OR/MS Today - February 2003 FORum An Immodest Proposal to Brand the Profession By Gene Woolsey A little more than 10 years ago, Tom Sheehan, the executive director of the American Production and Inventory Control Society (APICS), thought that the Society needed to be renamed and refocused. Without further ado, and nodding to all the diversity gods, he formed a blue ribbon task force to "look into these questions." Somehow, I was included, probably because I was the sitting editor of the Production & Inventory Management Journal at that time. At our first session we spent two days defining, arguing and debating, with the following result: We suggested that, in the future, the abbreviation APICS should become a logo with no particular association with words at all. The letterheads should look like: APICS The Educational Society for Resource Management Tom thanked us for our work, reported our findings to the APICS board which: (a) buried our report, and (b) did not renew Tom as executive director. The board was simply reacting to the outraged howl of the membership that thought that they were, by damn, production & inventory control people. They had joined APICS because we were the American Production & Inventory Control Society. However, time passed and the letterhead now reads exactly what we proposed some years before. Right now INFORMS is going through the same process, feverishly searching for the right brand name for the profession. A "Branding" session was held at the INFORMS meeting in San Jose. At the session, Gary Lilien reported that his committee had surveyed members and discovered that people like the terms "operations research" and "management science." The problem begins when they are required to explain what they do! I long ago learned that when someone asked me what I did, and I replied that I do "operations research" or "management science," that the next question was usually "What the #$%&* is that?" I then decided to define some rules for my job definition which follow: The definition should be so clear that the question: "What's that?" never happens. The definition should be so useful that the questioner says, "Wow, really? Where can I get some of that in my field?" Now Dr. Lilien's survey showed great love for the words "operations research" and "management science," but the study also hinted that we have to explain the terms further. May I immodestly suggest a letterhead that says: INFORMS The Process Improvement People or INFORMS The Process Improvement Society So when someone asks what we do, we tell them that we do process improvement. You then ask what they do, listen and quickly respond with a recent process improvement example in their field that either: saved millions of dollars or increased profits by millions of dollars, and/or had tremendous impact on managerial policy in the company or agency. (Also offer to send this person a relevant article from Interfaces.) The method outlined above does two things at once: It spares having to explain what we do, AND It just may acquire us a new client or a prospective student to study OR/MS and increase either: (a) our income, or (b) the interest in and/or membership of the profession. In short, if you ask me what I do, I'll tell you that I and my colleagues: do measurable, provable, process improvement, teach it to others at a university, and my professional society is called: INFORMS The Process Improvement People Gene Woolsey is professor of Economics and Business at the Colorado School of Mines. Table of Contents OR/MS Today Home Page OR/MS Today copyright © 2003 by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. All rights reserved. Lionheart Publishing, Inc. 506 Roswell Rd., Suite 220, Marietta, GA 30060 USA Phone: 770-431-0867 | Fax: 770-432-6969 E-mail: lpi@lionhrtpub.com URL: http://www.lionhrtpub.com Web Site © Copyright 2003 by Lionheart Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.