of a study published in the July/August issue of Operations Research, a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. The proposal, an alternative to the system currently employed by the United Network of Organ Sharing (UNOS), would also increase the overall likelihood of transplantation from 45 percent to 61 percent and increase quality-adjusted life expectancy from 32.7 months to 33.9 months."

— San Antonio Medical Gazette, Aug. 17, 2000

Compiled by Barry List, director of Public Relations, INFORMS

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