bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Selecting Employees for Random Drug Tests at Union Pacific Railroad
Authors: Meyer Jennifer L. , Savory Paul A.
Published: October 2008

Many industries have recently implemented programs to detect and deter the use of recreational drugs in the workplace. The transportation industry has received careful government attention, particularly where the safety of the public may be seriously affected by employees who use drugs. Following federal guidelines, Union Pacific Railroad first implemented a random drug-testing plan in 1990. Because the assigned jobs, shifts, and work locations of many railroad employees change frequently, defining the selection population was particularly challenging. In its continuing efforts to validate and improve this plan, Union Pacific Railroad sought an external evaluation to determine the fairness of its selection procedures. Based on our evaluation, Union Pacific Railroad improved two key aspects of its selection process. We confirmed the fairness of the modified process for selecting employees.
Automatic Optimization of Subproblems in Scheduling Airline Crews
Authors: Housos Efthymios , Elmroth Tony
Published: October 2008

Scheduling crews is critical to operating an airline. We developed a selection process for selecting subproblems that reduces the size of the problems solved and improves the quality of the solutions. By focusing on solving the weekly and fully dated crew-scheduling problems, we developed a natural methodology for solving subproblems that calculates all the possible connections of one day while fixing the connections of all the other days. Results with large fleets of many carriers show that this process produces superior solutions to the weekly and fully dated problems even if the daily solution of the crew-scheduling problem is not available. Improving the weekly and fully dated problems provides significant benefit and flexibility to the crew-scheduling process. Most important, our method allows for the continuous maintenance and support of the solution close to the actual day of operation. Traditionally, airlines have fully optimized the daily solution, while optimizing the weekly solution manually. The method is in use at Lufthansa, SAS, Alitalia, and KLM and is producing excellent results for the weekly and fully dated crew-scheduling problems.
ETC Measures the Impact of ISO 9002 on Corporate Quality
Authors: Aksoy Yasemin , Schaedel Peter G.
Published: October 2008

In March 1995, the Energy Transportation Corporation (ETC), a major shipper of liquefied natural gas in the Far East, instituted a multiattribute evaluation procedure to measure the impact of its ISO 9002 certification. A decision analyst and three top level managers—the president, the senior vice-president of operations, and the vice-president of corporate quality—adopted a broad definition of a customer (any stakeholder) and identified all major stakeholders in ETC's operations. Next, they defined the most important value attributes in serving these stakeholders as quality indicators. For each indicator, they determined an importance weight and assessed the level of improvement since the ISO 9002 initiative began in early 1993. A final aggregation showed that ETC's efforts concerning ISO 9002 had improved corporate quality by about 10 percent in the judgment of the managers. ETC used the study to better prioritize its use of available resources for continuous improvement projects.
Finding the Yellow Brick Road: Part 7, I Finally Have a Brain!
Authors: Powell Warren B. , Mayoras Donald E.
Published: October 2008

Sometimes, there is more truth in fiction than in publicly available accounts. This story by Warren B. Powell, a leading researcher of real-time routing and scheduling models and frequent consultant to the motor carrier industry, and Donald E. Mayoras, a senior transportation executive and president of a trucking company, provides a view into the discussions many carriers undertake prior to adopting an optimization model. The account is too long to appear as a single article and instead is being published in serial form. This is the seventh installment.
Creativity in OR/MS: The Creative Problem-Solving Process—Part 2
Authors: Evans James R.
Published: October 2008

The second part of the author's discussion of creative problem-solving techniques covering problem finding, idea finding, solution finding, and acceptance finding.
Bombardier Turned to Simulation to Validate the CF-18 Maintenance Program
Authors: Gharbi Ali , Girard Jean , Pellerin Robert , Villeneuve Laurent
Published: October 2008

The Canadair Defence Systems Division (DSD) is responsible for making all major repairs and modifications on the Canadian fighter CF-18. Although the work varies, DSD must establish a maintenance program each year that specifies estimated starting and ending dates for every maintenance project. It modifies this program constantly during the year because of discrepancies between planned and actual project duration. To improve the accuracy of its plan, DSD used simulation to assess the influence of uncertainty on project delivery dates. Managers can now rely on an accurate risk-analysis tool when making strategic decisions.
An Application of Discrete-Event Simulation for Batch-Process Chemical-Plant Design
Authors: Watson Edward F.
Published: October 2008

Operating a batch-processing chemical-plant efficiently is difficult. Chemical processes require specialized equipment that is sensitive to precise operating conditions and subject to strict quality conformance. Chemical formulations having unique attributes require the simultaneous use of multiple resources to process and move products through the plant. One of our clients used a generic simulation model we developed to help design and operate a multimillion-dollar batch-process chemical facility. Our client used the model to evaluate the impact of many complex issues—such as scheduling policy, inventory policy, resource sizing and configuration, operator schedules, and processing capability—for a proposed process facility. The client used the model to identify throughput issues related to new plant designs and to evaluate proposed improvements prior to implementation, thus saving considerable cost and time.
Production Scheduling in the Snack-Food Industry
Authors: Portougal Victor
Published: October 2008

To solve a scheduling problem in a food-processing company where production is organized as a flow shop, I applied a theoretical scheduling approach that realized cost savings.
Model World: OR is the Bridge to the 21st Century
Authors: Gass Saul I.
Published: October 2008

A slightly edited version of the author's address about the past and future of OR at the opening plenary session of the Seventh Mini-EURO conference held in Bruges, Belgium, March 24–27, 1997, with the topic “Decision support systems, groupware, and multimedia electronic commerce.”
The Fifth Column: A Test for Recruitment Reliability or Convincing a General What's Right When it's Greek to Him
Authors: Woolsey Robert E. D. , Astle William R.
Published: October 2008

Discussions of appropriateness of an aptitude test given to prospective recruits into the military to determine their intellectual fitness.
Franz Edelman Award for Management Science Achievement
Authors: Strauss Stephen A. , Graves Stephen C.
Published: October 2008

This issue of Interfaces presents the finalists and winners of the 26th annual competition for the Franz Edelman Award for Achievement in Operations Research and the Management Sciences, the profession's prestigious award for the practice of operations research and the management sciences. Stephen A. Strauss, chairman of the competition, and Stephen C. Graves, editor of the special issue, provide an overview of the competition and introduce the finalists and winner.
Hewlett-Packard Uses Operations Research to Improve the Design of a Printer Production Line
Authors: Burman Mitchell , Gershwin Stanley B. , Suyematsu Curtis
Published: October 2008

As Hewlett-Packard Corporation installed a system for manufacturing ink-jet printers in Vancouver, Washington, in 1993, it realized that the system would not be fast enough or reliable enough to meet its production goals. At the time, the market for ink-jet printers was exploding, and any incremental printer shipments would translate directly into market share and revenue gains. The company undertook a simulation project to develop recommendations for design changes to improve the system performance but concluded that that project would take too long to be useful. MIT researchers used analytical methods to predict capacity and to determine the sizes and locations of buffers that would increase capacity at the cost of a minor increase in inventory. HP's implementation of this work yielded incremental revenues of about $280 million in printer sales and additional revenues from ancillary products, replacement ink-jet cartridges, media, and related items. Productivity increased about 50 percent, making the assembly of the print engine cost competitive. Finally, HP developed a method of creating rapid and effective system designs in the future.
Positioning for a Competitive Electric Industry with PG&E's Hydro-Thermal Optimization Model
Authors: Johnson Raymond B. , Svoboda Alva J. , Greif Claudia , Vojdani Ali , Zhuang Fulin
Published: October 2008

The Hydro-Thermal Optimization (HTO) system optimizes the weekly electric production schedules of Pacific Gas and Electric Company's diverse resource mix. PG&E developed HTO to reduce operating costs, forecast marginal costs, and position itself for competition. PG&E implemented the system after extensive prototyping and validation and uses HTO daily for unit commitment, hydro scheduling, energy trading, fuel forecasting, resource evaluation, and marginal cost-based pricing. PG&E estimates annual benefits of HTO conservatively at $15 million. On a broader scale, PG&E has used HTO to analyze auction protocols for a deregulated power market and demonstrated that use of HTO-like tools to administer a power auction, as is done in the UK, could result in profit distribution inequities among bidders. HTO thus enabled PG&E to support a profound change in California's restructuring of the electric industry, from the proposed UK-type pool to a decentralized decision-making framework in which bidders optimize their own operations. As a result, California's $20 billion electric-power market will realize increased efficiencies and savings for both taxpayers and consumers.
Practice Abstract
Authors: Keefer Donald L.
Published: October 2008

We developed an optimization model for scheduling work, workers, and machines at the check-processing facility of Signet Bank, a $12 billion financial institution based in Richmond, Virginia.
The Occasional Observer: Market Structure Matters—The Case of Academic Journals
Authors: Murphy Frederic H.
Published: October 2008

Academics talk about the marketplace of ideas. We use this as a metaphor. However, there is a real market out there since the publication of academic journals makes up a major segment of the must-have market for giant publishers. The structure of this market has serious implications for our access to information and budget consequences for professional societies and university libraries.
An Efficient, Objective Technique for Selecting an All-Star Team
Authors: Hurley W. J.
Published: October 2008

Up to 1995, all-star selection in the Ontario-Quebec Intercollegiate Football Conference was accomplished with a head coaches' meeting that took up most of the Sunday before the conference semifinal play-off games. There were two difficulties with this system. First, coaches involved in the play-off games the next Saturday lost a day of game planning. Second, there were assistant coaches who felt this “horse-trading” session was not very objective. The implementation of a Borda voting scheme solves both these problems.
Can't See the Forest Because of the Decision Trees: A Critique of Decision Analysis in Survey Texts
Authors: Chelst Kenneth
Published: October 2008

Introductory survey texts in operations research and management science have one or two chapters on decision analysis. They vary little from text to text in the topics covered, focusing largely on the analytic aspects of decision analysis. Their authors ignore key elements of decision analysis and the barriers to its use. As a result, they provide little insight as to how decision analysis is used in the real world as part of an intuition-building process and as a communication tool. In a critical review of their presentations, I identify crucial missing or cursorily reviewed topics and emphasize the need for a structured approach that incorporates probabilistic concepts and trade-offs amongst objectives. I present an annotated list of references and a new outline for a six-hour overview of decision analysis (not including multiple objectives) as part of a semester-long OR/MS survey course.
The Mover-Stayer Model for the HIV/AIDS Epidemic in Action
Authors: Rossi Carla , Schinaia Giuseppe
Published: October 2008

Short- and medium-term projections of the HIV/AIDS epidemic indicators are of great interest to those evaluating the needs for health care and prevention interventions. We developed a simulation procedure to obtain forecasts of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and used it to estimate the characteristic regional parameters of the epidemic in Italy. The simulation procedure is based on a hybrid compartmental model, in which the epidemic evolves via nonrandom mixing patterns. Because of its structure, the model is suitable for policy making; in particular, for evaluating prevention campaigns, alternate forms of health care for people with AIDS, and drug supply needs. The model will also be used to estimate the number of intravenous drug users in Italy and the number of AIDS cases not reported or reported with a delay to the Italian surveillance system.
Editorial: Personal OR/MS
Authors: Rothkopf Michael H.
Published: October 2008

If we believe that OR/MS is good for others, we should believe and act as if it is good for us. I believe that reports of people actually using OR/MS in making personal decisions enliven our literature and help us to sharpen our thinking about the use of models and analysis in general. They also make great classroom material.
Assigning Season Tickets Fairly
Authors: Grandine Thomas A.
Published: October 2008

After assigning Mariner season tickets in a rather unsatisfying way in 1996 to the individuals who had agreed to buy and divide them, we devised a more sophisticated approach in 1997 that poses and solves a mixed-integer-programming problem, and we obtained much more satisfactory results.
The Easy Chair: Judging Effectiveness of Work in OR/MS Practice and Claiming Credit for Its Consequences
Authors: Miser Hugh J.
Published: October 2008

Discussion of the “practical credentials” of the OR/MS work and what it is that constitutes quality and effectiveness in OR/MS practice as seen by our profession, and especially by its large and growing academic community. The matter of scientific quality is left aside, as the supporting material for the cases offers ample evidence of their excellence.
Centralized Bakery Reduces Distribution Costs Using Simulation
Authors: Martin Ephraim
Published: October 2008

To improve the efficiency of product distribution for a centralized bakery, I first performed each person's tasks and discovered that constructing optimal minimum-distance routes would not significantly reduce costs but replacing the physical validation of new routes with a manual mathematical computation or simulation would. The trick was getting management to trust the simulation enough to use it.
The Evolution of a Performance Measurement Project at RTZ
Authors: Pauley Graeme S. , Ormerod Richard J.
Published: October 2008

In 1994, RTZ Corporation plc, the world's largest mining company, tried to reconcile (a) the desire of central management to compare performance across mine sites with (b) the desire of local management to judge performance in their own terms. The company began a project to establish a method of measuring open-pit productive capacity, to spread best practice, and to motivate higher performance. Initially we saw the solution as a simple model of equipment availability using hard OR derived using a participative process based on soft OR. Trials in Australia, Southern Africa, and North America showed that we needed to combine various hard and soft OR methods and to move the emphasis to achieving breakthroughs in performance. The latest trial resulted in an increase in production of over 25 percent in the first year. The results indicate that soft and hard OR methods can be combined to good effect to produce tangible results.
Application of Neural Networks and Simulation Modeling in Manufacturing System Design
Authors: Mollaghasemi Mansooreh , LeCroy Kenneth , Georgiopoulos Michael
Published: October 2008

Simulation modeling is often used in the design of manufacturing systems. With simulation modeling, however, the design process is a trial-and-error process; that is, an estimated “good” design is input to the model. Based upon the “quality” of this design, the designer may input a slightly perturbed design. This iterative process continues until the designer is “satisfied.” This process can be very time consuming. Neural networks can be used in conjunction with simulation modeling for system design to eliminate the trial-and-error process. This approach is used to achieve the opposite of what a simulation model can achieve. That is, given a set of desired performance measures, the neural network outputs a suitable design to meet management goals. In a real-world application, a major semiconductor manufacturing plant used this methodology to determine how the test operation should be operated to achieve the production goals.
The Easy Chair: Journal Editing as I See It
Authors: Miser Hugh J.
Published: October 2008

From time to time there arise in professional circles discussions of how scientific and technical journals are managed and especially how the editors choose their contents. Members of INFORMS had such a discussion recently, and the editor-in-chief of this journal offered a thoughtful response (Michael H. Rothkopf, Editorial refereeing—How blind should we be? Interfaces, Vol. 24, No. 6, pp. 14–18, 1994.). Unfortunately for a scientific community dedicated to seeking models of operating systems involving human behavior, OR/MS has offered no discriminating and objective studies of the editorial process to enlighten those with concerns about it.
Raw Material Management at Welch's, Inc.
Authors: Schuster Edmund W. , Allen Stuart J.
Published: October 2008

Welch's, a large grape-processing company owned by a grower cooperative, faced complex logistics in planning recipes for products sold in retail stores. The recently installed integrated MRP and cost-accounting systems did not include ways to calculate recipes at optimal cost based on plant-raw-material and capacity constraints. An imbalance of supply and demand further complicated this problem in raw-materials management. The cross-functional team in charge of managing raw materials spent increasing amounts of time deciding what recipes to use at each plant. We formulated the problem as a linear program model and used spreadsheet optimization to incorporate the model in daily decision making. The company has run the model each month since 1994 to provide senior management with information on the optimal logistics plan. This simple application saved Welch's between $130,000 to $170,000 during the first year.
The Occasional Observer: Some Simple Precepts for Project Success
Authors: Murphy Frederic H.
Published: October 2008

Over the years I have had the opportunity to work in and with different organizations on a variety of management science projects. Most have worked out and some have not. Every one has been a learning experience. I have accumulated some of the rules of thumb that I and other use to carry off projects. You have seen many of these rules before. Still, they bear repeating since they are constantly violated. A detailed overview of the 17 rules follows.
Design and Use of the Microsoft Excel Solver
Authors: Fylstra Daniel , Lasdon Leon , Watson John , Waren Allan
Published: October 2008

In designing the spreadsheet optimizer that is bundled with Microsoft Excel, we and Microsoft made certain choices in designing its user interface, model processing, and solution algorithms for linear, nonlinear, and integer programs. We describe some of the common pitfalls users encounter and remedies available in the latest version of Microsoft Excel. The Solver has many applications and great impact in industry and education.
A Comparative Analysis of Hazardous Waste Remediation Alternatives
Authors: Toland Ronald J. , Kloeber Jack M. , Jackson Jack A.
Published: October 2008

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has 136 contaminated nuclear-processing sites requiring remediation. Exploiting new remediation techniques will be critical to containing and treating this hazardous waste and to minimizing the estimated multibillion-dollar costs of cleanup. We combined system simulation, facility layout, stochastic life-cycle cost estimation, linear optimization, and various decision analysis techniques in a nine-month effort to give decision makers in the DOE realistic, flexible, and useful information to guide them in making decisions on Superfund remediation technology worth billions. A small team of students and instructors from the Air Force Institute of Technology used the majority of the techniques and tools taught at the institute to tackle this complex and important decision problem.
Optimizing Army Base Realignment and Closure
Authors: Dell Robert F.
Published: October 2008

In April 1997, the United States Army announced that savings had finally overtaken costs in closing or realigning 803 of its installations worldwide. This milestone occurred in the ninth year of a 13-year program approved by Congress and Presidents Reagan, Bush, and Clinton. The cost of this program is $5.3 billion, and when complete, the army expects annual savings of $996 million in perpetuity. A mixed-integer linear program, BRACAS (base realignment and closure action scheduler), helped the army budget for the 29 closures and 11 realignments approved by Congress and President Clinton in 1995. The army used BRACAS to schedule optimally the $2 billion in BRAC costs for these 40 installations over the six-year period mandated by Congress; associated annual savings will be $360 million.
Trash-Flow Allocation: Planning Under Uncertainty
Authors: Huang G. H. , Baetz B. W. , Patry G. G.
Published: October 2008

The materials in trash, or municipal solid waste (MSW), may be recycled, composted, incinerated, or landfilled. Transporting these materials to waste-management facilities consumes part of the operating budget of a municipality. Many factors, the majority uncertain, may influence the planning of waste-flow allocation. MSW managers want to know (1) whether the existing pattern is close to the optimal, and (2) if not, what is the optimal? We used a gray linear-programming (GLP) model to address these questions for the regional municipality of Hamilton-Wentworth, Ontario. This approach can effectively reflect the interactive relationships between uncertain system components. It can also bring uncertain information into the optimization process and resulting solutions, permitting feasible decision alternatives to be generated. The region's waste managers have used the results to verify or adjust the existing waste-flow allocation pattern. They may also be used to formulate related local policies.
Forecasting Practices in Mexican Companies
Authors: Duran Jorge A. , Flores Benito E.
Published: October 2008

A survey of firms in Mexico shows that many companies make limited use of modern forecasting methods. The forecasting techniques used in the US and included in the survey are little known or used by the reporting Mexican companies. This is in spite of the fact that business forecasting has been taught in colleges and universities in Mexico for many years. The most commonly used methods are the judgmental. A likely explanation is the unstable business situation suffered by companies in Mexico since the December 1994 devaluation. Economic instability will make it very difficult to use historical information for forecasting purposes.
The Easy Chair: What Kinds of Papers Will Contribute to a Well-Rounded View of the Conditions and Craft of OR/MS Practice?
Authors: Miser Hugh J.
Published: October 2008

With an OR background of varied practice. I began my editorial career in operations research over three decades ago. Even then it was clear that readers of our journals wanted more of what were already being called applications papers. Note that this term appears to have conceded that the subject's center of attention was developing theory rather than exploring the phenomena that OR was undertaking to understand and explain. A balanced view of the subject should regard the two activities as inseparable partners: theory without an observational base is only an intellectual game; practice without adequate intellectual conceptions (that is, models) is mere management gamesmanship.
Book Reviews
Authors: Lev Benjamin
Published: October 2008

Davison, A. C. and Hinkley, D. V. 1997, Bootstrap Methods and Their Applications, Cambridge University Press, New York, 582 pp., $39.95—reviewed by Thomas Freeman, Jr.

Reinertsen, Donald G. 1997, Managing the Design Factory: A Product Developer's Toolkit, The Free Press, New York, 269 pp., $30.00—reviewed by Belarmino Adenso-Díaz.

Bertsekas, Dimitri P. 1998, Network Optimization: Continuous and Discrete Models, Athena Scientific Publishing, Belmont, Massachusetts, 593 pp., $74.00—reviewed by Hanif D. Sherali.

Tijms, Henk C. 1995, Stochastic Models: An Algorithmic Approach, John Wiley and Sons, Chichester, UK, paperback, x + 375 pp., $22.50—reviewed by J. Ben Atkinson.

Dingle, John 1997, Project Management: Orientation for Decision Makers, John Wiley and Sons, New York, 279 pp., $34.95—reviewed by Thomas Freeman, Jr.

Birge, John R. and Louveaux, François 1997, Introduction to Stochastic Programming, Springer-Verlag, New York, 421 pp., $49.95—reviewed by Shabbir Ahmed.

Neufeld, John L. 1997, Learning Business Statistics with Microsoft Excel, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 436 pp., $25.00—reviewed Linda L. Brennan.

Box, George and Lucerno, Alberto 1997, Statistical Control by Monitoring and Feedback Adjustment, John Wiley and Sons, New York, 327 pp., $69.95—reviewed by Jim Tsoukalas.
Franz Edelman Award for Management Science Achievement
Authors: Strauss Stephen A. , Graves Stephen C.
Published: October 2008

Editorial of the chairman of the 27th annual competition for the Franz Edelman Award for Management Science Achievement. The competition is sponsored jointly by INFORMS and its practice section, the College for the Practice of the Management Sciences (CPMS). The primary purpose of the competition is to recognize outstanding accomplishments in the practice of management science. The prizes recognize verifiable results that had a major impact on the client organization. The award is named in honor of Franz Edelman. Dr. Edelman was responsible for management sciences at RCA, one of the earliest industrial OR/MS activities in North America. He worked for 30 years at RCA and is counted among the fathers of innovation in management science.
Note: Developing Strategies for Maritrans' Business Units
Authors: Murphy Frederic H.
Published: October 2008

Maritrans has decided to postpone the publication of our Edelman Competition entry until the conclusion of a lawsuit the company has initiated against the United States government.
Portfolio Construction Through Mixed-Integer Programming at Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo and Company
Authors: Bertsimas Dimitris , Darnell Christopher , Soucy Robert
Published: October 2008

Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo and Company LLC (GMO) uses mixed-integer-programming (MIP) methods to construct portfolios that are close (in terms of sector and security exposure) to target portfolios, have the same liquidity, turnover, and expected return as the target portfolios, control frictional costs, and do so with fewer distinct stocks and with fewer transactions. It also applies MIP methods to portfolios consisting of several subportfolios. It uses the MIP approach to construct 11 quantitatively managed portfolios representing over $8 billion in assets. The benefits from this implementation include (1) keeping the existing client business; (2) making possible important new growth opportunities; (3) reducing the number of stock names by an average 40 to 60 percent; (4) reducing the annual cost of trading the portfolios by at least $4 million by reducing the number of trading tickets written by 75 to 85 percent; (5) improving the trading process; and (6) improving performance in simulation in a US fund consisting of growth stocks with small market capitalization.
Management Science at Merrill Lynch Private Client Group
Authors: Labe Russ , Nigam Raj , Spence Steve
Published: October 2008

Merrill Lynch Private Client Group won the 1997 INFORMS Prize for effective use and impact of management science on the organizational success of the firm. Merrill Lynch established its management science group in 1986. The group's mission is to provide high-end quantitative analysis to support strategic management decisions and to enhance the financial consultant–client relationship. Hallmarks of our approach include objectivity, communication skills, teamwork, and consulting skills in addition to the required technical knowledge. We have developed special expertise in selected areas that are vital to Merrill Lynch's businesses. These include asset-allocation analysis and modeling, financial-planning support and analysis, investment strategies, expert systems, marketing-information technology, prospecting and cross-selling models, and portfolio-performance measurement. The impact and success of the group can be measured in hard dollars, repeat business, the development and analysis of strategic initiatives, and the tools we developed to assist the salesforce.
Summers Rubber Company Designs Its Data Warehouse
Authors: Gorla Narasimhaiah , Krehbiel Steve
Published: October 2008

Businesses use data warehouses to provide the vast amount of information users need. In designing data warehouses, they must consider the level of granularity of data, time intervals, data integrity, use of data marts, data scrubbing, distributed design, and trade-offs between system operating costs and response time. We computed querying and update costs for a data warehouse at Summers Rubber Company. While the company staff benefited from the information provided by the data warehouse, there were problems related to data quality and user skills. Using the data warehouse at Summers took disk-storage space of only 18 percent of the transaction database storage requirement and using data marts took only three percent.
Efes Beverage Group Makes Location and Distribution Decisions for Its Malt Plants
Authors: Köksalan Murat , Süral Haldun
Published: October 2008

We conducted a study for Efes Beverage Group to evaluate various sites as potential locations for new malt plants. We performed an economic analysis that showed the inferiority of some alternatives. To evaluate the remaining alternatives, we developed a mixed-integer-programming model that considers both the location of new malt plants and the distribution of barley and malt. It considers the long-run effects of the decisions and minimizes the present value of total costs. Sakarya, Izmir, and Ankara turned out to be the best locations for new malt plants. Efes is currently using the model for distribution decisions. Based on our results and new developments that occurred since then, top managers are currently debating where and when to locate the new malt plants.
Teachers' Forum: Spreadsheet Modeling and Simulation Improves Understanding of Queues
Authors: Grossman Thomas A.
Published: October 2008

Process-driven spreadsheet queuing simulation is a better vehicle for understanding queue behavior than queuing theory or dedicated simulation software. Spreadsheet queuing simulation has many pedagogical benefits in a business school end-user modeling course, including developing students' intuition, giving them experience with active modeling skills, and providing access to tools. Spreadsheet queuing simulations are surprisingly easy to program, even for queues with balking and reneging. The ease of prototyping in spreadsheets invites thoughtless design, so careful spreadsheet programming practice is important. Spreadsheet queuing simulation is inferior to dedicated simulation software for analyzing queues but is more likely to be available to managers and students.
The Realities of Becoming a Long-Term Supplier to a Large TQM Customer
Authors: Roethlein Christopher J. , Mangiameli Paul M.
Published: October 2008

In late 1993, the range appliance division of Whirlpool Corporation adopted total-quality-management principles. It announced that companies would have to meet specific objectives and support quality if they wanted to be considered as future suppliers of Whirlpool's components. Many of Whirlpool's established suppliers were suddenly forced to realize that long standing relationships were no longer important. One of Whirlpool's long-time suppliers, Stanley Engineered Components (SEC), a small supplier of oven-door latches, spent three and one-half years attempting to accommodate and keep its largest customer. How did SEC accommodate and satisfy Whirlpool? Top management committed itself to a complete change in corporate philosophy, strategy, and practice. To bring about the change, top management hired talent from outside and developed in-house talent. Top management used TQM-style principles as a method of competitive advantage to obtain new business contracts. SEC understood and complied with the needs of its customers.
Improving Access to Science and Math Education in Western Pennsylvania
Authors: Srinivasan Ashok , Strauss Robert P.
Published: October 2008

Seven out of every 10 American jobs are expected to be related to technologies using advanced computers and electronics, requiring workers with strong math and science skills. However, school systems in several regions in the US that have suffered economic and demographic declines are having problems maintaining and improving math and science education. We conducted a study and engendered cooperation between school districts to improve student access to math and science courses in one such region. We first examined the math and science curricula, predicted enrollment rates, forecasted teacher availability, and analyzed access characteristics for a set of school districts in Western Pennsylvania known as the Mon Valley Education Consortium. We then proposed strategies for cooperation between the school districts that included moving students to multiple centers for advanced math and science courses, moving teachers between schools, and using an area vo-tech school as a math and science center. As a result of the study a pilot project was implemented signaling the beginning of regional cooperation in the area.
Creativity in MS/OR: Choosing the Appropriate Technique
Authors: McFadzean Elspeth
Published: October 2008

There is a great need for creativity within the MS/OR environment. Managers must be capable of defining problems, developing novel solutions, and implementing them effectively. A lot of research has focused on creativity. Researchers, for example, discussed methods of improving creative thinking in people, presented techniques that can encourage participants to develop more novel ideas, described the creative problem-solving process.

I focus on creative problem-solving (CPS) techniques and how best to choose the most appropriate for a given situation. To this end, therefore, I have categorized the techniques and placed them in a continuum ranging from paradigm-preserving techniques to paradigm-breaking techniques.
US Airways Optimizes the Scheduling of Reserve Flight Crews
Authors: Dillon Jeffrey E. , Kontogiorgis Spyros
Published: October 2008

Reserve pilots and flight attendants work on call to operate flights that the assigned crews cannot fly or flights that have not been assigned at all. The monthly schedule for a reserve crew member consists of a set of days for which the person is on call. We built an automated system to construct optimal schedules for reserves. Crew planners at US Airways use the system to build schedules that put enough reserves on call without sacrificing the reserves' quality of work life.
A Two-Phase Genetic Algorithm for Large-Scale Bidline-Generation Problems at Delta Air Lines
Authors: Christou Ioannis T. , Zakarian Armand , Liu Jun-Min , Carter Helen
Published: October 2008

We developed a two-phase algorithm for solving Delta Air Lines' bidline-generation problem: assigning trips (tasks) to monthly schedules for crew members (called bidlines.) The system must produce bidlines that conform to all rules, and it should maximize average total value and the quality of the bidlines as measured by their purity. The first phase of the algorithm (the purity phase) constructs as many high-quality lines as possible, and the second (the GA phase) completes the assignments by constructing high-total-value valid lines from the remaining open trips. Delta obtains significant savings in staffing by using this algorithm. The bidlines produced are of comparable quality to those built with the semiautomatic process that Delta Air Lines used before.
Predictive Dialing for Outbound Telephone Call Centers
Authors: Samuelson Douglas A.
Published: October 2008

In the late 1980s, I used queuing and simulation to invent predictive dialing, a method to determine when computer-directed outbound telephone dialing systems should dial. I included a real-time estimation updating feature that was highly robust against sudden changes in the system's operating environment; thorough validation to ensure that the models tracked all important features of the real systems; and a modular software design that allowed “plug-in” replacement of the control software, eliminating debugging of field upgrades. The improved systems kept operators busier and drastically reduced the number of calls the systems abandoned because no operator was available to talk to the answering party. This invention was critical to the success, in the late 1980s, of International Telesystems Corporation (ITC), a small company founded in 1984, which a competitor, EIS International, bought in 1993 for approximately $12 million.
The Teachers' Forum: Visual Interactive Decision Modeling (VIDEMO) for Problem Solving—A Hypermedia Concept in Education
Authors: Beroggi Giampiero E. G.
Published: October 2008

Delft University of Technology launched the first European educational program in MS/OR-based policy analysis in 1992. The program was established within the university's new School of Systems Engineering, Policy Analysis, and Management. The school based the program on developments in three areas: policy analysis, OR/MS theory, and information systems. VIDEMO uses concepts drawn from these three areas. The VIDEMO modeler can contribute to economics, management, and engineering modeling.
Course Planning at Lufthansa Technical Training: Constructing More Profitable Schedules
Authors: Haase Knut , Latteier Jörg , Schirmer Andreas
Published: October 2008

Lufthansa Technical Training GmbH (LTT) runs training courses for Lufthansa Technik AG and for several other international airlines. It offers about 670 types of courses of which several hundred take place each year. The course-scheduling problem LTT faces is to develop a schedule for the year that maximizes its profit while meeting complex precedence, temporal, and resource-related constraints. A good operational schedule should also meet a number of subordinate objectives. In the past, LTT did all its scheduling manually. We developed a prototype course-scheduling module, using the operational planning situation of 1996 as our major test instance. It turned out that most of the schedules generated were substantially better than the solution LTT constructed manually, both in terms of profit and computation time. We subsequently developed a fully fledged decision-support system.
Editorial: The Third Interfaces Ranking of Universities' Contributions to the Practice Literature
Authors: Rothkopf Michael H.
Published: October 2008

Research universities expend a lot of effort trying to measure contributions to the research literature. In an applied field like OR/MS, contributions to the practice literature are also important, but five years ago, there was no scheme for measuring such contributions. On the theory that we tend to get what we measure and reward, I started a simple scheme to measure universities' contributions to the INFORMS practice literature. I described the scheme, the rationale for it, and the results of applying it to the 1988-to-1994 literature to rank universities in an Interfaces editorial [Rothkopf, Michael H. 1996, “Editorial: Which universities contribute to the practice literature? The first Interfaces ranking,” Interfaces, Vol. 26, No. 2 (March–April), pp. 16–21]. I promised to update the rankings periodically, and a subsequent editorial carried an updated set of rankings based upon the 1990-to-1996 literature [Rothkopf, Michael H. 1997, “Editorial: Which universities contribute to the practice literature? The second Interfaces ranking,” Interfaces, Vol. 27, No. 4 (July–August), pp. 19–22]. This editorial contains the latest rankings based upon the 1992-to-1998 literature. The new rankings have a new top university, the University of Texas at Austin, and they confirm some trends that the comparison of the first and second rankings suggested.
Reply to Comment: Using Product Profiling to Illustrate Manufacturing-Marketing Misalignment
Authors: Hill Terry J. , Menda Rafael , Dilts David M.
Published: October 2008

Reply to the “Comment: Using Product Profiling to Illustrate Manufacturing-Marketing Misalignment” by Richard J. Schonberger (Interfaces vol. 29, no. 6, November–December 1999, pp. 127–129) referring to the Interfaces July–August 1998 article “Using product profiling to illustrate manufacturing-marketing misalignment” by Hill, Menda, and Dilts, where they described Rumack Pharmaceutical Company (disguised name) as an example of misalignment between marketing and manufacturing.
Developing a Foundation for Strategy at Seagate Software
Authors: Keeney Ralph L.
Published: October 2008

Seagate Software provides tools and applications for managing and accessing information. In 1995, Seagate Technology began building the company using a strategy of acquiring software companies with synergistic products for information, network, and storage management. After over a dozen acquisitions, it needed to integrate them into a single company with a common vision and a shared sense of values. To help, Seagate used value-focused thinking to create and organize a complete set of company objectives based on discussions with key individuals, originally from several different acquired companies. The discussions also provided a list of issues and decision opportunities to address. Seagate used the objectives as a foundation for talking about the desired properties of vision and mission statements and creating several possibilities for each. The process and the resulting vision and mission statements contributed to creating a single company with clear, agreed-upon direction.
Information Systems in Management Science
Authors: Stern Harry
Published: October 2008

This is the final column that I will be doing in the series. Because I am no longer primarily involved with computers, I find that I am not competent to deal with some of the technical issues that this column should discuss. I recently reviewed a proposal for Bristol-Myers that involved remote job entry. The last technical information that I had was several years old and indicated that remote job entry was not a reasonable tool for commercial jobs. When I checked my contacts for information about RJE, everyone told me that both the hardware and the software were there to support it, that many people were using it and that it should cause no problems. I feel that the editor of a column must have current knowledge.
Perspectives on MS Applications—All Around the Model
Authors: Shycon Harvey N.
Published: October 2008

In this series of articles I have attempted to address the problem of successful implementation of management science studies. From the numerous management science studies in which I have participated over the past several years, I have developed a set of conditions which I have found to be most conducive to providing an atmosphere for successful management science analysis and implementation of results. The initial part of the series of articles, starting in November 1970, stressed management involvement and participation in studies. It attempted to document a clear record of success, correlated directly to management's involvement in the studies. Next in these series of articles I stressed the need for education of management in the management sciences as a method for indoctrination in the concepts and principles of management science in order to facilitate this involvement. This article will discuss resources for the management science organization.
Why Should the Management Scientist Grapple with Information Systems
Authors: Vazsonyi Andrew
Published: October 2008

Brooding over some recent writings on old age convinces me that many of us try to atone for the crime of ageing by giving advice to the young. In fact, when writing this paper I considered using the title, “Young Man, Go Management Information Systems”. But my advice (which I freely give) is also to anyone who is willing to listen, as well as to the young at heart. Let me confess, then, that the title you see to this paper is purely rhetorical. May advice is unhesitating: “Make information and communication your business.”
Behavioral Science—On the Changing Location of Industrial-Organizational Psychologists
Authors: Braunstein Daniel N.
Published: October 2008

Managers and management scientists currently have an opportunity to influence the direction of applied behavioral science. The reason is that a rapid shift is occurring in the places where industrial-organizational psychologists are being trained. In the past, most of them received their doctoral educations completely in departments of psychology. But in the near future, according to data furnished by Campbell (Campbell, J. P. 1971. Psychology in business schools. Professional Psych. 1 6–11.), a majority will be educated in the business schools.
Perspectives on MS Applications—All Around the Model
Authors: Shycon Harvey N.
Published: October 2008

Successful implementation of management science studies is the theme of this series of articles. A part of this series has covered. (1) the stages of introduction of the new activity, (2) announcing the management science program, (3) staffing the management science program, (4) project selection, and (5) resources for the management science organization. This article explores where management science should report.
An Open Letter to the Membership
Authors: Cyert Richard M.
Published: October 2008

There is within the TIMS membership a division of views about the nature of the organization. I think it is time that more members in the organization took a role in determining the kind of organization that we should have. In particular, I believe there should be a committee of members to do some long-range planning. Most people of the Council feel that they have an inadequate amount of time to do the job. In addition, I feel that this is the kind of job for which we should have volunteers from the membership. I am, therefore, issuing an invitation to those of you who feel qualified and are interested in spending some time on a long-range planning committee for TIMS to write to me and indicate your interest and background.