ORMS Today - April 2017 by Lionheart Publishing Inc.

SPECIAL INTERNATIONAL ISSUE

Worldly problems, O.R. solutions • Analytics everywhere • Collaborative shipping • IFORS & its conference • People flow in buildings • Human trafficking analysis • Agriculture, analytics & IoT

April 2017

Volume 44 • Number 2 ormstoday.informs.org

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Contents Photo Courtesy of 123rf.com | © Kran Kanthawong

April 2017 | Volume 44, No. 2 | ormstoday.informs.org

On the Cover O.R.: A Global Perspective

Spec i a l i s s u e :

I n t ernationa l O. R . 20

Collaborative shipping in the sharing economy By Jeroen Beliën, Robert Boute, Stefan Creemers, Philippe De Bruecker, Joren Gijsbrechts, Silvia Valeria Padilla Tinoco and Wouter Verheyen A more holistic view across individual supply chains brings many advantages for the logistics industry.

From feeding the hungry and fighting human trafficking to the history of IFORS and its first international meeting to collaborative shipping, people flow and the Industrie 4.0 initiative, the world is full of problems and O.R. solutions. Photo Courtesy of 123rf.com | © Watchara Rojjanasain

de partm e nt s

6 8 10 12 14 16 60 61 61 64

Inside Story President’s Desk INFORMS in the News Issues in Education PuzzlOR Roundtable: Praxair Industry News Literature Files Classifieds ORacle

Story of IFORS and its international conference By Graham K. Rand First held 60 years ago, the triennial event – and the Federation – continue to grow to meet their respective missions.

Human trafficking analysis

2 | ORMS Today

By Renata Konrad, Andrew C. Trapp and Kayse Lee Maass Operations research and similar analytical techniques have the unique potential to address a worldwide problem.

April 2017

12 ormstoday.informs.org

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April 2017 | Volume 44, No. 2 | ormstoday.informs.org

Spec i a l i s s u e :

INFORMS Board of Directors

I n t ernationa l O. R . 34 38 42

Agriculture’s need for analytics and IoT By Joseph Byrum Can analytics play a major role in ensuring a growing world population will have enough food to eat for generations to come?

Analytics everywhere By Arnab Chakraborty and Thomas D. Meyer What the Internet of Things, big data and Germany’s Industrie 4.0 initiative are teaching us about the power of analytics.

People flow in buildings

President Brian Denton, University of Michigan

President-Elect Nicholas Hall, Ohio State University

Past President Edward H. Kaplan, Yale University

Secretary Pinar Keskinocak, Georgia Tech

Treasurer Michael Fu, University of Maryland

Vice President-Meetings Ronald G. Askin, Arizona State University Vice President-Publications Jonathan F. Bard, University of Texas at Austin

Vice President- Russell Barton, Sections and Societies Pennsylvania State University

Vice President- Marco Luebbecke, Information Technology RWTH Aachen University

Vice President- Jonathan Owen, CAP, General Motors Practice Activities Vice President- Grace Lin, Asia University International Activities

Vice President-Membership Susan E. Martonosi, Professional Recognition Harvey Mudd College Vice President-Education Jill Hardin Wilson, Northwestern University

By Juha-Matti Kuusinen, Janne Sorsa, Marja-Liisa Siikonen, Henri Hakonen and Harri Ehtamo Accurate modeling of how people use elevators and behave in emergencies is the key to successful people flow planning.

Vice President-Marketing, Laura Albert, Communications and Outreach University of Wisconsin-Madison Vice President-Chapters/Fora Michael Johnson, University of Massachusetts, Boston

Editors of Other INFORMS Publications Decision Analysis Rakesh K. Sarin, University of California, Los Angeles

Editor’s Cut Anne G. Robinson, Verizon

Information Systems Research Alok Gupta, University of Minnesota I NFORMS Journal on Computing David Woodruff, University of California, Davis

INFORMS Transactions Jeroen Belien, KU Leuven on Education

Interfaces Michael F. Gorman, University of Dayton Management Science Teck-Hua Ho, National University of Singapore

news

Manufacturing & Service Christopher S. Tang, Operations Management University of California, Los Angeles

Marketing Science K. Sudhir, Yale University

Mathematics of Operations J. G. “Jim” Dai, Cornell University Research

Operations Research Stefanos Zenios, Stanford University

Organization Science Gautam Ahuja, University of Michigan

Service Science Paul P. Maglio, University of California, Merced Strategy Science Daniel A. Levinthal, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania Transportation Science Martin Savelsbergh, Georgia Institute of Technology

49 Healthcare Conference

56 In Memoriam: Philip Wolfe

49 Board officer nominations

58 Simulation Society honorees

50 Marketing Science Conference

59 Winter Simulation Conference

50 INFORMS Initiatives

59 People

51 Prizes: Call for nominations

59 Meetings

56 In Memoriam: Kenneth Arrow

4 | ORMS Today

April 2017

Tutorials in Operations J. Cole Smith, Clemson University Research

INFORMS Office • Phone: 1-800-4INFORMS

Executive Director Melissa Moore

Headquarters

INFORMS (Maryland) 5521 Research Park Dr., Suite 200 Catonsville, MD 21228 USA Tel.: 443.757.3500 Fax: 443.757.3515 E-mail: informs@informs.org

ormstoday.informs.org

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Inside Story

Peter Horner, editor

peter.horner@mail.informs.org

World full of problems, O.R.-driven solutions I don’t have any scientific evidence, but I’m pretty sure based on personal observation that the older you get, the faster time flies, and from my vantage point, time is now traveling at Mach 2. Can it really be 20 years since Andres Weintraub and I had breakfast together at an INFORMS conference hotel somewhere to plan the first in what would become an annual international issue? The answer is yes, and let me be the first to welcome you to the 20th anniversary of the special international issue of OR/MS Today. From the beginning, the goal of the international issue was to highlight interesting and innovative applications of operations research (and now high-end “analytics”) around the world. This issue remains true to that goal, but with a slight twist. Instead of focusing on nation-specific work, this issue looks at global problems and O.R. solutions, as well as key developments that serve to advance the O.R. profession from an international perspective. For example, Graham Rand, retired from Lancaster University in the U.K. and an O.R. historian, chronicles the founding of the International Federation of Operational Research Societies (IFORS) and its international conference (page 24). I think it’s safe to say that no organization has fostered the recognition, growth and cooperation of O.R. societies on a global scale more than IFORS. This issue also examines several universal issues where O.R. and advanced analytics have or can play a major role, from feeding a hungry world (page 34) to fighting human trafficking (30). In the former, Joe Byrum of Sygenta says that “data-driven farming is more than a good business decision; it’s the only truly sustainable option for the future.” The latter is certainly a serious international problem that knows no boundaries. 6 | ORMS Today

April 2017

“Almost every country is affected by human trafficking as a source, transit point or destination of victims,” note co-authors Renata Konrad, Andrew C. Trapp and Kayse Lee Maass. Our international O.R. tour makes several stops in Europe, including Germany, where an initiative known as Industrie 4.0 is driving innovation in a variety of organizations across the public and private sectors (page 38), and Belgium, where a team of researchers are working on collaborative shipping and logistics in the sharing economy (page 20). Speaking of starts and stops, and thanks to a team of researchers from Finland, our tour also explores the flow of people and building safety as it related to elevator use in both normal and emergency situations (page 42). As I’ve said in this space many times before, this special international issue would not exist without the foresight, help and guidance of Andres Weintraub, professor at the University of Chile and a former president of IFORS. The issue is also indebted to Jim Cochran, professor at the University of Alabama, chair of the OR/MS Today committee and co-founder of Statistics Without Borders, whose input to the international issue in recent years has been immense. Both of them have extensive worldwide contacts – and an extraordinary number of frequent flying miles – all of which have greatly benefited this and past versions of our special international issue. Andres, Jim and I met last fall at the INFORMS Annual Meeting in Nashville, Tenn., to discuss this special issue. Not all of our ideas and plans materialized, and due to page constraints, not all of the contributions we received made it into this special issue, but several will be published in upcoming issues of OR/MS Today. As always, we look forward to your feedback. ORMS

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Lionheart Publishing Online http://www.orms-today.org OR/MS Today (ISSN 1085-1038) is published bimonthly by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). Canada Post International Publications Mail (Canadian Distribution) Sales Agreement No. 1220047. Deadlines for contributions: Manuscripts and news items should arrive no later than six weeks prior to the first day of the month of publication. Address correspondence to: Editor, OR/MS Today, 506 Roswell Street, Suite 220, Marietta, GA 30060. The opinions expressed in OR/MS Today are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of INFORMS, its officers, Lionheart Publishing Inc. or the editorial staff of OR/MS Today. Membership subscriptions for OR/MS Today are included in annual dues. INFORMS offers non-member subscriptions to institutions, the rate is $62 USA, $79 Canada & Mexico and $85 all other countries. Single copies can be purchased for $10.50 plus postage. Periodicals postage paid at Catonsville, MD, and additional mailing offices. Printed in the United States of America. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to OR/MS Today, INFORMS-Maryland Office, 5521 Research Park Dr., Suite 200, Catonsville, MD 21228. OR/MS Today copyright ©2017 by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. All rights reserved.

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President’s Desk

Brian Denton

INFORMS President president@informs.org

Global engagement by INFORMS and its members Since this is the international issue of OR/MS Today, I’m taking the opportunity to point out some of the things INFORMS does to foster global engagement among our members. INFORMS currently has members from 89 countries – with significantly reduced rates for members from developing countries – which creates opportunities for our members to meet O.R. professionals from around the world to learn about the many different cultures and perspectives represented in our diverse membership and our field. I will share some specific opportunities that you can take advantage of to expand your horizons. First, INFORMS is a proud member of the International Federation of Operational Research Societies (IFORS). IFORS has been in existence since 1959 and has grown from three founding member nations – the United States (ORSA, a predecessor society of INFORMS), the United Kingdom (ORS), and France (SOFRO) – to include 52 O.R. societies from around the world.The most recent society to join was the Institute for Operations Research of Nigeria. This year the Colombian and Russian O.R. societies are petitioning to join. The IFORS Statute states the objective of the Federation is to “develop operational research as a unified science and to advance it in all the nations of the world.” To achieve this goal IFORS engages in many activities including sponsoring an international meeting every three years; this year’s meeting is in beautiful Quebec, July 17-21. IFORS also encourages nations, including developing countries, to establish O.R. societies, promote education and engage in activities intended to promote growth in our field. As a member society, INFORMS and its members are important contributors to the IFORS mission. In fact, longtime member and former INFORMS President Mike Trick is currently serving as the president of 8 | ORMS Today

April 2017

IFORS. (For more on IFORS, its history and meetings, see Graham Rand’s article on page 24.) In addition to IFORs meetings, INFORMS partners with O.R. societies from other nations to hold an international conference two out of every three years (with the third year being the IFORS conference). Recent destinations have included Montreal (in collaboration with the Canadian Operational Research Society), Rome (in collaboration with the Association of European Operational Research Societies and the Italian OR Society) and Beijing (in collaboration with the Operations Research Society of China).These conferences provide valuable opportunities to exchange ideas with people from a diverse range of cultures and perspectives. Our next international conference, in July of 2018, will be held in Taipei,Taiwan. One conference on the agenda for this year that I am personally excited about is the upcoming INFORMS Healthcare Conference in Rotterdam, Netherlands, on July 26-28. As someone who works in healthcare O.R., I find great value in learning about the different ways countries organize their health systems. I expect the Rotterdam conference will be an excellent opportunity for anyone to learn about the state-of-the-art O.R. methods used worldwide to improve healthcare delivery. There are many other shining examples of INFORMS’ global engagement. For example, our journals have a broad international readership, and in 2016 alone we published articles by authors from more than 40 countries. Each year, our extensive awards program attracts many international submissions and prize-winning entries. Past winners of the prestigious Franz Edelman Award for achievement in O.R. include the Dutch Delta Program (Netherlands), Indeval

(Mexico), Canadian Pacific Railway (Canada), Bosques Arauco (Chili) and Tata Iron and Steel (India), to name a few. Many international activities stem from individual member contributions. Last year, Past President Ed Kaplan traveled to El Salvador, Mongolia, Poland, Israel and the Netherlands.The Mongolia trip, organized by Jim Cochran, featured a workshop on teaching O.R at the National University of Mongolia. More than 80 participants, including instructors from Mongolian universities and managers from Mongolian businesses, attended the workshop. Jim has a long history of creating exciting opportunities to spread knowledge in our field.The Republic of Moldova is next on his agenda, and Jim is working on future opportunities for workshops in Nepal, Madagascar, Myanmar and Ghana. INFORMS Vice President of International Activities Grace Lin is a driving force behind several new initiatives such as an international reception hosted by the INFORMS International Activities Committee (IAC) at the INFORMS Annual Meeting.The IAC will host its third annual reception at the 2017 INFORMS Annual Meeting this fall in Houston.The reception is open to all members and provides a great opportunity to network. Please see the conference program book if you wish to attend this year’s reception. I have given you some examples of the ways that INFORMS and its members create opportunities for global engagement with operations researchers from around the world. Without opportunities like these, we would not have the chance to benefit from discoveries by researchers in other countries and to gain new perspectives from the diverse members of our field. I hope many of you will take advantage of the opportunities that exist, at home or abroad, to develop professional relationships that extend across borders. ORMS ormstoday.informs.org

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INFORMS in the News

Compiled by Ashley Kilgore

Wine futures, airport security, career options Investing in wine futures can significantly improve distributor profits A study in the INFORMS journal Manufactur ing & Ser vice Operations Management, conducted by INFORMS member Burak Kazaz of Syracuse University, shows a wine distributor can significantly improve its profits by investing in wine futures, in addition to bottled wine. The study’s numerical analysis demonstrates an approximate 21 percent profit improvement, a benefit that increases as the wine distributor’s degree of risk aversion increases. - Public Now, March 6

JFK Airport security breach brings to light security vulnerabilities Av i a t i o n s e c u r i t y e x p e r t a n d INFORMS Fellow Sheldon Jacobson provided insight on vulnerabilities at airport checkpoints, like the kind that resulted in 11 passengers passing through an unsupervised checkpoint at JFK Airport in February, all of whom reached their flights without further screening. “The most vulnerable time for any kind of check point is in a transition period,” said Jacobson, who continued that airport security is weakest early in the morning and during shift changes. - CBS News, Feb. 21

Want to be a CEO? It helps to look the part Looks do matter. According to a new study in the INFORMS journal Management Science, the more competent you look (based on certain facial features) the more likely you are to be a CEO.The study, which focused on male CEOs, found that faces that rated as competent-looking typically had square jaws, overall sharper features and appeared more mature. - The Wall Street Journal, Feb. 17

Talking points for new hires Want to decipher whether a new hire will thrive in his position? Compare his 10 | ORMS Today

April 2017

emails to those of a co-worker. According to a new study in the INFORMS journal Management Science by INFORMS member Sameer Srivastava, the more similarities in language style, the better the fit.The study found that a new hire whose own emails are linguistically similar to his co-workers’ messages is four times less likely to be fired than someone who never mimics the language style of his peers. - NWI Times, Feb. 12

National Academy of Engineering elects three INFORMS members Three INFORMS members are among those elected for 2017 to the National Academy of Engineering, among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer. Mark S. Daskin: Clyde W. Johnson Collegiate Professor and chair, Department of Industrial and Operations Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. For leadership and creative contributions to location optimization and its application to industrial, service and medical systems. Arkadi Nemirovski: John Hunter Chair and Professor, H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta. For the development of efficient algorithms for large-scale convex optimization problems. Sridhar R.Tayur: Ford Distinguished Research Chair and professor of Operations Management, Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh. For developing and commercializing innovative methods to optimize supply chain systems. Academy membership honors those who have made outstanding contributions to “engineering research, practice or education, including, where appropriate, significant contributions to the engineering literature” and to “the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of

engineering, or developing/implementing innovative approaches to engineering education.” - National Academy of Engineering, Feb. 8

Career options as a data analyst In the era of information and technology, the role of data analysts has become critical to cope with the present needs of the consumers and companies.The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) can serve as a valuable tool to help these analytics professionals successfully navigate their careers. - News Dog, Jan. 23

INFORMS presents award for best publication in the natural sciences Dr. Lewis Ntaimo, associate professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Texas A&M University, former Ph.D. student Julian Gallego Arrubla, and Curt Stripling of the Texas A&M Forest Service, have been selected for this year’s INFORMS Section on Energy, Natural Resources and the Environment (ENRE) award for best paper publication. - Environment Guru, Jan. 10

INFORMS member contributions selected for “40 Under 40” Vice President of Business Analytics of Regal Entertainment Group Matt Carr, an INFORMS member, was selected for the Knoxville Sentinel’s top “40 Under 40” for his role in helping Regal grow to a company that makes decisions and pursues strategies based on actionable data analysis. - Knoxville News Sentinel, Jan. 2

How to cure the Electoral College INFORMS Past President Ed Kaplan and INFORMS Fellow Arnold Barnett published an op-ed with the Los Angeles Times exploring a simple reform that might go a long way toward reducing objections to the electoral college without introducing a partisan bias. Kaplan and Barnett propose that instead of awarding electoral votes on a winner-take-all basis, they should be awarded in direct proportion to each candidate’s share of the popular vote. ORMS - Los Angeles Times, Dec. 16, 2016 For links to all of the articles mentioned about, visit: http://bit.ly/2mPxplb.

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Issues in Education

By Kevin Huston and Liz Bouzarth

Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it’s off to class we go… “When you’re curious, you find lots of interesting things to do.” – Walt Disney

As a college professor, does the following sound familiar? In an attempt to make your course material relevant, you excitedly bring a real-world problem to class.Your students show some initial excitement, but this wanes as the example progresses, likely because they are not as invested in the problem as you are. While the students appreciate the exposure to an application, this type of real-world experience still seems artificial and simplified to them. This has happened to us many times. In looking for a way to improve this type of situation, we set out to design a class that would make these real-world experiences more authentic. Our goals in developing the course were to: (i) give students a new look at mathematics, its applications and potential career options; (ii) have the students generate their own meaningful questions and be motivated to seek their solutions; and (iii) enhance students’ abilities to communicate technical information. Thinking also that a change in scenery might enhance the experience, we decided that rather than bringing the applications to the students, we would take the students to the applications – to the “Happiest Place on Earth,” in fact. We work at Furman University, a private liberal arts institution in Greenville, S.C. After the spring semester, we have an optional three-week term called the May Experience (or MayX, for short). Classes offered during MayX are meant to be novel, interesting experiences that do not fit into the normal curriculum. They have few, if any, prerequisites, and they often take place away from campus. We developed a study away MayX course called “Math and the Mouse” that takes place in Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla. The class covers topics related to typical O.R./analytics courses to help students 12 | ORMS Today

April 2017

explore the ways mathematics is used to model real-world problems and to help them produce meaningful solutions.Topics include LP/IP modeling, scheduling, logistics, networks, queueing, probability, statistics and heuristic algorithms. Further, the class experiences are designed to foster in the students an inquisitive nature and sense of wonder associated with their view of the Disney parks and the world beyond. For example, we introduce the Traveling Salesman Problem through an “inclass” activity that we called the Traveling Tourist Problem. We give the students a list of attractions that must be visited in a Disney park, and we allow the students access to park maps and data related to wait times at attractions throughout the day. The students work in groups to design tours of the attractions that they think would be the fastest. The next day, the groups implement the tours by racing to see which group (including the group of professors) designed the best route. After the race, we spend class time discussing the modeling of the problem, their approaches to solving it, and some other common solution techniques, including heuristic approaches such as genetic algorithms. Afterward, our students meet with representatives from touringplans.com, a company that provides services related to visiting major tourist attractions. One of the products that the company offers includes custom touring plans for Walt Disney World. Since some of their solution approaches involve genetic algorithms, the students see how what they had been learning is implemented on a larger scale. The students ask intelligent and relevant questions related to the material, and they see industry professionals using the ideas they recently explored themselves.

The Magic Kingdom serves as a backdrop for Furman University students in a MayX course.

Although the topics in the course have a quantitative bent, participating students have come from a variety of majors: mathematics, biology, chemistry, neuroscience, business, economics, health sciences, physics, music and Spanish. One challenge of this variety is that students’ prior mathematics experience is also varied.We often handle this by dividing projects into different levels and assigning students to the levels based on their prior experience. One example of this involves a workforce scheduling problem that we designed in consultation with some Disney professionals. Using data that was crafted to resemble actual Disney data, the students model the scheduling of employees to cover the daily workload for a Magic Kingdom restaurant called The Pecos Bill Tall Tale Inn and Café. The task requires each group to create more than 250 constraints to successfully model the scenario. To accommodate the different levels of student experience, there is a difference in the complexity of the constraints required (more employee breaks mean a more complex set of constraints). For most of the students, this is their first exposure to modeling – some ormstoday.informs.org

Apply for 2017

students dubbed the problem “The Beast.” It is initially beyond their abilities, but after struggling with it for a few days (in consultation with a professor), they all get it. It is fun to see the smiles on their faces after taming “The Beast.” The final week of the course is set up so that the students investigate projects in the park that they have an interest in solving. The students design the project, figure out how to collect the data, analyze the data and give presentations on their results. The process of having the students pick problems at Disney World solves the motivation problem that we found in our classrooms. In fact, students are excited to pursue the solutions and often ask questions that lead to discussions of advanced O.R., probability and statistics material. Likewise, it is exciting for us to see that our students are motivated to learn and to investigate, and a wonderful after effect was that they build confidence in

their own abilities. Further, they communicate their results through class presentations and by writing daily blogs about the course (mathandthemouse. blogspot.com). For us, the payoffs for the course are numerous.Two-thirds of the students who have taken the course have subsequently taken a course in operations research, and the course has g e n e r a t e d m a ny s u m m e r research projects, related internship pursuits and student presentations at conferences. Further, of those Math and the The “Math and the Mouse” course gave students and Mouse alumni who have already professors a reason to celebrate. graduated, half have pursued graduate programs in OR/ Kevin Huston (Kevin.hutsom@furman.edu) ISyE or statistics/analytics.The excitement, is a professor of mathematics and Liz creativity and success of our students makes Bouzarth (liz.bouzarth@furman.edu) is an this an incredibly rewarding professional associate professor of mathematics at Furman experience for us. ORMS University.

Apply to win this prestigious practice prize that rewards professionals who devise innovative analytical methods, utilize those methods in a verifiably successful O.R./analytics project, and describe their work in a clear, well-written paper. Two-page abstract is due by May 1, 2017. This top INFORMS practice prize spans all O.R. and analytics disciplines and application fields. Any work presented in an INFORMS section or society practice-oriented competition is eligible as long as the work did not result in a published paper. The Wagner Prize competition is high-profile, with its own track at the INFORMS Annual Meeting. Presentations are widely distributed via streaming video. Finalist papers are published as a special issue in INFORMS respected practice journal Interfaces. Last year’s competition was held at the INFORMS Annual Meeting, November 13-16, 2016, in Nashville, Tennessee. The first-place prize will be awarded to Mikael Rönnqvist, Gunnar Svenson, Patrik Flisberg, and Lars-Erik Jönsson at the Edelman Gala during the April 2017 Conference on Business Analytics and O.R. in Las Vegas, Nevada. Don’t miss your chance to win this illustrious award for 2017.

Daniel H. Wagner

www.informs.org/wagnerprize April 2017

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PuzzlOR

John Toczek

puzzlor@gmail.com

Payload balance The International Space Station requires occasional resupply of food, water and equipment from payloads that are delivered by rockets. Because rockets require their payloads to be balanced, deciding where to place cargo is critical to mission success. The accompanying image shows a delivery payload.There are four cargo sections within the payload labeled A, B, C, D. In order for the payload to be balanced, the total weight of cargo in section A must be equal to that of section D. And the total weight of cargo in section B must be equal to that of section C. Note that section A does not need to equal section B (nor does section C need to equal to section D). There are 15 packages each of varying weights that must be Where to distribute the delivery payload? included in the delivery.The weights of the packages in kilograms are as follows: 70, 90, 100, 110, 120, 130, 150, 180, 210, 220, 250, 280, Send your answer to puzzlor@gmail.com by June 15. The 340, 350, 400. Each section must contain at least three packages and winner, chosen randomly from correct answers, will receive a $25 no section can hold more than 1,000 kg. Amazon Gift Card. Past questions and answers can be found at puzzlor.com. ORMS Question: John Toczek is the senior manager of analytics at NRG in Philadelphia. He What are the weights of the sections when the payload is earned his BSc. in chemical engineering at Drexel University (1996) and his MSc. in operations research from Virginia Commonwealth University (2005). balanced?

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14 | ORMS Today

April 2017

ormstoday.informs.org

Stop compromising. With FICOâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s advanced analytics platform, you can deploy your existing math models with what-if analysis and visualization in a matter of weeks. Supported by 60 years of proven industry experience, you can provide trusted insights to increase productivity and improve profitability.

Roundtable Profile

Praxair plant in Utah with argon, nitrogen and oxygen storage tanks. Photo credit: Ted Kawalerski

Praxair:

Making our planet more productive

By Larry Megan and Kristin Bruton 16 | ORMS Today

April 2017

For more than 100 years, Praxair has taken something as fundamental as air and turned it into ways to make food taste better, processes operate cleaner and breathing easier â&#x20AC;&#x201C; in short, to make all our lives better by fulfilling our mission of making our planet more productive. As a Fortune 300 company, we develop products and technology that impact more than 20 different industries.You see our work every day, often without realizing it. We provide oxygen for respiratory therapy, hydrogen to help purify crude oil into gasoline, carbon dioxide to add the fizz in our beverages and argon to enhance the robotic welding systems that build new automobiles. We provide products to our customers through three primary supply modes: large process plants, cryogenic liquid and packaged gases. Large process plants: For our largest customers, such as refineries and steel mills, we design, build and operate large process plants adjacent to their facilities. These plants act as a vital utility to those customers, similar to electricity and water, and provide an uninterrupted supply of industrial gases to support their operations. As a result, a high degree of automation and data analytics is needed to ensure that we continuously maintain safe, reliable and efficient operation. ormstoday.informs.org

Cryogenic liquid: Medium-volume customers, such as hospitals and universities, typically have liquid storage located at their facility, which is then used to provide product throughout their operations. We monitor their inventory in real time and then deliver product using our tanker truck fleet, all without the customer needing to place an order. This proactive, vendor-managed service model provides high reliability for our customers while enabling us to effectively manage our costs. As with large process plants, this service model requires a variety of analytics, from optimizing assets to scheduling daily deliveries. Packaged gases: We sell a wide variety of smaller packaged gases to laboratories, hospitals and other customers. These products can range from a cylinder of nitrogen to specialty gas mixtures needed for emissions testing, advanced manufacturing and semiconductor fabrication. We also offer a var iety of services such as embedded regulators and telemetry. We also own the cylinder assets, which helps ensure continuous supply to our customers. Packaged gases are a very transaction-intensive business with many distinct products, which leads to many opportunities to use analytics to manage the supply chain, understand margins and better target the sales force. Culture Drives Strategy The core of Praxair’s business model is a culture of productivity – continuous improvement across all aspects of our business, including how we operate our plants, how we deliver our products, how we manage our business processes and how we collaborate with our customers. This culture pervades all levels in the organization. We have a longstanding history of effectively deploying tools such as Lean and Six Sigma, but as our productivity model has matured, it has become much more challenging to find the low-hanging fruit in productivity. As a result, our current efforts to sustain our productivity momentum are focused on three key areas: innovation, digitalization and advanced analytics. Praxair’s Global Analytics team plays a key role in this evolving productivity strategy. We support Praxair’s mission by making our people more productive – developing the decision support systems needed to enable our business clients to make better decisions faster. We provide a wide variety of systems that improve our different business functions regardless of where they are on the analytics maturity curve, from descriptive and diagnostic systems that help Praxair’s businesses more effectively manage and share

All About the Roundtable The Roundtable consists of the institutional members of INFORMS with member company representatives typically the overall leader of O.R. activity. The Roundtable is composed of about 50 organizations that have demonstrated leadership in the application of O.R. and advanced analytics. The Roundtable culture is peer-to-peer, encouraging networking and sharing lessons learned among members. The Roundtable meets three times a year. Roundtable goals are to improve member organizations’ OR/MS practice, help Roundtable representatives grow professionally and help the OR/MS profession to thrive. Further information is available at http:// roundtable.informs.org. The Roundtable also has an advisory responsibility to INFORMS. According to its bylaws, “The Roundtable shall regularly share with INFORMS leadership and advise the INFORMS Board on its views, its suggested initiatives and its implementation plans on the important problems and opportunities facing operations research and the management sciences as a profession and on the ways in which INFORMS can deal proactively with those problems and opportunities.” The Roundtable meets with the INFORMS presidentelect each spring to discuss practice-related topics of interest to him or her, and with the entire INFORMS Board each fall to discuss topics of mutual concern. This series of articles aims to share with the INFORMS membership at large some information and insights into how O.R. is carried on in practice today.

Praxair’s

their data, to predictive and prescriptive systems that optimize operations, logistics and sales. Our wide variety of skills enables us to meet our customers wherever they are on the continuum of analytics, and positions them to meet ever more challenging business needs.

Global Analytics team

Global Reach, Local Impact In industrial gases manufacturing, the majority of the products sold are manufactured roughly 200 miles of where they are produced. This high degree of localization leads to a business model where P&L (profit and loss) responsibility lies with geographical business units to ensure that the company best meets the needs of its local customers. The Global Analytics team reflects this strategy – we have a hybrid global/local organization designed to balance centralized development while embedding key technical capabilities within the regional business units. The centralized corporate team is organized into Advanced Analytics and Visualization, Business and Supply Chain Optimization and Smart Operations functions. Its portfolio includes simple visualization tools that help business leaders effectively manage data across heterogeneous data sources so they can get quick insights into their business performance; complex optimization models to manage strategic, tactical and operational decisions in our supply chains; and sophisticated algorithms to manage all aspects of plant operation, from automating startup to maximizing and sustaining efficiency during normal operation. To ensure alignment with business priorities, we are a shared organization between R&D and Global Operations, which allows us to have development flexibility while being close to business needs. April 2017

plays a

key role in this

evolving productivity

strategy.

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Roundtable Profile

Praxair has a

long history of working with

leading researchers in

operations research and

process systems to develop

platforms for

future innovations.

18 | ORMS Today

Complementing the cor porate teams are local teams in China, India and Mexico. These local business teams integrate corporate-level applications into local needs. Many of our applications require customization based on differences in the local business climate and regulatory statutes. These local teams enable fast and impactful replication of solutions to those geographies. These teams, which have similar skill sets as the corporate team, solve local issues that would previously have been invisible at the corporate level. They identify Praxairâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s goal is to give its people the opportunity to work through the problems and solutions for their local entire lifecycle of a problem. customers and to quickly meet their Photo credit: Ted Kawalerski needs. Often these local solutions have been subsequently leveraged for replication globally. such as varying customer demand and timeBesides this horizontal integration across the of-day electricity prices, make the system quite business, the entire team works to apply analytics dynamic.Through the development of sophisticated across all business functions including our on-site, forecasting tools and large mixed integer linear merchant liquid and packaged gases businesses, and programming models, we can determine optimum a broad range of business processes including sales, operating scenarios on a continuous basis and share product management and customer service. Some these with our logistics and production teams. recent examples of our programs follow. The sophisticated planning tools, which plan over a weekly time horizon, then guide the operational Broad Reach tools designed for minute-to-minute optimization In our on-site plants, predictable production reliof the plants and logistics. ability is critical to our business. We have deployed Finally, on the business side, the team has sigseveral programs using advanced analytics to betnificantly impacted Praxairâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s revenue manageter increase our predictive reliability. Cryogenic air ment strategies over the past several years. For separation plants, which produce oxygen, nitrogen example, in our packaged gas business, weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve and argon, require compressors driven by large developed cooperative game theory methods electric motors. The unexpected failure of one to allocate shared distribution and production these machines is very disruptive to our operations costs to determine product cost at the SKU level and supply chain. Our programs utilize advanced and service cost at the order level. This solution statistics and visualization to monitor several hunadopts linear programming models to determine dred machines worldwide and alert the operations the cost to serve for existing customers as well as staff when a machine is at risk for a potential failmachine learning algorithms to estimate costs for ure. This provides the local team with the insight new customers. The deliverables help us better they need to effectively manage their maintenance manage business and productivity decisions. For programs. Furthermore, the data from all the maexample, understanding cost differences among chines is sent back to a centralized control center different locations provides additional insight into so that subject matter experts can assist local operour supply chain optimization. ations to manage issues. Future machine learning Our People applications will help us better identify patterns across multiple data sources to better identify atAs with any organization, our people are our most risk machines. valuable asset. To develop our staff, our goal from Managing the merchant liquid supply chain day one is to give them the opportunity to work is a second example. These liquid plants, while all through the entire lifecycle of a problem. This making the same basic set of products, often vary includes working with our business partners on the in capacity and efficiency. As merchant liquid value proposition, leading a cross-functional team customers may receive shipped product from from initial development through beta testing, and multiple locations, continuously optimizing this working with the business to deploy tools in the supply chain can be challenging. External factors, field to bring value. Such opportunities help our April 2017

ormstoday.informs.org

people develop strong leadership, communication, business and project management skills, in addition to technical skills. At our core, we’re very strong in technical areas such as data visualization, advanced statistics, linear and nonlinear optimization and advanced process control. Our strength is in our breadth as we must be ready to solve a wide variety of business problems from the simple to the complex. We also recognize the need for strong external partners. We have a long history of working with leading researchers in operations research and process systems to develop the platforms for our future innovations. Strong relationships with SUNY-Buffalo, Carnegie-Mellon, McMaster University and UT-Austin, among others, keep us as at the leading edge of academic research while providing an opportunity for our staff to engage and mentor graduate students. As an example, we have recently been working with several institutions under Department of Energy funding to demonstrate a state-of-the-art industr ial scale steam methane reforming plant. As a team, we installed a new visual monitoring system, developed a new control strategy to operate the plant, and demonstrated a cloud-based solution

for decision deployment. Going forward, we will have substantial engagement with the DOE’s new Clean Energy Smart Manufacturing Innovation Institute to further Praxair’s mission and drive innovation generally within the manufacturing industry. What Does the Future Hold? This is an exciting time to be engaged in advanced analytics. The dig italization of manufacturing is a key trend for future growth, and we are excited to be at the leading edge of that in the process industries. In the next few years, we will be developing cutting-edge applications that leverage “big data” infrastructure to solve key challenges in machine reliability and fleet safety, using new technologies to deliver realtime information and collaboration capabilities to people in the field, and delivering new tools to help optimize our supply chains on a global scale. While the industrial gases industry is more than 100 years old, there is plenty of room left for innovation. ORMS Larry Megan is director of Praxair Global Analytic, as well as Praxair’s representative to the INFORMS Roundtable. Kristin Bruton is communications manager at Praxair.

Healthcare 2017 OPTIMIZING OPERATIONS & OUTCOMES

INFORMS Healthcare 2017 brings together academic researchers in “healthcare analytics” & industry stakeholders who are applying & sharing research to improve the delivery of effective healthcare.

Keynote Speakers

Dimitris Bertsimas Operations Research Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Brian Denton Department of Industrial & Operations Engineering, University of Michigan Dr. Eric de Roodenbeke CEO, International Hospital Federation

Early Discount Rate Deadline is Monday, June 5

http://meetings.informs.org/healthcare2017

HEALTHCARE 20 7 Rotterdam, Netherlands | July 26–28, 2017

April 2017

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INTERNATIONAL

O.R.

Horizontal collaboration: Where companies at the same level of the supply chain establish partnerships. Photo courtesy of 123rf.com |ÂŠ vitpho

Collaborative shipping:

Logistics in the sharing economy A more holistic view across individual supply chains brings many advantages for the logistics industry.

By Jeroen BeliĂŤn, Robert Boute, Stefan Creemers, Philippe De Bruecker, Joren Gijsbrechts, Silvia Valeria Padilla Tinoco and Wouter Verheyen 20 | ORMS Today

April 2017

Vertical supply chain collaboration has been around for decades. In a vertical collaboration, companies within one and the same supply chain collaborate, for instance to improve their forecast accuracy or inventory management. Horizontal collaboration is a more recent phenomenon where companies at the same level of the supply chain (i.e., between suppliers or between buyers) establish partnerships. An example of such a type of collaboration in transportation and logistics is collaborative shipping, where multiple shippers bundle volumes to fill the same transport. This more holistic view across individual supply chains brings many advantages for the logistics industry such as higher vehicle fill rates, reduced transportation costs and less transport emissions as more scale is available to enable a modal shift towards greener transport modes. ormstoday.informs.org

Without counteractions, total annual transportation emissions are expected to increase by 70 percent by 2050 compared to 2010, whereas they need to be reduced by 40 percent to 70 percent during that timeframe to keep the increase in average global temperature well below 2Â°C by 2100 (IPCC, 2014 [1]). With todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s average vehicle fill rates of less than 50 percent, the current state-of-the-art freight system is environmentally not sustainable.While the integration of electronic data interchange (EDI) technology into enterprise systems has enabled vertical collaboration (such as outsourcing logistics or vendor-managed inventories) between supply chain partners for a long time, horizontal collaboration is yet to break through. Proactive Sharing of Transport Bundling of freight is nothing new; this is exactly what logistics providers do. When companies outsource their logistics, a logistics service provider will combine freight loads of its customer base if shipment times are identical, and if there is a geographical match. Collaborative shipping is different; bundling opportunities are detected prior to shipment, and, if necessary, the timing of a shipment can be altered. For example, in 2011, healthcare multinationals Baxter and UCB established a horizontal collaboration to bundle their temperature-controlled pharmaceutical flows using intermodal rail transport. It is unusual for two pharmaceutical companies to partner up in logistics, which makes this case interesting. Synergies were created through flexible planning: Baxter has the possibility to postpone some of its orders, which frees up space for UCB who was shipping low volumes with a lower frequency. This example clearly illustrates the difference with traditional freight groupage that is mainly reactive, and in which decisions are made in the execution phase rather than in the planning phase.The more flexible the participating companies are, the greater the synergies. Collaborative shipping fits within the Physical Internet initiative proposed by Benoit Montreuil (2011 [2]) to tackle the inefficiencies in transportation and logistics. In the open and interconnected Physical Internet, inspired by its digital counterpart, physical goods are routed and scheduled efficiently through the seamless integration of standardized units, interfaces and protocols. As the foundation of the Physical Internet is built around multi-dimensional collaboration, it complements the emerging sharing economy in which goods and services are being shared and exchanged more easily than ever. Moreover, the increased availability of information and communications (ICT) technologies paves the way to explore new types of collaboration through data analytics.

Figure 1: Example of a bundling opportunity. Shipments A and B both have their origin near Brussels and their destination near Barcelona, which allows for a bundling of shipments.

Figure 2: Example of a backhauling opportunity. The destination of shipment A (Barcelona) lies close to the origin of shipment B, whose destination (Brussels) is close to the origin of shipment A. The empty truck after delivery of shipment A can be used for shipment B.

Bundling, Backhauling and Collect & Drop Opportunities The potential of hor izontal supply chain collaboration remains largely untapped. Practice has shown that establishing a horizontal collaboration is not that straightforward. Even when companies are April 2017

ORMS Today

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Collaborative shipping The algorithm also identifies collect and/or drop-off opportunities, allowing you to pick up an extra load en route, i.e., near an existing route, and drop it off further along the same route (see Figure 4). This allows us to tie in seamlessly with the sharing economy. Many things will naturally need to be resolved before the “Uberization” of freight transport is achieved, but one thing is certain: The algorithm demonstrates genuine opportunities for participation in the sharing economy. And the sharing economy is where we are heading.

Figure 3: Example of a roundtrip opportunity that includes three shipments (A, B and C). The destination of A (Lyon) is close to the origin of B, whose destination is close to the origin of shipment C (Bourges). The destination of C (Brussels) is again close to the origin of A, which completes the roundtrip.

willing to cooperate, there are still many practical impediments. One of the most important hurdles is to find suitable partners with whom to collaborate. Creemers et al. (2017 [3]) developed an algorithm that can quickly analyze extremely large data sets for all the transport routes of one or more companies, looking for ways to combine geographically compatible shipments. Among other things, it uses the GPS coordinates of the beginning and end of each route. Typical examples of opportunities include: • Bundling of shipments: routes with a starting and destination point in the same area, making it possible to use the same means of transport and thus increase the load factor (see Figure 1). • Backhauling: routes in the opposite direction, thus avoiding an empty return journey (see Figure 2). • Roundtrips: different routes that tie in with each other, allowing them to be combined into one tour, also putting an end to empty miles (see Figure 3). 22 | ORMS Today

April 2017

Big Data Analytics Through Digitally Enabled Platforms The strength of the algorithm is that it can handle data sets of almost any size. You might just about manage to analyze a few hundred transport routes in Excel, but for 10,000 routes you need heavier artillery. The algorithm has been implemented at Cargostream, an independent Pan-European platform that helps participating shippers reduce their truck transportation kilometers by bundling their regular transportation needs with other shippers and facilitates a shift to multi-modal transportation. The Cargostream platform currently includes more than 30,000 routes of multinational firms, including Procter & Gamble, Etex, Bridgestone, Duracell, General Mills, etc. (http://www.cargostream.net/). The availability of big data through such platforms allows the identification of ample collaborative shipping opportunities. The algorithm provides a list of opportunities ranked according to potential cost savings and environmental benefits. Recent research and proven results in the past three years have shown the following benefits: • reduction of transportation costs by 10 percent to 15 percent, • reduction of CO2 emissions by 20 percent to 25 percent, and • reliability improvement of more than 10 percent. In a second phase the frequency of the shipments among the collaboration partners are synchronized to streamline the inventory replenishments. As a result, not only can transportation costs be reduced, but inventory reductions can be realized as well when shippers join forces in the sharing economy (Gijsbrechts and Boute, 2017 [4]). Standardized Cooperation Agreements for SMEs Because of the large transaction costs associated with cargo bundling, it is presumed that only larger ormstoday.informs.org

companies can afford to invest in such projects. As small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) may lack the volume, time and money to obtain efficiency gains through cargo bundling, De Bruecker and Verheyen (2017 [5]) developed an online matching tool to facilitate the bundling process for use in a community-based context (business parks, sector organizations or intra-organization bundling). When users enter their shipment data on this platform (quantity, origin and destination, product type, shipping day and sequence), the tool proposes opportunities to bundle the shipment. By indicating preferences and constraints regarding product types and partner characteristics, food avoids being bundled with dangerous chemicals, for example, or the shipment is not bundled with a direct competitor. When the partners accept the proposed bundle, a standardized autocompleted cooperation agreement is automatically developed. The goal of these standardized autocompleted contracts is to further eliminate the transaction costs for the SMEs. The agreements include rules with respect to the management, liability and the distribution of the bundling costs to ensure that each partner gets its fair portion of the bundling gains. This ensures that both small as well as large SMEs, who may already benefit from lower transportation costs, have an incentive to bundle their shipments. Collaborative Shipping: Cheaper and Better for the Environment Collaborative shipping allows companies to reduce transport costs, which is generally also their primary motive for seeking out opportunities to share transport. However, collaborative shipping also enhances the sustainability of logistics. Improving the load factor reduces the number of vehicles on the roads. Fewer vehicles means lower emissions of harmful greenhouse gases, less congestion and fewer chances of accidents. Collaborative shipping also facilitates the shift to more sustainable transport modes, such as rail transport. The greater the economies of scale that can be achieved through collaborative shipping, the easier this shift will be. In addition, this will also make multimodal transport accessible to SMEs; working together makes it possible to achieve the freight volumes required to bring rail transport within financial reach. ORMS Jeroen Beliën (jeroen.belien@kuleuven.be) and Robert Boute are professors at KU Leuven, Research Center for Information Management, Simulation and Modeling, Leuven, Belgium. Boute is also a professor at the Vlerick Business School, Technology and Operations Management

Shorter Pull Quote text may be

used in this margin area.

Figure 4: Example of a complex collaboration opportunity. The roundtrip including shipments A, B and C is completed with the collection of shipment D in Dijon as a bundling with shipment A. This shipment D is dropped off near Paris on the route from Bourges back to Brussels (after a bundling with shipment C). Area, Leuven-Ghent, Belgium. Stefan Creemers is a professor at the IESEG School of Management, Lille, France. Philippe De Bruecker is a postdoctoral researcher at Odisee University College, Brussels, Belgium, and the KU Leuven, Research Center for Economics and Corporate Sustainability, Leuven, Belgium. Joren Gijsbrechts and Silvia Valeria Padilla Tinocoare Ph.D. candidates at the KU Leuven, Research Center for Operations Management, Leuven, Belgium. Wouter Verheyen is an assistant professor at Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands, as well as at Odisee University College, Brussels, Belgium.

REFERENCES 1. IPCC, 2014, “Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report,” contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, Geneva, Switzerland, pp. 151. 2. Montreuil, B., 2011, “Towards a Physical Internet: Meeting the Global Logistics Sustainability Grand Challenge,” Logistics Research, Vol. 3, No. 2-3, p. 71-87. 3. Creemers, S., Woumans, G., Boute, R., Beliën, J., 2017, “Tri-Vizor uses an efficient algorithm to identify collaborative shipping opportunities,” Interfaces, forthcoming. 4. Gijsbrechts, J. and Boute, R., 2017, “Synchronization of intermodal freight shipments in the sharing economy,” working paper, KU Leuven. 5. De Bruecker, P. and Verheyen, W., 2017, “Automatized cargo bundling for SMEs,” ORBEL31 Conference, Brussels, Feb. 2-3.

April 2017

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INTERNATIONAL

O.R.

Leading participants at the first International Conference in Operational Research, Oxford, 1957. Among those sitting in the front row (from the far right to the center) are: E.L. Arnoff, David Hertz, Pat Rivett, George Dantzig, Philip Morse, Thornton Page and Sir Charles Goodeve. Source: IFORS

Story of IFORS and its international conference First held 60 years ago, the triennial event – and the Federation – continue to grow to meet their respective missions.

By Graham K. Rand

24 | ORMS Today

April 2017

In July, the 21st triennial conference of the International Federation of Operational Research Societies (IFORS) will be held in Quebec. The first international conference was held 60 years ago in Oxford, England. The double celebration of significant anniversaries provides a good opportunity to reflect on what led to the first conference and to the creation of IFORS. As will be seen, and is only to be expected, the two societies that merged to create INFORMS – the Operations Research Society of America (ORSA) and the Institute of Management Sciences (TIMS) – were key players in the founding of both IFORS and the international conference. ormstoday.informs.org

In his presidential address, delivered at the 3rd Annual Meeting of TIMS at Los Angeles in October 1956, Gifford H. Symonds informed his members that “TIMS Council has agreed to cosponsor … with the Operations Research Society of Amer ica and the Operational Research Society of England an international conference on operational research and management science in England in 1957” [7]. Hopefully, OR Society members in Scotland, Wales and Ireland didn’t see this announcement; it is a U.K. society. The idea for the conference arose when members of TIMS and ORSA prepared a joint letter to the presidents of both societies proposing an international meeting. TIMS had an embryo French section, and hoped that the meeting would be held in Paris, but, by the time its council decided to co-sponsor the international meeting, the British had already offered to host the conference in Oxford. Many of the arrangements had been set, and Paris was ruled out. In January 1955, the vice-president of ORSA, Russ Ackoff, from the Case Institute of Technology in Cleveland, first proposed the idea to Pat Rivett, secretary of the OR Society, who received it enthusiastically. Conference committees were formed in early 1956, led by Sir Charles Goodeve and Pat Rivett in the U.K. and Thornton Page and David Hertz in the U.S., and by September 1956, the plans were well laid. At the time, Sir Charles was working for the British Iron and Steel Association. Rivett was also working in one of the U.K. nationalized industries – the National Coal Board. On the U.S. side, Page was from the Operations Research Office at Johns Hopkins University, and Hertz worked for Arthur Andersen and Company. In 1957, Page reported that “there were several major differences in concept to be ironed out: the OR Society wanted to maintain a scholarly atmosphere, ORSA emphasised the international aspects, and TIMS the organisational aspects of OR” [6]. The early decisions included limitation of the size of the conference to 250 delegates, pre-publication of the selected papers and solicitation of delegates from 30 countries. The selection of papers proved to be a major task; many potential participants were turned down. Most significantly, in the light of subsequent history, it was agreed that an evening meeting should be held when selected delegates could discuss the continuation of the international conferences.

Senior delegates met at “The Bear” pub to discuss plans for another conference. Credit: Graham Rand

Oxford 1957 It was a truly international meeting with delegates from the U.S., U.K., France, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey. Female delegates (there were not many) and couples were housed in hotels and guest houses, while the single males discovered, in Balliol and Magdalen colleges, that “Oxford undergraduates get along without plumbing on every floor and with the nearest bath sometimes 100 yards away along an outside path” [6]. Everyone ate together, in medieval halls, “seated on long oaken benches, and served by the famous Oxford scouts” [6]. Page reports that speakers, presumably in the discussion sessions, were allowed seven minutes each, and the timing was controlled by a set of green and red lights. The speaker was not to start another sentence after the red light came on. Hugh Miser recalled that all concerned obeyed this discipline, though at a meeting some years later he heard Tjalling Koopmans complain that he had been cut off by the red light, and would now finish his remarks. Hertz reported to TIMS that “we were housed and fed (although as one of those who stayed at Balliol, I’m not sure you can call it ‘fed’ – with no apologies to the hosts, since apparently Balliol College is very proud of its very bad food) all for $56.00, everything included. Very smoothly run: entertainment at the banquet, nightly informal sessions after we were locked in the colleges by the head porter, being awakened rather brusquely every morning by the under porter – this should convey some of the flavor” [5]. April 2017

“We were

housed and ‘fed.’ I’m not sure you can

call it ‘fed’ – apparently

Balliol College is

very proud of its

very bad food.”

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IFORS & its International Conference

Oxford and its “dreaming spirals” played host to the first IFORS International Conference 60 years ago. Credit: Stephen Rand

The Proceedings of the conference, which includes a group photograph of the participants, were published the same year [4]. In addition to the for mal papers, the opening session, discussions on the papers, panel discussions, reports on O.R. developments in the countries represented, and the summing-up are also included. The Proceedings were distributed widely, including to all the membership of ORSA. Some of the leading participants are shown in the front row of the group photograph (see photo on p. 24). It is interesting to note that C. West Churchman, who summed up the conference in a closing session, and Russ Ackoff, who by then had moved up to president of ORSA, are several rows back in the photograph. The following week, the prestigious British journal, The Economist, reported on the conference [1]. In a perceptive comment the reporter noted that it is not easy to be sure what O.R. is “since this co-operative application of the scientific method to the workings of business and other organisations is apt to push its elastic frontiers out round wherever it happens to stray, but many of the activities upon which its gaze happens to light benefit from its scrutiny.” The reporter noted a difference between British and American O.R.: “The experts from the United States were concerned more with the elaboration of its techniques, and with the study of large working systems in all their ramifications, than 26 | ORMS Today

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with the practical case studies and applications British speakers described.” On the last day of the conference, the participants dispersed in seven groups to meet O.R. workers at their place of work. Tours away from the conference have continued to be an important feature of IFORS conferences, but are now touristic rather than professional. However, the opportunity for social interaction continues to be the main aim of these activities. In his report to TIMS members, Hertz noted, “The promotion of science is not alone in the doing; it is also in the critical awareness of what others are doing and what, if you please, the world is like. I’m afraid that lack of awareness of this is a singular trait of U.S. management. In that connection, a paper such as delivered by Manning of Great Britain at the international conference on ‘Tolerances in Fitting Shoes,’ or by Kawata of Japan on ‘Standing Time of a Freight Car in a Marshalling Yard,’ may be compellingly suggestive as to the transfer of methodology through the filtering action of environmental demand, perception and the other factors mentioned. These papers can be interestingly contrasted with one of the U.S. contributions – George Feeney’s ‘Empty Box Car Distribution Problem’” [5]. Planning the Next Step On the evening of Sept. 5, more than two dozen senior delegates met at a “pub,” The Bear, in ormstoday.informs.org

Woodstock, a village outside Oxford close to Blenheim Palace, to discuss plans for another conference. In addition to the U.K., the U.S. and France, the countries represented were Australia, Canada, India, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. The attendees agreed that another conference should be held in spring 1960. Although there was a feeling that it should be held in the U.S. or Canada, the expense would prevent many Europeans from attending. Instead, the delegates decided to keep the conference in Europe, but not in a large city. Germain Krewerasâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; suggestion of Aixen-Provence in France was later approved, though the date turned out to be September 1960. There was a great deal of discussion about the nature and size of the conference. Philip Morse, from MIT, the first president of ORSA (1952-53), wanted it limited to 100 delegates; others thought that a thousand delegates would be more desirable. In the end, they agreed to restrict attendance to between 200 and 500 delegates, and that a limitation on the size of an individual countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s delegation might be desirable. In the discussion about a permanent federation, several potential objectives of such an organization were suggested. They included co-ordinating O.R. effort on international problems, establishing an abstracting and translating service in O.R., ensuring the continuity and consistent high quality of international conferences and obtaining travel funds and publication

funds, possibly from UNESCO, UN or OEEC. It was agreed that Sir Charles Goodeve and his committee would continue to act as a secretariat until a federation was established, and that they should prepare a draft charter. Although no formal instructions were given, it was understood that the Federation would consist of member societies, not individuals, that the secretariat (committee) should be elected on a rotating basis, that votes would be on some proportional basis, that finance would be raised by subscription, that new member societies would be elected on evidence of qualification, and that the charter could be amended by a majority vote. Goodeve and those members of his committee who were present accepted these responsibilities, on the understanding that others may be co-opted, and so the ground was laid for the birth of IFORS some 15 months later.

The

original three members of IFORS included

ORSA, the OR Society and SOFRO.

The Birth of IFORS IFORS came into existence on Jan. 1, 1959. The time since the Oxford meeting had been spent in preparing the statutes and creating the working arrangements for the Federation. There were initially three member societies: ORSA, the OR Society and SOFRO, the French society. The statutes gave control of the Federation to a Board of Representatives of one member per society; the initial members were John Lathrop (ORSA), Germain Kreweras (SOFRO) and Pat Rivett April 2017

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IFORS & its International Conference

(OR Society). Lathrop, from Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, had not attended the first conference, but had followed Russ Ackoff as ORSA president in 1958-59 after a lengthy period of service as ORSA’s first secretary/treasurer from 1952-55. To discharge the affairs of the Federation, the statutes provided for a Secretariat consisting of a secretary (an executive officer) and treasurer, to be nominated by a designated “Foster” Society.The first such society was the OR Society, and Goodeve was nominated as secretary (essentially the first president) and Donald Hicks (National Coal Board) was nominated as treasurer.The Board of Representatives accepted these nominations. The statutes [2] set out the purpose of the new Federation: “the development of operational research as a unified science and its advancement in all nations of the world.” Several ways of accomplishing this included the following: 1. Sponsoring of international conferences and meetings. 2. Providing other means for the exchange of information on operational research between nations. 3. Encouraging the establishment of national operational research societies. 4. Maintaining standards of competence in operational research. 5. Encouraging the teaching of operational research. 6. Promoting the development of specific parts of operational research, for example, to ensure a balance within that science or to open new fields. Perhaps the most striking aspect of the statutes is the provision that in all formal votes taken by the board, the voting strength of each member society is in proportion to the square root of the qualified REFERENCES 1. Anon., 1957, “Operational Research,” The Economist, Sept. 7, pp. 784 and 787. 2. Anon, 1959, “The International Federation of Operational Research Societies,” Operations Research, Vol. 7, B36-B41. 3. Anon, 1961, “The International Federation of Operational Research Societies,” Operations Research, Vol. 9, B87-B88. 4. Davies, M., Eddison, R.T., Page, T., 1957, Proceedings of the first international conference on Operational Research (Oxford 1957). English Universities Press, London. 5. Hertz, D.B., 1958, “The International Conference on Operations Research: A Report,” Management Science, Vol. 4, 344-347. 6. Page, T., 1957, “First International Conference on Operations Research,” Operations Research, Vol. 5, 863-871. 7. Symonds, G.H., 1957, “The Institute of Management Sciences: Progress Report,” Management Science, Vol. 3, 117-130.

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membership (defined in the bylaws as “broadly those who have a university degree or its equivalent and have worked in the field of operational research for at least two years”) of that society. This is clearly meant to give greater weight to larger societies, but not to overwhelm the smaller societies. The effect now is that the largest society (INFORMS with more than 8,000 qualified members) has a voting strength of just over 90, compared to the smallest society (Tunisia with 21 members), whose voting strength is less than five. IFORS’ first AGM About 350 delegates were present at the first conference following the founding of IFORS, in Aix-en-Provence in September 1960. This conference was designated the 2nd IFORS conference, hence the celebration of the 21st this year. During the conference, the first general meeting of IFORS was held, attended by the official delegates of the 10 member societies (the Netherlands, Australia, Sweden, Belgium, Canada, India and Norway had by now joined IFORS). Sir Charles Goodeve reported [3] that the Oxford Conference had yielded a surplus of nearly £1000 ($1,200), that the 10 member societies had a combined membership of more than 4,000, of whom 1,700 were “qualified,” and that an application for membership had been received from Japan. Four proposals were discussed and later approved by ballot: (i) that ORSA be designated the next foster society, (ii) that the next conference be held in Oslo in 1963, with Norway the host society, (iii) that IFORS sponsor a new abstracting journal, and (iv) that the annual membership levy would be 5 shillings ($0.30) per qualified member. What Happened? In the years since 1955, IFORS had been conceived, born and grown. Many of the societies who were to play key roles in the development of IFORS were already members of the Federation, and were drawn from three of the four regional groups that were created later. Today, IFORS consists of more than 50 member societies, representing some 30,000 individuals. Representatives from a good proportion of the member societies will gather in Quebec in July. And so the IFORS story continues. ORMS Graham Rand recently retired from Lancaster University, U.K. He was IFORS vice president (1998-2000) and is currently chair of IFORS’ publications committee. He was chair of the organizing committee of the 12th IFORS conference held in Athens in 1990.

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Human trafficking is a compound societal issue that involves the exploitation of humans for monetary gain or benefit. Photo courtesy of 123rf.com | ÂŠ ximagination

Human trafficking analysis Operations research and similar analytical techniques have the unique potential to address a worldwide problem.

By Renata Konrad, Andrew C. Trapp and Kayse Lee Maass 30 | ORMS Today

April 2017

Worldwide, an increasing amount of public attention is being directed toward the problem of human trafficking. The media are more frequently covering trafficking, anti-trafficking activism has risen, and most countries have created new policies, laws and enforcement mechanisms to address the issue. Despite this recognition, there is a shortage of technical solutions that practitioners and analysts can use to analyze data, perform impact assessments and assess decisions related to antiâ&#x20AC;&#x201C; human trafficking efforts. Operations research (O.R.) and similar analytical techniques have a unique potential to promote antihuman trafficking efforts. ormstoday.informs.org

Human trafficking is a compound societal methods of deterring its prevalence, and ultimately, While issue that involves the exploitation of humans for inform and transform policy. In 2014, the executive monetary gain or benefit. As a modern form of director for the United Nations Office on Drugs slavery, human trafficking violates human rights, and Crime (UNODC) issued a plea for help in presents a global public health concern, and is developing evidence-based approaches to address prevalent in both impoverished and wealthy nations. the crime of human trafficking. Given that services can play a Victims range from domestic workers (such as to trafficked persons are in their infancy, and housekeepers and nannies), to laborers (including evidence-based clinical and sociological research factory, construction, mining, commercial fishing, in the area is growing, there is an opportunity to role food service and agricultural), sex workers, beggars examine how researchers and practitioners can use and child soldiers. O.R. and analytics to effectively combat human in Risk factors for trafficking increase when trafficking. individuals are vulnerable due to poverty, the While it is reasonable to assume that O.R. and attraction of perceived higher standards of analytics can play a unique, effective role in counliving elsewhere, lack of employment, organized tering trafficking efforts, there are several practical crime, conflict, natural disasters or other such challenges for O.R. and analytics practitioners in f actor s. The demand for cheap labor and applying their techniques. At the same time, these for prostituted women, girls and boys drives challenges are opportunities to advance O.R. and several trafficking. Human trafficking often begins analytical methodologies. with fraudulent recruitment methods, such as promises of employment, marriage or a better Complex Challenges life. It starts out as recruitment or movement and Trafficking is inherently clandestine. Recruitment ends with exploitation. Migration is an element is deception, traffickers are covert, and victims are remain. of trafficking, but not all migrants become concealed. This â&#x20AC;&#x153;industryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;sâ&#x20AC;? illicit nature poses sevtrafficking victims. Similarly, trafficking does eral (surmountable) challenges for O.R. and analytnot necessarily involve migration or movement. ics practitioners. For example, statistics for juveniles indicate that There is a dearth of quantitative data regarding between 2008 and 2010, 83 percent of confirmed trafficking activity. Little reliable information sex trafficking incidents in the United States exists on the distribution of victims, traffickers, involved U.S. citizens. When a person through buyers and exploiters. Data that do exist can be coercion, deception, force, abuse of power or inaccurate, missing or worse, false; furthermore, power of vulnerability moves within her/his simply enhancing data collection techniques and country or to another country for the purpose of methodologies is often insufficient. Because data exploitation, he/she becomes a human trafficking analysis of both trafficked persons and traffickers victim [1]. typically involves data from multiple sources and Due to its clandestine nature, it is difficult jurisdictions, issues like data ownership, privacy, to detect and gather statistics on the crime of unwillingness to share or a simple lack of knowledge human trafficking. For analysts and practitioners, concerning what data are available often hamper measuring its prevalence is both difficult and data collection. (Figure 1 provides a sample of largely complicated. Sources estimate that between governmental resources which contain some data 27 million and 45.8 million individuals around aggregated by country for the interested reader.) the world are victims of human International Organization for Migration, Counter-trafficking: trafficking [2, 3]. Moreover, for https://www.iom.int/counter-trafficking traffickers, exploiting humans is an extremely profitable enterprise. Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights: Globally, forced labor and sexual http://www.ohchr.org exploitation generate an estimated $150 billion annually in illegal The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe: profits, making it one of the http://www.osce.org largest sources of profit for global organized crime, second only to United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking: illicit drugs. http://www.ungift.org There is a need for quantitative research to provide an understanding Figure 1: Sample of data resources regarding trafficking activity. of trafficking operations, develop

O.R. and analytics

unique, effective

countering trafficking efforts,

practical challenges

April 2017

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Human Trafficking Human trafficking is essentially a supply chain in which the “supply” (human victims) moves through a network to meet “demand” (e.g., for cheap, vulnerable and illegal labor). Traffickers consciously ensure that such networks are hidden and connections are covert to elude law enforcement; such circumstances pose a challenge for O.R. and analytics practitioners. Networks are dynamic, as traffickers are likely to change distribution and transportation routes to avoid detection. Rapid network adaptations leave law enforcement and analysts with incomplete information. Further complicating the effective development of strategies to identify and dismantle trafficking networks is the high level of diversity affecting network structures. The culture, local customs, access points, competing activities and efficacy of local law enforcement are all key factors influencing how networks both originate and evolve. Opportunities for O.R. Application and Advancement While the human trafficking “industry” presents challenges, these issues also introduce opportunities for new applications and advancements in O.R. and analytics. The authors are involved in some of the initiatives described below, while others present interesting and potential impactful avenues for investigation. Analyzing resource allocation decisions. Resource allocation decisions lie at the heart of many O.R. problems, and anti-trafficking initiatives stand to benefit from techniques that the O.R. community has developed. For instance, a government may need to decide how to best schedule labor inspectors to detect child labor in the manufacturing industry. Such a government will likely have a limited operating budget, while inspectors need to travel to maximize the likelihood of detecting illegal labor practices, which are probably being concealed. In another example, a nongovernmental organization (NGO) may want to decide where to locate a shelter for trafficking survivors. Such a decision entails a large investment, typically from the nonprofit sector, for a small population of survivors. While aspects of facility location problems could be used to select locations for rehabilitative shelters, such an approach would have to account for several characteristics that are unique to trafficking. In addition to safe housing, for successful rehabilitation, shelters need to be linked to a network of social and medical services. Factors 32 | ORMS Today

April 2017

that influence the geographic location of shelters include access to necessary survivor services, secur ity issues, and demand that is largely unknown. Organizations need to balance these factors against establishment and maintenance costs, as well as shelter capacity. As such, decisions concerning whether to open and where to locate a shelter are complex; O.R. techniques are wellsuited for such a decision-making environment. Identifying effective victim interventions. Although governments play an important role in creating socioeconomic policies to address the systemic causes of trafficking [4], ongoing trafficking recr uitment calls for targeted intervention strategies to prevent individuals from falling victim to trafficking. The aim of awareness campaigns, arguably the most common form of trafficking prevention activities, is to raise awareness of the dangers of trafficking and offer strategies to avoid deception and exploitation. With effective implementation, such awareness campaigns can play a key role in combating human trafficking. Evidence suggests that interventions that are empowerment oriented and involve communities hold even greater promise than top-down, one-time interventions, such as public awareness campaigns. These empowerment-oriented interventions include vocational training, skill-building and support for formal or other education classes.Yet, to be effective, targeted interventions must first identify a target population and then efficiently allocate resources to implement a prevention intervention. Analytics practitioners can potentially identify vulnerable individuals, communities or populations expected to have the highest likelihood of being trafficked. Furthermore, O.R. practitioners can develop resource allocation and media planning programs to effectively target interventions similar to efforts in public health. Developing assessment measures. Despite significant financial and social investments, and the seriousness of the crime itself, many anti– human trafficking interventions operate without an adequate evidence base. Information is largely anecdotal, and a lack of meaningful impact assessments makes it difficult for analysts to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions. O.R. techniques identify and compare alternatives, and practitioners and researchers can play an active role in defining measures to assess interventions related to human trafficking. Drawing from a significant presence in health policy modeling, medical decision-making, cost-benefit analysis and increasingly, welfare ormstoday.informs.org

economic principles, an opportunity exists for practitioners to develop and define appropriate measurements to guide anti-trafficking policymakers in assessing interventions. One can envision practitioners’ development of an objective function that adequately captures societal costs for survivor rehabilitation programs. Dismantling trafficking networks. The nature of human trafficking networks presents opportunities for O.R. and analytics practitioners to further develop the rich field of networkbased analytic techniques. Network analysis can identify the means (e.g., individuals, groups, paths, etc.) to block or facilitate flow (e.g., money, communication, trafficking, etc.) in a trafficking network. Moreover, analysts and researchers can use network analysis to study network behaviors, measure relationships within the network or interdict/disrupt the network itself. For example, analytics practitioners could exploit the structures embedded in social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, to understand the social networks of at-risk persons or, alternatively, exploiters of trafficked persons. Social network analysis could help to determine which contacts have a critical influence over others, and this may enable early identification of either a victim or trafficking transaction. N e t wo r k i n t e rd i c t i o n , t h e s e i z i n g o f traffickers and rescue of victims, is an obvious application for O.R. practitioners. Although the fundamental ideas of network interdiction pertain to human trafficking, unlike network interdiction research in the context of illegal narcotics or weapons, trafficked humans are a “renewable commodity.” This difference changes how practitioners account for network flows in existing approaches. Perhaps what presents a greater challenge for them is ambiguous evidence in human trafficking networks. Compared to drug or weapons interdiction, where there is little dispute as to whether the commodity is illicit, in human trafficking interdiction the “commodities” may not be willing or able to identify themselves as such. Thus, the interdictor is faced with the additional decision of whether to pursue prosecution, and if so, the burden of collecting evidence. Identifying trafficking activity. Analytics practitioners can apply several existing approaches to identifying victims and per petrators or providing investigators with investigative leads or evidence. For example, some human-trafficking activity leaves traces in the public areas of the Internet, mostly in the form of advertisements

and escort ads. Advertisers use social networking, dating, chat and community websites, with more proficient traffickers frequently altering their online presence to elude identification. Recent advances in techniques, such as matrix completion, have the potential to address issues regarding falsified or missing data. Machinelearning technologies can be used to learn and detect online trafficking activity. Traffickers are also known to take advantage of increased demand for commercial sexual exploitation during major events, such as conventions or the Super Bowl. Analytics practitioners could conduct spatiotemporal analyses of online ads to detect and possibly interdict transportation of victims to the event. Results from such analyses could benefit law enforcement and policymakers for consensus building as to where and when they should focus intervention efforts. Human trafficking is a serious crime and an appalling violation of human rights. Almost every country is affected by human trafficking as a source, transit point or destination of victims. Despite its prevalence, the seriousness of the crime, and the considerable investment in tackling it, there is a lack of technical solutions that can support decision-making related to anti-trafficking initiatives. O.R. and analytics have great potential to make an impact in this field. ORMS

Network interdiction, the seizing of

traffickers and rescue of

victims, is an

obvious application for O.R.

practitioners.

Renata Konrad (rkonrad@wpi.edu) is an assistant professor of operations and industrial engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. She is interested in optimization and simulation approaches in human trafficking and healthcare. Andrew C. Trapp is an associate professor of operations and industrial engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. He develops new theory, models and computational solution approaches to tackle problems from a diverse cross-section of sectors including humanitarian operations, data mining, sustainability and healthcare. Kayse Lee Maass (leekayse@umich.edu) is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Industrial and Operations Engineering at the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on the application of OR/MS to social justice and equity issues within the supply chain management, humanitarian logistics and healthcare contexts.

REFERENCES 1. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2004, United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and the Protocols Thereto, http://www.unodc.org/documents/ treaties/UNTOC/Publications/TOC%20Convention/TOCebook-e.pdf. 2. “Trafficking in Persons Report,” 2016, United States Department of State, http: //www.state. gov/j/tip/rls/tiprpt. 3. The Global Slavery Index, 2016, Dalkeith, Western Australia: Walk Free Foundation. 4. Heller, C., 2014, “Perception management – Deterring potential migrants through information campaigns,” Global Media and Communication, Vol. 10, No. 3, pp. 303-318.

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INTERNATIONAL

O.R.

The explosion of data, cloud computing and advanced analytics is optimizing the way we grow food. Source: Syngenta

Agricultureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s need for analytics and IoT How analytics can play a major role in ensuring a growing world population will have enough food to eat for generations to come.

By Joseph Byrum

34 | ORMS Today

April 2017

Analytics and Internet of Things (IoT) devices promise to deliver massive returns on innovation in agriculture. When it comes to smart devices, most attention immediately turns to the home where phones and tablets communicate with lights, thermostats and other appliances to enhance the convenience of our living environments. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cer tainly a welcomed advance, but analytics and IoT can achieve even more, perhaps playing a major role in ensuring a growing world population will have enough food to eat for generations to come. ormstoday.informs.org

Here’s how that could happen. The explosion in availability of inexpensive sensor technology, cloud computing capacity and the development of advanced operations research algorithms is coming together to optimize the way we grow food. Improving productivity isn’t a luxury; it’s a necessity. The world population is charging toward 9.7 billion in 2050 [1], a significant jump from just 1.6 billion at the dawn of the 20th century [2]. Naturally, the amount of arable land per person has been sliding downward ever since [3].To guarantee that we will have enough to eat in the decades ahead, we must optimize the amount of food produced per acre. Pre-industrial agriculture was about as far from optimized as you could imagine. It took backbreaking labor on small subsistence farms to extract enough food to feed a single person from about two acres of land. In the 20th century, the arrival of machinery, modern fertilizers and plant hybrids sent productivity soaring. An acre could feed five. Now the dawn of precision agriculture promises to harness the power of sensors and analytics to drive the next revolution in operational efficiency – one that will ensure there’s enough food to go around as the population expands and the pressures on land use intensify. Data-driven farming is more than a good business decision; it’s the only truly sustainable option for the future. Growing plant crops requires soil, sunlight, water and nutr ients. The amount of sun is variable and dependent on weather, but the rest is under our control. In the old days, farmers would err on the side of dumping too much fertilizer on their fields, thinking it better to go with too much than to starve the growing plant. Unfortunately, this excess of nitrogen was bad for the environment and didn’t promote efficient growth. Likewise, guessing the amount of water needed tended to overuse this scarce resource. Today, using analytic techniques to apply only as much water and fertilizer as needed to the plant so that it achieves maximum growth eliminates waste of scarce resources and protects against environmental damage. The American Farm Bureau found precision techniques cut costs by 15 percent while increasing yields by 13 percent, on average [4].Thus, efficiency, profitability and sustainability go hand-inhand with agriculture, thanks to the power of data analytics. The Internet of Things to the Rescue Data analytics are only as good as the data used to feed the algorithms, and right now agricultural

data are a mess. There is no unified system for data and devices, creating a nightmare for analysis. The information collected isn’t actionable. Agriculture has lagged on the data side because, unlike the lucrative market for consumer goods, agriculture is often seen as a low-margin business with little opportunity for high-tech investment – the sort of investment needed to drive productivity to the next level. From an economic standpoint, the boost in productivity from improved data collection must be big enough to cover the cost of the new equipment. That is a hard sell, because commodity prices are variable. Farmers are inherently practical, interested not in the latest and greatest gadgets, but the devices that have a proven value. So the sensors that create data for growers must be affordable, and IoT devices hold great promise in that respect. Small networked devices can monitor soil moisture and nutrition content, as well as environmental conditions including temperature, humidity and air quality. They can track problems with equipment, like the amount of water, pesticides and fertilizer used. Just about every relevant variable can be measured and tracked on a plant-by-plant basis. Combined with satellite imagery, drones and GPS systems, the amount of data generated can be tremendous. The cost of rugged IoT devices has contracted in recent years, but not quite enough to encourage mass adoption. Achieving greater sensor density requires a significant up-front investment in technology that continues to evolve. Farms that were once thought to be cutting edge used 2G GSM cellular modems to upload sensor data to the cloud for later analysis. They were forced to upgrade at the beginning of the year when one of the largest wireless providers shut down this network [5]. The shrinking size and increasing power and efficiency of the equipment is making it easier to create mesh networks to move data around farms that were once severely limited by power and range constraints. This will help make mass adoption a reality. A report by BI Intelligence [6] estimates the number of data points gathered on an average farm will grow from 190,000 today to 4.1 million in 2050.

Data-driven farming is more than a

good business decision; it’s the only

truly sustainable option for the

future.

O.R. Communities to the Rescue Having more data at one’s fingertips is nice, but without proper analysis, the data lack actionable value. Data and information are not the same thing. If the readout on the agricultural sensor is 54, that’s data – but it conveys no actionable information April 2017

ORMS Today

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Agriculture & Analytics

Analytics will play an indispensable role in cultivating a sustainable harvest to feed a fast-growing world population. Source: Syngenta

on its own. Knowing that the sensor is measuring in degrees Fahrenheit helps provide context. Knowing, in addition, that a soil temperature of 54 degrees is ideal for growing soybeans provides a basis for action – it’s a good time to begin planting seeds. What the INFORMS and IFORS (International Federation of Operational Research Societies) communities have in abundance is the expertise in converting data into actionable information through the tools of operations research. Agriculture traditionally has not been a data-intensive industry and has not built up the expertise to deal with the information overload that will follow mass adoption of IoT devices. REFERENCES 1. http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/news/population/2015-report.html 2. https://www.census.gov/population/international/data/worldpop/table_history.php 3. http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.ARBL.HA.PC 4. http://www.fb.org/newsroom/american-farm-bureau-survey-shows-big-data-use-increasingbig-questions-rem 5. https://www.att.com/esupport/article.html#!/wireless/KM1084805 6. http://www.businessinsider.com/internet-of-things-smart-agriculture-2016-10 7. http://aggateway.org/eConnectivityActivities/Implementation/PrecisionAgIrrigationLanguage (PAIL).aspx 8. http://openag.io/

36 | ORMS Today

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There is no question that agriculture will need help from the data analytics community. One of the big challenges that must be solved is the establishment of data standards that will replace the current array of proprietary systems with a means of cooperation and data sharing. Groups like AgGateway [7] and Open Ag Data Alliance [8] are working on the standards needed so that agriculture’s IoT sensors can talk to one another, which inevitably raises difficult ownership and privacy questions about who controls the data collected. Solving these problems, which aren’t unique to agr iculture, will enable far mers to place sensors in a way that gives them the granularity needed to optimize like never before. In assisting this effort, the analytics community will play an indispensable role in cultivating a sustainable harvest to feed a fast-growing world population. ORMS Joseph Byrum, Ph.D., MBA, PMP, is senior R&D and strategic marketing executive in Life Sciences-Global Product Development, Innovation and Delivery at Syngenta, a global Swiss agribusiness that produces agrochemicals and seeds. He writes on agricultural innovation including analytics. Syngenta received the 2015 Edelman Award from INFORMS.

ormstoday.informs.org

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The core of Industry 4.0 is connected, intelligent products that communicate with users or other products. Photo courtesy of 123rf.com | © aimage

Analytics everywhere What Germany’s Industrie 4.0 initiative is teaching us about the power of analytics

By Arnab Chakraborty and Thomas D. Meyer

38 | ORMS Today

April 2017

Through advances such as big data and the Internet of Things (IoT), the field of analytics has been growing by leaps and bounds. However, much of the focus, particularly in t he U ni te d S t a te s , h a s b e e n in t he c o n s u m e r ( i.e., business-to-consumer, or B2C) market. Indeed, much of the innovation coming out of Silicon Valley, and from disruptive digital companies with new business models and no legacy infrastructure to contend with, remains in the context of personalization and the consumer experience. However, organizations too often focus on analytics simply as a tool for incremental gain, with data siloed throughout the business and used by different groups, each focusing on different goals, unable to unlock new value and outcomes. As a result, their business intelligence is out of sync with the business itself, and they’re missing out on a tremendous opportunity to get the most value from their analytics investments and reap the full benefits that analytics can offer. To move past business intelligence and toward becoming an “intelligent business,” companies must embed analytics across the entire value chain. The Example of Germany That is starting to happen, as evidenced by the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), also known as Industry 4.0 (for the fourth industrial revolution). Engineering and ormstoday.informs.org

manufacturing ecosystems are getting reshaped because of the IIoT – particularly sensor technologies and the vast amounts of data they can provide – which is enabling the creation of “smart” products and services connected to each other through generally available platforms. It’s no surprise that Germany is among those leading the charge in this area, in industry – given the country’s role as one of the world’s most-innovative manufacturing markets and its technological leadership in industrial production R&D – as well as in academia, with many universities making advancements in IIoT-related areas of robotics, sensor technologies and artificial intelligence. The core of Industry 4.0 is connected, intelligent products that communicate with users or other products, enabling new digital business models that harness collected data to offer additional services and as-a-service products – a fully digital value chain. Production processes in all sectors, from high tech to manufacturing and industrial equipment, are being transformed by digital technologies, with leading companies integrating these technologies to improve and evolve pillars of their value chain across entire industries. Innovative manufacturers recognize that enhancing the manufacturing process for even simple products presents new opportunities for growth. Germany’s commitment to this digital evolution is evidenced through its public-private strategic initiative designed to establish itself as a leading provider of advanced manufacturing solutions.The purpose of this initiative, known as Industrie 4.0 [1] (related to, but not to be confused with, Industry 4.0), is to connect the IoT to traditional industrial manufacturing, leveraging digital technologies including advanced analytics, big data and cloud computing. Industrie 4.0 and other programs such as Smart Service Welt [2] represent a paradigm shift from “centralized” to “decentralized” smart manufacturing and production, where intelligent machines, systems and networks are capable of autonomously exchanging and responding to information to manage industrial production processes through edge analytics. By designing their systems for broad-scale adoption and enabling connected “things” to make decisions – while also empowering individuals to use data, gather insights and make informed business decisions that require a “human touch” – leading companies in Germany are re-orientating themselves around data to realize the full value of their analytics investments and to unlock new sources of value. By encouraging the adoption of agile technology platforms and tools such as data visualization to increase the reach of data-driven insights, Industrie 4.0 has touched on a cultural change we’re seeing throughout Germany. New work models are being developed to scale collaboration across organizations, with analytics embedded to transform the value chain and deliver real outcomes, with new

The core of

efficiencies freeing up time across the organization to focus on the development of new revenue sources. The list of major companies leading in the Industrie 4.0 ecosystem is long. Bosch Group [3] with global sales of more than €70 billion, is active on all three levels of the IoT – sensors, software and services – and produces 4 million IoT sensors daily. Nearly three years ago it formed a new company, Bosch Connected Devices and Solutions, to supply electronic components and software designed to add intelligence to and Web-enable a wide range of devices.And earlier this year, as part of its shift toward Industrie 4.0, Bosch launched its first IoT cloudcomputing infrastructure and platform at a dedicated data center in Germany. Manufacturing and electronics conglomerate Siemens this past June launched its Simcenter portfolio [4], a suite of simulation software and test solutions that help companies address the modern engineering challenges of today’s complex products. Combining simulation and physical testing with intelligent reporting and data analytics, Simcenter helps companies more accurately predict product performance throughout all stages of the product development process. Just recently, Lufthansa Technik [5] – the Lufthansa Group subsidiary that provides maintenance, repair and overhaul services for aircraft, engines and components – announced that in 2017 it will launch an independent platform, called Condition Analytics, to predict precisely when components should be replaced, delivering results faster and saving operators money.This is another example of Lufthansa’s strategy to blend digital analytics with engineering expertise to make component maintenance, repair and overhaul more predictive. Agricultural-equipment company Claas [6] is leveraging this type of continuous remote monitoring technology by developing ways to transmit information from its harvesters operating in fields to farmers or grain experts thousands of miles away automatically via satellite networks. Operators of Claas combine harvesters can use the company’s smartphone app to help control machines – and can even leave them to operate alone. These are just a couple of the countless examples of German companies getting involved and taking a lead in analytics and Industrie 4.0, saving time, creating new operating efficiencies and creating new revenues. Accenture is working with many of these and other companies around the world to help them embed analytics across their businesses and throughout their value chains to transform the culture of their operations, unlock the greatest possible value from their analytics investments, and ultimately create new business models. In Germany and elsewhere, much of what we see taking place as organizations begin embedding analytics across the value chain entails developing new digital April 2017

Industry 4.0 is connected,

intelligent products that … offer a

fully digital value chain.

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Analytics Everywhere and data-driven prototypes that help accelerate digital journeys toward becoming “intelligent businesses.” We often bring clients into the Accenture Labs and Accenture Liquid Studios to leverage immersive environments and help them quickly develop analyticsbased prototypes to unlock new value. Creating New Business Models Across Industries In the same way as manufacturers have been placing sensors in shop-floor equipment to feed information directly to an analytics engine – enabling them to identify, predict, and then proactively address, machine-related maintenance issues – this can be done with other technologies and in other industries. For example, by embedding sensors in its vehicles, a trucking company can identify potential operational issues, such as when a part is likely to break down, the truck’s likely location when it will break down, the potential locations for repair and the optimal repair times to maximize in-service time. Based on these insights, the fleet manager can make effective decisions regarding ordering spare parts necessary for repairs; scheduling repairs with the garage, and even planning a motel stay for the driver during this time. Some of these tasks can now be fully automated, removing the need for time-consuming human intervention. So rather than just selling its customers the vehicles it manufactures, the company can sell them ancillary services related to the ongoing operation of the vehicle, helping customers maximize the vehicle’s uptime. In this way a truck manufacturer can now be so much more, providing additional services and creating new revenue streams by taking advantage of the insights powered by analytics to unlock value and, in many cases, provide something unexpected but highly appreciated to clients. Across industries, we’re seeing new business models like this being powered by analytics, and Germany is at the forefront of this activity through initiatives such as Industrie 4.0, which play on its manufacturing heritage. EDITOR’S NOTE: An earlier version of this article appeared in the 2017 January/February issue of Analytics magazine.

REFERENCES 1. https://www.gtai.de/GTAI/Content/EN/Invest/_SharedDocs/Downloads/GTAI/Brochures/ Industries/industrie4.0-smart-manufacturing-for-the-future-en.pdf 2. http://www.acatech.de/smart-service-welt 3. https://www.senseware.co/bosch-ushers-in-industrie-4-0-with-smart-building-smart-homesolutions/ 4. http://www.plm.automation.siemens.com/en_us/about_us/newsroom/press/press_release. cfm?Component=248286&ComponentTemplate=822 5. http://aviationweek.com/mro-europe-2016/lufthansa-technik-launch-big-data-analytics-platform 6. https://www.ft.com/content/fe0e97fc-690d-11e6-a0b1-d87a9fea034f

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Creating a Digital Ecosystem Of course, leveraging the full power of advanced analytics requires more than just a solid technology infrastructure and the latest technologies. What’s needed is a cultural shift within organizations so that each element of the value chain uses analytics to work toward the same business goals. To get as much value out of data as possible in such a fast-paced environment, companies need to think beyond the confines of the four walls of their own organizations to the broader analytics ecosystem.This might entail partnering with technology companies or vendors that have expertise (and data scientists) unavailable in your own organization; participating in industry or academic activities in the field; or perhaps even teaming with competitors to make the greatest advancements as quickly as possible.A rising tide lifts all ships, as they say. In Germany, one of our key relationships is with the German Research Center of Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) – the world’s largest research center in the field of AI – with whom we’re collaborating to develop and apply deep learning capabilities that will solve complex and challenging business problems.With an initial focus on next-generation retailing and, in the manufacturing sector, smart products, we can pair DFKI’s labs and skills with design-led approaches to analytics and AI expertise to facilitate ideation and achieve innovative solutions faster than either of us could alone. The Road Forward The first three industrial revolutions came about as a result of mechanization, electricity and IT. The introduction of the Industrial IoT and related services into the manufacturing environment has ushered in a fourth industrial revolution, one that has already shown the potential to bring differentiated products and services at scale and create new customer experiences. Germany’s Industrie 4.0 initiative is a great example of how collaboration between a wide variety of organizations across the public and private sectors is helping drive innovation, enabling organizations to become agile, innovative and disruptive. By applying analytics to drive digital disruption in the industrial and manufacturing sectors, leading companies in Germany are creating intelligent products and smart services to deliver unique outcome-based customer experiences. By following a similar model, companies in the United States and elsewhere would be well-positioned to create new and novel business models – and prosper from the new sources of value they provide. ORMS Arnab Chakraborty is a managing director at Accenture Analytics, part of Accenture Digital, with responsibility for the ASG (Austria-Switzerland-Germany) region. Thomas D. Meyer is the Accenture country managing director for Switzerland and the Accenture Digital lead for the ASG region.

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Modern elevators contain many sensors and software designed to move people safely and comfortably inside the buildings. Photo courtesy of 123rf.com | ÂŠ Inspirestock International

People flow in buildings Accurate modeling of how people use elevators and behave in emergencies is the key to successful people flow planning.

By Juha-Matti Kuusinen, Janne Sorsa, Marja-Liisa Siikonen, Henri Hakonen and Harri Ehtamo

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In 2014, more than half of the total global population was living in an urban environment. In the urban world, elevators often form the core of the buildings, whose value is thus largely dependent on their performance and the vertical transportation system as a whole. In addition to smooth and efficient people flow, the quality of a building depends on safety, especially on fast evacuation in an emergency situation. This article describes some key advances in people flow and building safety modeling based on several years of collaborative research carried out by KONE Corporation, one of the global leaders in the elevator and escalator industry, and ormstoday.informs.org

Systems Analysis Laboratory of the Aalto University. This ongoing research forms the basis for the development of efficient vertical transportation systems, as well as advanced people flow and evacuation planning tools which provide important decision support for building designers. Elevators Adapt to People Flow Modern elevators contain many sensors and software designed to move people safely and comfortably inside the buildings. The elevators are typically combined into groups, and the elevators in the same group are controlled by an elevator group control system (EGCS). The main task of the EGCS is to dispatch the elevators to passengers’ calls. To transport passengers to their destinations fast and without waiting, modern EGCS use advanced mathematical optimization algorithms and passenger traffic forecasts to adapt to the possible changes and uncertainties in the traffic [16]. The EGCS measures the people flow in a building by counting the number of passengers boarding and alighting at each elevator stop and passengers’ calls. The measurements are made for each floor and direction throughout the day [10]. The EGCS forms the traffic forecasts from the measurements and uses them in dispatching the elevators to the calls in an efficient way. The floor- and direction-based statistics, however, do not fully describe the passenger traffic in a building, and thus cannot be used to explicitly predict all the important uncertainties related to the traffic. For example, it is not possible to accurately predict how many passengers typically travel between a given origin-destination floor pair, i.e., how much free space is typically required in an elevator during a journey from the origin to the destination. The prediction of this and other important information related to the passenger traffic requires the measuring of every passenger journey between every pair of floors in a building. This, however, is not possible with the commonly used sensors. A recent study presents a method that can be used to estimate the passenger journeys, and thus, to improve the performance of the elevators [9]. The passenger journeys can also be combined into a building origin-destination matrix to recognize the three traditional traffic components – incoming, outgoing and interfloor – and special floors such as express zones. The three traffic components together with the total traffic intensity define a range of traffic patterns, for example, up-peak traffic during which most people travel from the main elevator lobby or ground floor to the populated floors.

Figure 1: A building origin-destination matrix based on the passenger journeys estimated during a 15-minute simulation of mixed lunch hour traffic in a 25-floor office building. Source: Kone Corporation

The

Sociality Completes Traffic Planning No matter how intelligent the elevator group control is, the passenger traffic cannot be efficiently handled if, for example, there are too few elevators in the group. On the other hand, elevators are expensive and take a lot of floor space, and thus, too many elevators would also be a bad solution, especially for the building owner. For a long time, elevator traffic planning has been based on the theoretical up-peak roundtrip model, which is used to calculate the uppeak performance of an elevator group [14]. In cases involving advanced group controls or unusual building configurations, the planning is typically based on simulation. The results of the traffic simulations depend on the simulated traffic pattern and on the assumptions of how passengers behave and use elevators. Hence, to be able to plan appropriately dimensioned elevator groups where the number and size of the elevators is not too large or small, the simulated behavior should model the real behavior as accurately as possible. One of the key inputs in elevator traffic simulations is the process that describes how passengers arrive at the elevator lobbies and register calls. The typical assumption is that passengers arrive according to a Poisson process. In this process, passengers arrive individually with exponentially distributed inter-arrival times. It has been shown that this assumption holds in the real world during an up-peak traffic situation [1]. Kuusinen et al. [8] present a study on the arrival process in a high-rise office building, taking into account, for the first time, that the process does April 2017

results of the

traffic simulations depend on the

simulated traffic pattern and on the assumptions of how

passengers behave and use

elevators.

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People Flow

Figure 2: The batch-size distribution depends on the time of day. For example, in office buildings, people arrive at work alone in the morning (left) whereas they move in batches during lunch time (right). Source: Kone Corporation

not remain the same throughout the day. For example, during lunch time, people socialize and move in batches whereas in the morning they arrive at work alone. Hence, the real arrival process can be modeled more accurately with a compound Poisson process where the passengers arrive in batches regardless of the time of day. Of course, the size of the arriving batches need to be defined, which can be done with a batch-size distribution. The batch-size distribution has been measured in several office buildings around the world and throughout the day by human observers. The results from these measurements are strikingly similar. In the morning, people usually travel alone, which is reflected by the average batch size of 1.1 persons or less, and the high proportion, about 90 percent to 95 percent, of people moving alone. On

Figure 3: People flow simulation with KONE BTS. Source: Kone Corporation

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the other hand, people tend to form large groups of up to five persons during lunch time, which results in the average batch size of 1.4-1.7 persons. Hence, during lunch time, the size of the batches deviates significantly from only one person, which should be taken into account in elevator traffic simulations to obtain reliable results. The var ying intensity of people flow throughout the day has been studied quite extensively, and the existing elevator traffic simulation models generate the measured daily traffic patterns [12]. However, the batch arrivals seem to be the final piece to match the results of the theoretical models to the real people flow. A good example is the up-peak roundtrip model. To validate the model, its key variables as well as the batch size distribution were measured during the embarkation of a cruise ship [13. During an embarkation, the traffic consists mainly of people traveling from the embarkation decks to the upper decks with some interfloor traffic between the upper decks. This means that the traffic is almost pure up-peak traffic, making the validation possible. Based on the measurements, the average batch size was about 1.7 passengers, indicating that many of the batches were clearly larger than one passenger. A new variant of the classical uppeak roundtrip model, which takes the average batch size as an input parameter, produced results that matched up with the measurements. Since the up-peak roundtrip model can be used to validate simulation models, the new model enables the validation and calibration of simulation models based on batch arrivals. Finding the Way in the Virtual Building The KONE Building Traffic Simulator (KONE BTS) is capable of modeling complex high-rise ormstoday.informs.org

buildings having multiple elevator groups, staircases and escalators [10]. BTS generates autonomous virtual agents according to the arrival process model and routes them through the building from their origin floors to their destination floors. Each agent belongs to a passenger group that Figure 4: Snapshots of a trial of the experimental study on pedestrian behavior and exit selection in evacuation has a set of physical and of a corridor. behavioral characteristics. Source: Kone Corporation Examples of physical characteristics are walking speed, space demand and agents need to decide which of the available An ability to use certain transportation devices.The betransports to use when leaving their home havioral characteristics define how the agents weight floor. The decisions are based on the behavioral different routes when making way-finding decisions characteristics of the agents and the congestion during a simulation. levels of the transports [15]. BTS generates a way-finding network automatWhy is the Back Row Rushing? ically from building hotspots or nodes. A hotspot is a place where a passenger typically makes a deciAn important decision evacuees usually face is what usually face sion about the next destination or hotspot. Example exit to use. In agent-based evacuation simulation is hotspots are building entrances, waiting areas such models, the preferred exit is often selected based as elevator lobbies, escalators and staircases. During on a rule or a more advanced algorithm.The agents a simulation, every agent makes a way-finding demay, for example, select the nearest exit or observe cision at each hotspot. This decision problem can the situation and make optimal decisions [2]. It is, to use. best be described by multi-attribute value theory, however, questionable whether people in a threatwhich weights different behavioral criteria or modening situation would make optimal decisions and ules according to the passenger group parameters. select the fastest exit. The information available, for For example, a module representing the reluctance example the length of the queues at the exits, and to walk long distances favors routes that do not con- the time to process it may be limited. Indeed, the tain walking.The final route decision is drawn from results of an experimental study suggest that people a probability distribution where a high route proba- in an evacuation situation may not be able to select bility corresponds to a high utility.The advantage of the fastest exit [5]. this approach is that even if the agents were identical Most catastrophes in evacuation situations, with respect to their parameters, they may choose like in evacuations from fire, take place just different routes if they are about equally probable. in front of the most used exits. The speed of A deterministic approach would make identical pedestrian flow through the bottlenecks is one of passengers choose the same route, which would be- the factors affecting the outcome of evacuations. come congested while other routes would remain The factors affecting these flows have been unused. studied with evacuation experiments and by After 9/11, author ities star ted to pay computer simulations. One of the key findings more attention to evacuation of tall buildings, is the faster-is-slower effect, which says that the and elevators became an accepted means for harder people push toward an exit, the more evacuation. In tall buildings, evacuation can be people flow through it is reduced. This is due several times faster with the elevators than with to the increased pressure, which increases the two to three staircases as required by the current interpersonal friction forces and creates jams and safety standards. The number and location of clogging in front of bottlenecks. evacuation elevators are defined in the building The widely used social-force model describes design phase. In the evacuation simulations, the crowd with a self-driven many particle system. passenger waiting times and journey times to It produces realistic flows through bottlenecks and the rescue levels, as well as the time to empty creates the faster-is-slower effect [3]. It does not, the whole building, are considered [11]. When however, explain how, why and when the crowd simulating such an evacuation situation, the virtual members adopt impatient pushing behavior. The

important decision evacuees

what exit

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People Flow

Figure 5: FDS+Evac is able to create realistic behavior in a crossing (left). Stable equilibria curves in a spatial game of patient (yellow) and impatient (black) agents under threatening conditions (right). Source: Kone Corporation

REFERENCES 1. Alexandris, N.A., 1977, “Statistical models in lift systems,” Ph.D. thesis, University of Manchester, Institute of Science and Technology. 2. Ehtamo, H., Heliövaara, S., Korhonen, T, Hostikka, S., 2010, “Game Theoretic Best-Response Dynamics for Evacuees’ Exit Selection,” Advances in Complex Systems, Vol. 13, pp. 113-134. 3. Helbing, D., Farkas, I., Vicsek, T., 2000, “Simulating Dynamical Features of Escape Panic,” Nature, Vol. 407, pp. 487-490. 4. Heliövaara, S., Korhonen, T., Hostikka, S., Ehtamo, H., 2012a, “Counterflow Model for AgentBased Simulation of Crowd Dynamics,” Building and Environment, Vol. 48, pp. 89-100. 5. Heliövaara, S., Kuusinen, J.-M., Rinne, T., Korhonen, H., Ehtamo, H., 2012b, “Pedestrian behavior and exit selection in a corridor – An experimental study,” Safety Science, Vol. 50, pp. 221-227. 6. Heliövaara, S., Ehtamo, H., Helbing, D., Korhonen, T., 2013, “Patient and Impatient Pedestrians in a Spatial Game for Egress Congestion,” Physical Review E, Vol. 87, pp. 012802. 7. Korhonen, T., Hostikka, S., 2009, “Fire Dynamics Simulator with Evacuation: FDS+Evac Technical Reference and User’s Guide,” VTT working papers 119, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. 8. Kuusinen, J.-M., Sorsa, J., Siikonen, M.-L., Ehtamo, H., 2012, “A study on the arrival process of lift passengers in a multi-story office building,” Building Services Engineering Research & Technology, Vol. 33, pp. 437-449. 9. Kuusinen, J.-M., Sorsa, J., Siikonen, M.-L., 2015, “The Elevator Trip Origin-Destination Matrix Estimation Problem,” Transportation Science, Vol. 49, pp. 559-576. 10. Siikonen, M.-L., 1997, “Planning and Control Models for Elevators in High-Rise Buildings,” Ph.D. thesis, Helsinki University of Technology, Systems Analysis Laboratory. 11. Siikonen, M.-L., Hakonen H, 2003, “Efficient Evacuation Methods in Tall Buildings,” Elevator World, Vol. 51, pp. 78-83. 12. Siikonen, M.-L., 2013, “Traffic Patterns in Hotels and Residential Buildings,” in: Peters, R.D. (ed), Proceedings of 3rd Symposium on Lift and Escalator Technologies, pp. 140-147. 13. Sorsa, J., Siikonen, M.-L., 2014, “Up-peak Roundtrip Time in Theoretical Calculation, Traffic Simulation, and Reality,” in: Lustig, A (ed), Proceedings of Elevcon 2014, IAEE, pp. 347-357. 14. Strakosch, G.R., Caporale, R.S., 2010, “The Vertical Transportation Handbook,” John Wiley & Sons, New York. 15. Susi, T., Sorsa, J., Siikonen, M.-L., 2005, “Passenger Behaviour in Elevator Simulation,” Elevatori, Vol. 34, pp. 28-37. 16. Tyni, T., Ylinen, J., 2001, “Genetic algorithms in elevator car routing problem,” in: Spector, L, Goodman, E.D., Wu, A., Langdon, W.B., Voigt. H.-M., Gen, M., Sen. S, Dorigo, M., Pezeshk. S.

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reason for a change in behavior can be in the external conditions or in the behavior of the crowd members. In the literature of social psychology, the pushing behavior is often related to panic. Nevertheless, it has long been understood that actual panic occurs rarely in real crowds and evacuating people tend to behave rationally. Heliövaara et al. [6] present a spatial game model for pedestrian behavior in situations of exit congestion. The options of the agents are either to act patiently or impatiently, and they play the game against other agents in their surroundings.The payoffs for the agents are derived from natural assumptions on crowd dynamics, which turn out to result in a hawk-dove game, a basic game in evolutionary game theory. Since the parameters of the game depend on the agents’ location in the crowd, the agents further back in the crowd act impatiently and push while the agents in front of the exit play a different game by acting patiently. The equilibria of the game are studied computationally: The game model is coupled with the social-force model, and this is implemented in a popular fire dynamics simulator FDS+Evac where the agents can rotate their bodies and dodge each other, too [7, 4]. Simulation results show that the model gives a valid explanation for the clogging occurring at bottlenecks of egress routes under threatening conditions. ORMS Marja-Liisa Siikonen (marja.liisa-siikonen@kone.com) is the director of people flow planning at KONE Corporation, headquartered in Helsinki, Finland. Juha-Matti Kuusinen and Janne Sorsa are managers and Henri Hakonen is a senior specialist (people flow planning) at Kone. Harri Ehtamo is a professor at Aalto University.

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news Ready for Rotterdam: 2017 INFORMS Healthcare Conference

Inside News 50

Marketing Science Conference

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Prizes: Call for nominations

In Memoriam: Kenneth Arrow

In Memoriam: Philip Wolfe

Simulation Society honorees

Winter Simulation Conference

People

Meetings

INFORMS Nominations The INFORMS Nominating Committee has provided the following slate of nominees for the elections to be held in summer 2017 (for offices beginning Jan. 1, 2018): Picturesque Rotterdam will serve as the host city of the 2017 INFORMS Healthcare Conference. Photo courtesy of 123rf.com | ÂŠ rudi1976

All over the world, healthcare organizations are being challenged by obstacles related to the aging of the population and other global trends. It is vital that the complex and growing demands in healthcare delivery are tackled swiftly and optimally. With the abundance of data available, operations researchers across the globe can pool resources and share solutions to come up with innovative ideas to remedy shortcomings within current healthcare systems. The 2017 INFORMS Healthcare Conference, to be held July 26-28 in Rotterdam, Netherlands, is the ideal forum for O.R. professionals to come together to optimize health service operations and outcomes. The conference with be led by conference chair Joris Van de Klundert, Institute of Health Policy and Management, Erasmus University, along with program chairs Edwin Romeijn, Georgia Institute of Technology, and Sandra Sulz, Erasmus University Rotterdam. The program is organized into nine tracks of top issues that are impacting the healthcare industry today. These tracks are Disease and Treatment Modeling, Healthcare Data Analytics and Machine Learning, Health and

Humanitarian Logistics, Health Information Technology and Management, Health Operations Management, Health Systems in Low and Middle Income Countries, Medical Decision-Making, Personalized Medicine, and Public Health and PolicyMaking. When attendees are not engaged in high-level talks they can take part in some of the other events that round out the program for the conference. The INFORMS Health Applications Society sponsors a student paper competition. Students are asked to submit either oral or poster presentations that will be evaluated by leading healthcare scholars on quality, novelty and importance of methodology, contribution to healthcare research and potential for impact on practice. The finalists must present their work during a special session at the conference. There are also poster sessions during the conference that are not related to the student paper competition. These poster session presentations allow authors to present projects that are in the early stages of development, and thus benefit from the interactive critique, suggestions and encouragement from colleagues working in similar areas.

President-Elect Ramayya Krishnan Col. (retired) Greg Parlier

Secretary Victoria Chen Pooja Dewan

VP International Sarang Deo Sue Merchant

VP Practice C. Allen Butler Manoj Chari

VP Marketing, Communications and Outreach Laura Albert (Nominated to run unopposed for a second term)

VP Membership and Professional Recognition Susan Martonosi (Nominated to run unopposed for a second term) As provided in Bylaw 3, additional nominations by petition of at least 50 members for any of the open officer or vice president positions shall be accepted by the Secretary if received with all material needed for ballot by May 31.

2017 Conference, continued on p. 50

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new s 2017 Conference, continued from p. 49

The conference will take place at the De Doelen International Congress Centre, in the heart of Rotterdam, which is an emerging world leader in the healthcare and medical industry. A group rate is available at the Rotterdam Marriott, which is linked to the Congress Centre and just a two-minute walk away from Rotterdam Central Station. There are only a limited number of rooms booked at the INFORMS group rate, so make your reservations as early as possible. For more information on this conference, including registration, the venue or the program visit: http://meetings2.informs.org/ wordpress/healthcare2017/. ORMS

ISMS Marketing Science Conference The 39th Annual ISMS Marketing Science Conference will be held June 7-10 at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. The ISMS Marketing Science Conference is an annual event that brings together leading marketing scholars, practitioners and policymakers with a shared interest in rigorous scientific research on marketing problems. Topics include but are not limited to

branding, segmentation, consumer choice, competition, strategy, advertising, pricing, product, innovation, distribution, retailing, social media, Internet marketing, global marketing, big data, machine learning, choice models, game theory, structural models and randomized control trials. For more information and to register, visit the conference website: https:// marketingscience2017.usc.edu/. ORMS

INFORMS Initiatives Applications for 2017 Wagner Prize now open Applications for the 2017 Daniel H. Wagner Prize for Excellence in Operations Research Practice are now open. A two-page abstract in English that provides evidence of mathematical development, solution, unique new algorithm or series of coherent advances developed in conjunction with an application is due by May 1. The prize emphasizes the quality and coherence of the analysis used in practice. During his years as president and principal

owner of Daniel H. Wagner, Associates, Inc., Dr. Wagner brought many highquality mathematicians into the operations research community. He strove for strong mathematics applied to practical problems, supported by clear and intelligible writing. This prize recognizes those principles by emphasizing good writing, strong analytical content and verifiable practice successes. Administered by CPMS, the Practice Section of INFORMS, the award consists of a cash amount from endowments from the firms Metron, Inc., Daniel H. Wagner, Associates, Inc. and Applied Mathematics, Inc. The competition is held each year in the fall at the INFORMS Annual Meeting. C. Allen Butler (photo) of Daniel H. Wagner, Associates, Inc., chairs the prize committee. To learn more, visit: https://www. informs.org/Recognize-Excellence/ I N F O R M S - Pr i z e s -A w a r d s / D a n i e l H.-Wagner-Prize-for-Excellence-inOperations-Research-Practice/.

Pro Bono Analytics program accepting volunteers Make a difference in underserved communities by volunteering your time and talents to the INFORMS Pro Bono Analytics program. The program gives non-profit organizations the opportunity to work with analytics professionals on a volunteer basis to help solve challenges and create new opportunities for success with the scientific process of transforming data into insight. The initiative matches INFORMSâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; analytics professional volunteers with nonprofit organizations that would benefit from advanced analytics and operations research training and techniques. By focusing on current analytics issues as they relate to non-profit organizations, the Pro Bono Analytics team will be able to take the necessary steps in assisting to solve the most complex of issues. Volunteer opportunities are constantly being added. To learn more, visit: connect. informs.org/probonoanalytics/home ORMS

H T T P : / / W W W. A N A LY T I C S - M A G A Z I N E . O R G

DRIVING BETTER BUSINESS DECISIONS

Getting down to

Check out the March/April 2017 Issue of ANALYTICS Now Available at: www.analytics-magazine.org

C. Allen Butler

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Call for nominations: INFORMS prizes & awards INFORMS Fellows INFORMS Fellows are examples of outstanding lifetime achievement in operations research and the management sciences. They have demonstrated exceptional accomplishments and made significant contributions to the advancement of OR/MS over a period of time. A nominee for the Fellow Award must be a current full member or retired member of INFORMS and must have been a full or retired member for at least 10 years, not necessarily consecutive. However, long-term membership in INFORMS or ORSA or TIMS more than 10 years ago may mitigate a membership gap of a year or two during the last 10 at the discretion of the Organizing Committee. Officers and other Board members of INFORMS, and INFORMS staff members, may not nominate or be nominees while holding such positions, unless the individual has been ineligible to nominate or be a nominee for five or more consecutive years as a result of this restriction. Members of the Fellow Selection Committee may not nominate or serve as references. The contributions of a nominee will be evaluated in each of the following five categories; contributions must be outstanding in at least one category: • Research: includes theoretical, empirical, or computational innovations in OR/MS; • Practice: includes substantial application of OR/MS to significant practical problems; • Management: includes significant responsibility for and direction of the development and application of OR/MS techniques and knowledge, within an organization of any type (e.g. academic, for-profit, nonprofit, governmental, military, health care), over an extended period of time, that have had a major impact internal and/or external to the organization; • Education: includes activities that had significant impact on the growth and development of OR/MS education; • Service: includes significant work over an extended period of time on behalf of INFORMS and its functions and/or significant contributions that advanced the stature and recognition of the OR/MS profession. A nomination shall be prepared by a full or a retired member of INFORMS (the nominator). The nominator is responsible for securing exactly three persons to serve as references for the nominee. At least one of the references must be an INFORMS Fellow and the remaining references should be current regular or retired members of INFORMS. Members of the Selection Committee may not serve as references. The nominator and

at most one of the reference letters can be from the same institution as the nominee. A maximum of four reference letters, including the letter from the nominator, may be submitted. For more details on eligibility, criteria, and nomination and selection procedures, please visit https://www.informs.org/RecognizingExcellence/Fellows. Complete nominations are due by June 30, 2017 to: INFORMS Attn: Fellows Nominations 5521 Research Park Drive, Suite 200, Catonsville, Maryland 21228, U.S.A. email: Tracy.Cahall@informs.org

John von Neumann Theory Prize The John von Neumann Theory Prize is awarded annually to a scholar (or scholars in the case of joint or related work) who has made fundamental, sustained contributions to theory in operations research and the management sciences. The award is given each year at the INFORMS Annual Meeting if there is a suitable recipient. Although the Prize is normally given to a single individual, in the case of accumulated joint or related work, the recipients can be multiple individuals. The Prize is awarded for a body of work, typically published over a period of several years. Although recent work should not be excluded, the Prize typically reflects contributions that have stood the test of time. The criteria for the Prize are broad, and include significance, innovation, depth, and scientific excellence. The award is $5,000, a medallion and a citation. The Prize Committee is currently seeking nominations, which should be in the form of a letter (preferably email) addressed to the prize committee chair (below), highlighting the nominee’s accomplishments. Although the letter need not contain a detailed account of the nominee’s research, it should document the overall nature of his or her contributions and their impact on the profession, with particular emphasis on the prize’s criteria. The nominee’s curriculum vitae, while not mandatory, would be helpful. Please compress electronic files if 10 MB. Nominations should be submitted to the committee chair (see below) as soon as possible, but no later than July 1, 2017.

Please see this page online for complete details: https://www.informs.org/Recognizing-Excellence/ INFORMS-Prizes/John-von-Neumann-Theory-Prize/ John-von-Neumann-Theory-Prize-Application-Process 2017 Committee Chair: Avishai Mandelbaum, Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management, Technion, Haifa 32000, Israel email: avim@ie.technion.ac.il

George B. Dantzig Dissertation Award The George B. Dantzig Award is given for the best dissertation in any area of operations research and the management sciences that is innovative and relevant to practice. This award has been established to encourage academic research that combines theory and practice and stimulates greater interaction between doctoral students (and their advisors) and the world of practice. The award is given at the INFORMS Annual Meeting. The George B. Dantzig Dissertation Award Committee is now accepting entries for the 2017 award. The award for the best OR/MS dissertation serves to promote greater interaction between academia and industry by encouraging researchers to conduct innovative research that is relevant to practice in any area of operations research and management science. The first and second place winners will receive awards of $800 and $400 respectively. Additional finalists will receive honorable mentions with $100 awards. Prizes will be awarded at the 2017 INFORMS Annual Meeting. Each entry must:

1. Consist of a doctoral dissertation written primarily by the entrant no more than 15 months prior to the submission deadline (completed between March 31, 2016 and June 30, 2017) and not previously submitted. 2. Present original ideas obtained predominantly by the entrant. 3. Clearly illustrate and demonstrate the relevance of the work in practice and the potential impact in industry. Entrants should collect and submit the following items by June 30, 2017:

1. A letter of recommendation from the entrant’s thesis advisor that describes the significance of the research and comments on the originality of the work. 2. A letter of recommendation from an industry associate that describes the relevance and the potential benefits of the research in their organization. This letter must be written by a manager familiar with the research who has served as an advisor to the research or as a coordinator to the on-site research project. 3. A summary of the dissertation (less than 5 double-spaced pages) highlighting the significance of the problem, the novelty of the methodological approach, the contribution of the research to industry, and the scope of the dissertation. 4. A self-contained paper (less than 25 double-spaced pages) based on the thesis so that the award committee can evaluate the contribution of the work. Nominations, continued on p. 52

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See this page online for complete details: https://www.informs.org/Recognize-Excellence/ INFORMS-Prizes/George-B.-Dantzig-DissertationAward/George-B.-Dantzig-Dissertation-AwardApplication-Process. 2017 Committee Chair: Wedad Elmaghraby, University of Maryland, R. H. Smith School of Business, College Park, MD 20742. email: dantzig2017@rhsmith.umd.edu

In addition, the signed originals of the letters of recommendation should be mailed, postmarked on or before June 30, 2017 to: INFORMS, Attention: INFORMS Awards, 5521 Research Park Drive, Suite 200, Catonsville, MD 21228, U.S.A. email: informs@informs.org

Lanchester Prize Nominations are invited for the 2017 Lanchester Prize. This prize is awarded for the best contribution to operations research and the management sciences published in English in the past three years. The award will be given at the 2017 INFORMS Annual Meeting, if there is a suitable recipient. To be eligible, a book, a paper, or a group of books or papers must meet the following requirements: • It must be on an operations research/management science subject. • It must have been published in one of the preceding three years or, in the case of a group, at least one member of the group must have been published in one of those years. • It must be written in the English language. • It must have appeared in the open literature. Books or papers may be case histories, reports of research representing new results, or primarily synthesis. For any nominated set (group of either articles or books) published over more than one year, it is expected that each element in the set is part of one continuous effort, such as a multi-year project or a continuously written, multi-volume book. To be eligible for consideration, each book or paper must be nominated to the committee. Anyone may make nominations. The Committee will use the following criteria in making judgments: • The extent to which the contribution advances the state of the art of operations research and the management sciences. • The originality of the ideas or methods. • The new areas of application it opens up. • The degree to which existing theory or method is unified or simplified. • The clarity and excellence of the exposition. • The degree to which the contribution provides value for future applications, or enables improved practice. A nomination consists of: 1) a nominating letter specifying the work being nominated and explaining why it is deserving of the Lanchester Prize; 2)

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supporting letters, if desired; 3) six copies of the work. See this page online for complete details: h t t p s : / / w w w. i n f o r m s . o r g / Recognize-Excellence/INFORMS-Prizes/ Frederick-W.-Lanchester-Prize/Frederick-W.Lanchester-Prize-Application-Process. The prize is $5,000 and a commemorative medallion. Nominations, by June 15, 2017, are to be sent to: INFORMS, Attn: INFORMS Awards, 5521 Research Park Drive, Suite 200, Catonsville, MD 21228, U.S.A. email: informs@informs.org 2017 Committee Chair: Dan Adelman, Charles I. Clough, Jr. Professor of Operations Management, The University of Chicago, Booth School of Business,5807 S Woodlawn Ave, Chicago, IL 60637. email: dan.adelman@chicagobooth.edu

George Nicholson Student Paper Competition The George Nicholson Committee competition is held each year to identify and honor outstanding papers in the field of operations research and the management sciences written by a student. The following conditions must be met for eligibility: 1. The entrant must have been a student on or after June 1 of the previous year under consideration. 2. The paper must present original research results (a summary of multiple papers is not eligible). 3. The research must have been conducted while the entrant was a student. 4. One or more advisors may appear as co-authors of a paper, but the student’s contributions must make up the majority of the paper. 5. An entrant can be a (co-)author in at most one paper submitted to the competition. More than one entrant per paper is allowed as long as they are eligible. 6. The paper must not have won a prize (1st or 2nd) in a previous Nicholson Competition. Prizes will be awarded and finalists will be invited to present their papers at the 2017 INFORMS Annual Meeting. All student entrants must register for an EasyChair account through: https://www.easychair. org/account/signup.cgi?iid=37847 Once registered, entrants should use the submission page: https://easychair.org/ conferences/?conf=nicholson2017. Please see this page online for complete details: https://www.informs.org/Recognize-Excellence/ INFORMS-Prizes/George-Nicholson-Student-PaperCompetition/George-Nicholson-Student-PaperCompetition-Application-Process. All entries must be submitted to EasyChair

no later than June 5, 2017. Applicants are strongly advised to check the INFORMS website for submission information. 2017 Committee Chair: Dr. J. Cole Smith, Professor and Chair, Industrial Engineering, Clemson University, 100B Freeman Hall, Clemson, SC 29634, U.S.A. email: jcsmith@clemson.edu

Prize for the Teaching of OR/MS Practice The Prize for the Teaching of OR/MS Practice will be given annually, if there is a suitable recipient, to a university or college teacher for excellence in teaching the practice of OR/MS. The purpose of this award is to recognize a teacher who has succeeded in helping his or her students to acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to be effective practitioners of operations research or the management sciences. An “effective practitioner” has respect for, understanding of, and the skills to surmount both the practical difficulties and the technical challenges of doing good OR/MS work. The award will be presented at the 2017 INFORMS Annual Meeting. Nominations may be provided either by a nominator or the nominee. Nominations should include: 1. Nominee’s name, affiliation, address, telephone, fax, e-mail. 2. A short (250-500 words) description, abstract, or philosophical statement about the course or pedagogical approach. 3. Description(s) of specific projects, cases, or scenarios used. 4. Statements of support from past students who are now in practice. 5. Statements of support from industrial sponsors and/or qualified observers and/or supervisors of students now in practice. 6. Be no longer than 20 pages in 12-point type. See this page online for complete details: https://www.informs.org/RecognizingExcellence/INFORMS-Prizes/Prize-for-theTeaching-of-the-OR-MS-Practice. Nominators should alert the committee chair by email of forthcoming nominations at least one month before the submission deadline of June 30, 2017. Any questions should also be directed to the committee chair. The nomination should be submitted as a PDF file attachment to an email to the committee chair. 2017 Committee Chair: Andrew Manikas, Assistant Professor, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY 40292, U.S.A. email: andrew.manikas@louisville.edu In addition, one copy of the nomination should be sent to the INFORMS office: INFORMS Attention: INFORMS Awards, 5521 Research Park Drive, Suite 200, Catonsville, MD 21228, U.S.A. email: informs@informs.org ormstoday.informs.org

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Saul Gass Expository Writing Award The Saul Gass Expository Writing Award honors an operations researcher/management scientist whose publications demonstrate a consistently high standard of expository writing. This award recognizes an author whose publications in operations research and management science have set an exemplary standard of exposition. The awardee’s written work, published over a period of at least 10 years, should indicate (in terms of breadth of readership) an influence and accessibility enhanced by expository excellence. Criteria include the lucidity, conciseness, logic and interest of the writing at all levels, from the general organization to the details. The author must have affected, through these publications, how something is done, studied, taught, or thought about by some group within the OR/MS community. The written work can contain any combination of practical, theoretical and pedagogical subject matter, and may be original, synthetic or historical. The corpus as a whole must be substantial in content, not necessarily prize-worthy in itself, but not trivial. Enough of the publications in question must have been singly authored to demonstrate the awardee’s expository skill. A team of authors writing together consistently over many years may also be considered for the award. The winner will receive $2,000 and a framed certificate that includes a brief citation at the 2017 INFORMS Annual Meeting. Please see this page online for complete details: h t t p s : / / w w w. i n f o r m s . o r g / Recognize-Excellence/INFORMS-Prizes/ Saul-Gass-Expository-Writing-Award/Saul-GassExpository-Writing-Award-Application-Process A nomination will consist of a written statement from a single individual of no more than 1,000 words. A nominator should consist of a single individual, who is a member of INFORMS, who has expertise in, or close to, the expertise of the nominee. Nominations should include references to examples of the nominee’s expository writing, as well as evidence of the influence these works have had on the OR/MS profession. Nominations must be sent by July 1, 2017 to: 2017 Committee Chair: Prof. Noah Gans, OID Dept.-Wharton, Univ. of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6340. email: gans@wharton.upenn.edu

Doing Good with Good OR Student Competition INFORMS is again sponsoring a competition to encourage student research and practice that has societal impact. The “Doing Good with Good OR Student Competition” will feature the most exciting work performed by students in partnership with public and private organizations that yields tangible and beneficial outcomes for individuals, communities, and organizations. Such work will be infused with

OR/MS methods and could appeal to multiple disciplinary and application-area interests. Submission process: 1. Nomination letter by the partner organization or a faculty member describing the societal impact of the work and the portion of the work (including the project duration) solely completed by the student entrant(s) during the time they were enrolled full-time in a degree-granting program. 2. Two-or three-page summary document that describes what the entrants accomplished (focusing on the societal impact and the centrality of the operations research and management science tools used). 3. 60-word abstract of the achievement 4. Submissions should be e-mailed to either of the Prize Competition co-chairs listed below. 5. Entrants will be expected to report on a project done in partnership with an organization that can certify that the results of the project have had, or are likely to have, a significant societal impact. 6. Any work with positive societal impact that has been completed within the last 3 years (class project, thesis research, independent study, internship, voluntary work) is eligible unless it has already received an INFORMS award. Please see this page online for complete details: https://www.informs.org/RecognizingExcellence/INFORMS-Prizes/Doing-Goodwith-Good-OR-Student-Paper-Competition/ Doing-Good-with-Good-OR-Application-Process. INFORMS must receive completed submissions for this competition by May 8, 2017. The finalists will be announced by June 16, 2017 and must submit no later than Aug. 29, 2017 a full paper (maximum of 25 pages) describing the project and its outcomes. The competition winner will be selected at the 2017 INFORMS Annual Meeting. 2017 Committee Co-Chairs: Jonathan Helm, Indiana University, Kelley School of Business, Bloomington, IN 47405. email: helmj@indiana.edu Turgay Ayer, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332 email: ayer@isye.gatech.edu

Undergraduate Operations Research Prize The Undergraduate Operations Research Prize Competition is held each year to honor a student or groups of students who conducted original and significant theoretical and/or applied research in the field of operations research or management science during their undergraduate enrollments. The prize is given each year at the INFORMS Annual Meeting if there is a suitable recipient.

Winner(s) of the competition will share a prize of $500 in addition to receiving travel support to the INFORMS Annual Meeting. All finalists of the competition will be invited to present their research in designated Undergraduate Research Showcase sessions at the INFORMS Annual Meeting. Applications are due by June 15, 2017 and must consist of the following documents: 1. Article co-authored by the entrant(s): An original research paper from the entrants’ project or work (no need to be published) presenting the problem, methods used and results reached. One or more faculty, and doctoral student(s) or post-doctoral advisor(s) may appear as co-authors of the article, but the first author must be the entrant(s) as they must have made substantial contribution to the project and to the writing of the paper with only minor editorial assistance. 2. Reference letter: A brief letter (not exceeding two-pages) by the entrants’ research advisor or another faculty member familiar with the entrants’ work confirming the entrants’ eligibility and detailing their contribution to the research. To encourage submissions involving multidisciplinary research, the faculty advisor need not be an INFORMS member. All applications including reference letters should be submitted to: 2017.informs.ug.or@gmail.com. An entrant to the competition is defined as any co-authors of the submitted article who were enrolled as undergraduate students for at least one academic term between June 15, 2016 and June 15, 2017, and the following eligibility criteria must be met by the entrants and their submitted articles: 1. The research must have been conducted during the entrants’ undergraduate enrollment(s). 2. An entrant can be a co-author in at most one paper submitted to this year’s competition. 3. The article must not be awarded by a prize in a previous year of this competition. The criteria for review will be based on the significance of the work, creative and novel use of modeling and/or solution methodology using operations research techniques, promise of the research for future work in the field of operations research and the quality of the writing of the article in terms of its coherency and the clarity of exposition. The work may be building a different modeling approach to an established problem or providing a new insight into an emerging or important problem. Demonstration of substantial value for project sponsors (if there is any) is also a plus in evaluation. All applicants should expect to be notified with the results of the competition by Aug.31, 2017. Interested candidates may visit link below to learn Nominations, continued on p. 54

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important details about the competition such as the eligibility requirements and evaluation criteria: h t t p s : / / w w w. i n f o r m s . o r g / Recognizing-Excellence/INFORMS-Prizes/ Undergraduate-Operations-Research-Prize/ Undergraduate-Operations-Research-PrizeApplication-Process. All further questions about the award should be addressed to the committee chair Murat Kurt at the email address murat.kurt@merck.com.

Bonder Scholarship in Health Services INFORMS Health Applications Society (HAS) is seeking nominations/applications to 2017 Bonder Scholarship for Applied Operations Research in Health Services. The purpose of the scholarship is to promote the development and application of process modeling and operations research analyses to health care design, delivery and operations by identifying young and promising researchers during their doctoral studies. The scholarship offers a research fund of $4,000, and the opportunity to apply for an additional support of $1,000 to cover expenses that will be incurred during the winner’s travel to 2017 INFORMS Annual Meeting. Starting with the year after the award is won; the winner also becomes eligible to apply for further research funds that are annually offered by Seth Bonder Research Foundation exclusively to former Bonder Scholars. Bonder Scholars also find the privilege to speak and disseminate their research in designated “Bonder Scholars” sessions at INFORMS Annual Meetings. Doctoral students building creative work with strong academic rigor and/or practical relevance at the crossroads of operations research/operations management and healthcare are all encouraged to apply. Applications are due by June 1, 2017, and must consist of the following documents: 1. A detailed curriculum vitae of the applicant which must include the applicant’s complete educational history with dates (in months and years) of enrollment in graduate studies. 2. Two letters of support one of which is expected to be from the applicant’s main academic advisor (or dissertation committee chair) and this letter must include a statement that the applicant has completed at least one academic year but no more than three academic years in any doctoral program. Applicants’ reference providers should separately address their nominations/ support letters to the email address provided below subject to the same deadline set for the applicants. 3. A one-page career goals statement describing why the candidate is interested in applying operations research to healthcare issues and problems. 4. A three-page summary of proposed program of research including all graphics and technical supplements (the three-page limit does not include the references to be

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cited therein). Applicants should pay special attention to delineating the completed and projected contributions of their doctoral studies within this three-page document. All applications, support letters and additional required materials should be submitted to: 2017. bonder.scholarship@gmail.com. All applicants should expect to be notified with the results of the competition by Aug. 10, 2017. The scholarship will be granted on the basis of excellence, innovation, candidate’s preparation to undertake the proposed program of research, and likelihood of success in his/her projected plan. Interested candidates may visit link below to learn important details such as the eligibility requirements and evaluation criteria: h t t p s : / / w w w. i n f o r m s . o r g / Recognizing-Excellence/CommunityPr i z e s / H e a l t h -A p p l i c a t i o n s - S o c i e t y / Seth-Bonder-Scholarship-for-Applied-OperationsResearch-in-Health-Services/Seth-BonderScholarship-for-Applied-Operations-Research-inHealth-Services-Application-Process. All further questions about the award should be addressed to the committee chair Murat Kurt at the email address murat.kurt@merck.com.

Bonder Scholarship in Military Applications The Military Applications Society (MAS) of INFORMS is seeking nominations for the 2017 Bonder Scholarship for Applied Operations Research in Military Applications. The purpose of this scholarship for applied O.R. in military applications is to promote the development and application of process modeling and operations research analysis to military issues. The scholarship provides funding to support the development of highly qualified individuals and promote the interchange of military O.R. research knowledge with INFORMS. The Bonder Scholarship consists of a grant of $4,000, plus award winner eligibility for up to $1,000 of travel funding. An additional $2,000 grant is provided and funded by the Seth Bonder Foundation. For important details, please visit the award web page: https://www.informs.org/Recognizing-Excellence/ Community-Prizes/Military-Applications-Society/ Seth-Bonder-Scholarship-for-Applied-OperationsResearch-in-Military-Applications/Bonder-ScholarshipApplication-Process. Submit applications and letters of support as pdfs by July 1, 2017, to Chris Arney at david.arney@ usma.edu.

Case and Teaching Materials Competition INFORMS is pleased to announce its Seventeenth Annual Peer-Reviewed Case Competition. This competition is jointly sponsored by INFORMS Education Committee and INFORM-ED. It is designed to encourage the creation,

dissemination, and use of new, unpublished cases in operations research and the management sciences. All submissions and supporting documentation are due by Aug. 4, 2017. All cases will be reviewed by a panel of judges familiar with the case method. Up to four finalists will be selected and notified by the Chair of the Case Competition by the end of August 2017. Finalists will give 30-minute presentations of their entries at a special open session of the 2017 INFORMS Annual Meeting in Houston, Texas. The panel of judges will select the winning entry from these finalists based on these presentations. Finalists must present their cases at the Annual Meeting to be eligible to win. All submitted cases must be previously unpublished. Cases should be essentially new in their entirety. If the case contains material drafted originally by individuals or groups other than the author(s) submitting the case, then the intellectual history and ownership of these portions should be made absolutely clear. Contestants are responsible for assuring that this guideline is strictly met. A complete submission package will consist of the following: 1. One electronic copy of a short (250 - 500 words) abstract, the case and teaching notes sent in a zipped file. The abstract should appear by itself on the second page and identify the industry, business issues, technical issues, pedagogical objectives, and suggested uses of the case. The case, any exhibits, and then the teaching notes should follow. 2. A completed Case Competition Submission Form. For more information, contact Palaniappa Krishnan, aka PK, at baba@udel.edu.

Volunteer Service Award The Volunteer Service Award recognizes exceptional volunteer service to INFORMS. Awards will be distributed at the Distinguished Service level, the Meritorious Service level, and the Service level. Nominations are due on June 30, 2017. They will be accepted for volunteers who meet the following eligibility criteria: current INFORMS member; at least one year of volunteer service to INFORMS; not a current or incoming Board member; and as not received the award within the past three years. The award is given based on service performed to INFORMS in the previous one year (July 1, 2016-June 30, 2017). Up to 20 volunteers may be awarded. In addition to the nominations, the selection committee may also choose to review volunteer data provided by INFORMS and select winners from among that list. For details, see https://www.informs.org/ Recognizing-Excellence/INFORMS-Prizes/ Volunteer-Service-Award. 2017 Committee Chair: Dr. Lauren Davis, North Carolina A&T State University, Greensboro, NC 27411. email: lbdavis@ncat.edu ORMS ormstoday.informs.org

2017 INFORMS ANNUAL MEETING OCTOBER 22â&#x20AC;&#x201C;25 | HOUSTON, TEXAS

You are invited to present to 5,000 plus attendees, join intriguing plenary presentations, panel discussions, and tutorials, or submit for one of our numerous oral and poster tracks focusing on operations research and analytics.

IMPORTANT DATES May 15 - Abstract Submission Deadline August 1 - Poster Competition Submission Deadline September 1 - Poster Submission Deadline September 1 - All Presenters Must Register September 29 - Early Registration Deadline

SUBMIT AN ABSTRACT OR REGISTER TODAY http://meetings.informs.org/houston2017

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new s In Memoriam

Kenneth J. Arrow, widely recognized as one of the 20th century’s leading economists and decision analysts and a 1972 recipient of the Nobel Prize for Economics, passed away on Feb. 21 at his home in Palo Alto, Calif., not far from Stanford University where he was a member of the faculty for more than 30 years. He was 95. Dr. Arrow shared the Nobel Prize with Sir John R. Hicks for the development of theories underlying the assessment of business risk and government economic and welfare policies. Dr. Arrow’s interest in operations research dated back to the 1950s, and he played a major role in creating the Department of Operations Research at Stanford University. In 1986, Dr. Arrow was awarded the John von Neumann Theory Prize by ORSA and TIMS (which later merged to create INFORMS) for his “fundamental and sustained contributions to theory in operations research and the management sciences.” Dr. Arrow grew up in and around New York City. After graduating from the City College of New York, he continued his studies at Columbia University, first in mathematics and then in economics, though his primary interest at that time was mathematical statistics. He served as a weather officer during World War II and, after the war, returned to graduate

study and research in mathematical economics at the Cowles Commission for Research in Economics at the University of Chicago. He also consulted at the RAND Corporation, where he first formulated the theory of social choice and proved his celebrated “Impossibility Theorem” of group decision-making. This material was the basis of his doctoral dissertation, and the subsequently published book, “Social Choice and Individual Values.” At RAND, Dr. Arrow also was the co-developer of the central concepts of dynamic inventory theory with Jacob Marschak and Theodore E. Harris, resulting in a 1951 paper in Econometrica. In 1958, he published the classic study entitled “Studies in the Mathematical Theory of Inventory and Production” with Samuel Karlin and Herbert Scarf. In addition, Professor Arrow was among the first researchers to note the existence of the learning curve. Professor Arrow was a member of the faculty at the University of Chicago (119481949), Stanford University (1949-1968, 1979-1991), and Harvard University (19681979). He authored more than 200 papers and 12 books. His many honors include the National Medal of Science (2004); John Bates Clark Medal of the American Economic Association; president of the Econometric Society and American Economic Association; elected

Photo credit: L.A. Cicero in Stanford News

Kenneth J. Arrow (1921-2017)

membership in the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society; and honorary degrees from the University of Chicago, The City University of New York and University of Vienna. “Kenneth Arrow was one of the greatest economists,” John Shoven, a professor of economics at Stanford, told Alex Shashkevich of the Stanford News. “But he was also humble, warm and a great friend to all of us at Stanford.” In the same article, Alvin Roth, a Stanford professor of economics, described Arrow as “an Albert Einstein of economics.” Said Roth: “Ken was a giant in an astonishing way.” ORMS Sources: INFORMS, Stanford News

In Memoriam

Philip Starr Wolfe By Harlan Crowder Philip Wolfe, one of the founding fathers of mathematical programming (MP), passed away on Dec. 29, 2016. Dr. Wolfe was a tireless researcher, teacher and avid promoter of the science and practice of MP. He was 89. Dr. Wolfe was born in San Francisco in 1927. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1954. His professional career carried him to the 56 | ORMS Today

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(1927–2016)

Pentagon, the mathematics department at Princeton University, the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, Calif., and the Mathematical Sciences Department at IBM Research in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. In 1951, while still a graduate student, Dr. Wolfe spent a summer internship working on the Air Force’s Project SCOOP at the Pentagon with George Dantzig. His most important accomplishment that summer was a suggestion for enabling Dantzig’s newly developed simplex

method for linear programming (LP) to avoid a trap that could prevent the procedure from converging to optimality. Dr. Wolfe’s idea for avoiding cycling of LP solutions was included in a subsequent paper by Dantzig, Alex Orden and Dr. Wolfe. Dr. Wolfe studied for his Ph.D. under the guidance of Edward Barankin at the University of California, Berkeley. He had become enamored with optimization during his stint at the Pentagon, but the ormstoday.informs.org

new field of game theory, as presented by Von Neumann and Morgenstern in their landmark 1944 book “Theory of Games and Economic Behavior,” equally intrigued him. Unable to decide which of the two routes to follow, Dr. Wolfe did the logical thing and picked both; his two-part thesis, presented in 1954, was entitled “I. Games of infinite length. II. A non-degenerate formulation and simplex solution of linear programming problems.” After receiving his Ph.D., Dr. Wolfe was lured to Princeton University by the opportunity to work with Albert Tucker and the stream of luminary visitors to the mathematics department, including George Dantzig, David Gale, Harold Kuhn, Theodore Motzkin and John von Neumann. One of his most significant accomplishments at Princeton was his collaboration with Marguerite Frank to study nonlinear optimization under linear constraints, resulting in the notable Frank-Wolfe procedure for quadratic programming. The completed manuscript describing the Frank-Wolfe procedure, “An algorithm for quadratic programming,” was presented to the Naval Research Logistics Quarterly for publication. Coincidently, Harry Markowitz had also submitted a paper to the journal with a similar theme: “The optimization of a quadratic function subject to linear constraints.” The astute managing editor of the journal, Alan Hoffman, sent each the other’s paper for review. Both papers were favorably reviewed and were published in the same issue in 1956. In 1957, Dr. Wolfe was drawn back West to join the RAND Corporation. The group there, including Dantzig, Ray Fulkerson and Lloyd Shapley, was developing practical computational methods for solving MP problems. In what was Dr. Wolfe’s best known work, he and Dantzig teamed up to develop the Dantzig-Wolfe decomposition method for linear programming. Their observations and ingenuity allowed the computational solution of a previously intractable class of problems. By the mid-1960s, Ralph Gomory was director of the Mathematical Sciences Department (MSD) at IBM Research. MSD had several members who had made notable contributions to optimization

and operations research (O.R.), including Gomory, Hoffman, Paul Gilmore, T. C. Hu and Richard Karp. In 1966, Gomory, who had known Dr. Wolfe since they had collaborated at RAND, invited Phil to join MSD. Once again Dr. Wolfe journeyed east and joined IBM Research where he would stay until his retirement. Dr. Wolfe was soon asked to form a group within the department that would focus on optimization and O.R. He enlisted MSD members including Ellis Johnson, Earl Barnes and Harlan Crowder. He also fostered collaboration and recruited ex officio members from inside and outside IBM, including Manfred Padberg, Michael Held, Kurt Spielberg and Peter Norden. This effort by Dr. Wolfe and his colleagues ultimately helped establish IBM Research as a major center of excellence in the theory and practical application of mathematical optimization. At IBM, Dr. Wolfe’s research interests dealt with various aspects of nonlinear optimization, including globally convergent methods for unconstrained optimization and nondifferentiable optimization. Dr. Wolfe also applied his leadership and collaboration talents to establishing a professional community for the continuing development of MP. He was active in the Association for Computing Machinery and its Special Interest Group in Mathematical Programming. In 1970, he collaborated with Michel Balinski to establish the journal Mathematical Programming. The next year, he was one of the principal founders of the Mathematical Programming Society (MPS); he served as MPS chairman from 1978 to 1980. One of Dr. Wolfe’s favorite creations was the Friends of Optimization (FoOp), an informal organization in the New York metropolitan area devoted to discussions and presentations on optimization and O.R. FoOp’s lively meetings were held at various venues and were a valuable opportunity for collaboration among participants from academia, government and industry. When the Russian mathematician L.G. Khachiyan’s polynomial-time ellipsoid algorithm for LP was announced in 1979, it was misconstrued in the popular press. A New York Times reporter wrote, “Soviet mathematician is obscure no more” and “the mystery author of a new mathematical the-

Photo credit: Michael Johnson

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orem has rocked the world of computer analysis.” Dr. Wolfe was soon receiving invitations from around the world to put in perspective the theoretical value of Khachiyan’s work and its modest contribution for solving real-world LP problems. Dr. Wolfe was a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Econometric Society and the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). In 1992, he received the John von Neumann Theory Prize, jointly with his friend and colleague Alan Hoffman, from the Operations Research Society of America, a forerunner of INFORMS. He received a Distinguished Service Award and a Founders Award from the MPS in 2000. In academic teaching pursuits, Dr. Wolfe served as an adjunct professor for the Industrial Engineering and Operations Research Department at Columbia University, and for the mathematics departments at The City University of New York and the New York (Brooklyn) Polytechnic Institute. Dr. Wolfe is survived by his wife Hallie Flanagan Wolfe, daughter Sarah of Whitehorse, Canada, and grandchildren Duncan and Sidney. ORMS SOURCES 1. Irv Lustig, INFORMS History and Traditions Interviews, INFORMS, 2001. 2. Alan J. Hoffman, in “Profiles in Operations Research,” Springer, 2011.

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new s INFORMS Simulation Society The INFORMS Simulation Society announced the following awards for 2016: LIFETIME PROFESSIONAL ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

Recognition: Longstanding, exceptional service to the simulation community

WSC BEST STUDENT PAPER AWARD

OUTSTANDING SIMULATION PUBLICATION AWARD

Emily Lada and Sara Shashaani (l-r).

Bruce Schmeiser and Russell C. H. Cheng (l-r). Recipient: Russell C. H. Cheng Recognition: Career contributions to the field of simulation

DISTINGUISHED SERVICE AWARD

Chang-Han Rhee

Peter Glynn

Recipients: Chang-Han Rhee and Peter Glynn Recognized work: “Unbiased Estimation with Square Root Convergence for SDE Models” (Operations Research)

Douglas Morrice and Jeffery Joines (l-r).

Recipient: Sara Shashaani Recognized work: ASTRO-DF: Adaptive Sampling Trust-Region Optimization Algorithms, Heuristics and Numerical Experience

WSC DIVERSITY AWARD

Recipients: Jessica P. Dorismond, Mariam Kotachi and Wen Zhang (l-r)

Recipient: Douglas Morrice

Simulation Society: call for nominations I-Sim Lifetime Professional Achievement Award The INFORMS Simulation Society (I-Sim) has established the Lifetime Professional Achievement Award (LPAA) to recognize major contributions to the field of simulation that are sustained over most of a professional career, with the critical consideration being the total impact of those contributions on computer simulation. This award can be given at most once annually. An individual’s contributions may fall in one or more of the following areas: contributions to research, contributions to practice, dissemination of knowledge, development of software or hardware, service to the profession, and advancement of the status or visibility of the field. Anyone is eligible to win the award, although individuals selected for this award should normally be in or near their retirement. The award may be received posthumously. Nominations may be submitted by anyone (including self-nominations), but they may not be made anonymously. The burden of offering evidence of merit falls on the nominator. Each nomination should include: • the nominee’s complete resumé; • a clear-cut, comprehensive description of the nominee’s major contributions to

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the profession, with complete supporting documentation; and • at least three letters of endorsement providing evidence of the significance and magnitude of the nominee’s professional achievements. Nominations should be sent by Sept. 1 to the LPAA Committee Chair: Marvin Nakayama (marvin@njit.edu). The nomination should be submitted via e-mail as a PDF. At least two weeks before the submission deadline, nominators should alert the committee chair by email of forthcoming nominations. If given, the award will be presented at the Winter Simulation Conference in Las Vegas, Dec. 3-6 (www.wintersim.org).

I-Sim Distinguished Service Award The INFORMS Simulation Society (I-Sim) annually sponsors a Distinguished Service Award (DSA) to recognize individuals who have provided longstanding, exceptional service to the simulation community, given to at most one person each year. This award is for sustained service to the simulation

community over at least 15 to 20 years or longer, and acquitted with distinction. The concept of service for this award does not include teaching or research contributions. Areas of volunteer service include, for example: (i) elected offices in simulation societies; (ii) editorial responsibilities such as area editor or editorin-chief for simulation; (iii) responsibilities such as program chair, proceedings editor, general chair, or member of the program or organizing committee for conferences involving simulation; (iv) appointed positions for simulation-related activities, such as newsletter editor or serving on committees; and (v) undertakings and actions that promote simulation. Nominations for the award can be made by anyone and should be sent by Sept. 15 to the DSA Committee Chair: Enver Yücesan, professor of Operations Management, INSEAD, enver. yucesan@insead.edu. Letters of nomination should identify the nominee’s areas of exceptional service, detailing the activities for which the nominee is believed to deserve this award. The nominator has the responsibility for justifying why the nominee should receive this award. If given, the award will be presented at the Winter Simulation Conference in Las Vegas, Dec. 3-6 (http://www.wintersim.org). ORMS ormstoday.informs.org

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People The National Science Foundation has approved Penn State as a site for the Center for e-Design, an Industry/University Collaborative Research Center (I/UCRC). Directed by INFORMS member Janis Terpenny, the Center for e-Design works with its members to research and advance solutions to complex problems associated with the design, production, distribution and sustainment of innovative and highquality products and systems that minimize costs and are responsive to the rapidly changing marketplace. Terpenny is the Peter and Angela Dal Pezzo Chair and head of the Harold and Inge Marcus Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering at Penn State. Terpenny named Dan Finke, research associate at the Applied Research Lab, as the site co-director. “The Center for e-Design will flourish at Penn State, where partnerships with industry and a culture of innovation

are highly valued,” said Terpenny. “The interdisciplinary nature of real problems of importance to industry members will call upon expertise from many researchers across the university.” Penn State becomes the center’s seventh university partner with sites already established at Iowa State University, University of Massachusetts Amherst, University of Buffalo, Brigham Young University, Oregon State University and Wayne State University. The primary focus of the Penn State site will include the following research areas: crowd-based design, big data analytics, design theory and innovation, collaborative design, design optimization, additive manufacturing, smart manufacturing and model-based enterprise. Researchers from several departments, colleges, research centers and institutes across Penn State are set to contribute to the center’s efforts. ORMS

WSC 2017: ‘Simulation Everywhere’ The 2017 Winter Simulation Conference (WSC 2017) will be held Dec. 3-6 in Las Vegas at the Red Rock Resort. WSC is the premier international forum for disseminating advances in the field of dynamic systems modeling and simulation. In addition to a technical program of unsurpassed scope and quality, WSC is the central meeting place for simulation practitioners, researchers and vendors working in all disciplines in industry, service, government, military and academic sectors. The theme for WSC 2017 is “WSC Turns 50: Simulation Everywhere!” After 50 years, we are now beyond modeling and simulation using grid and cloud computing, Web-based and distributed simulation and other recent technologies. We need to deal with computing power and storage in heterogeneous environments, resources virtualization; services consumed on demand (with minimal limitation for resource location), power issues, massive data sets.

We f a c e n e w challenges as we have ubiquitous processors that can process applications on demand. The call for papers is now open. Complete paper deadlines and requirements are available at www.wintersim.org. WSC 2017 general chair is Ernest H. Page and program chair is Gabriel Wainer. WSC 2017 is sponsored by ACM/ SIGSIM, IISE (Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers), INFORMSSIM and SCS (Society for Modeling and Simulation International), with Technical Co-Sponsorship from ASA (American Statistical Association), ASIM (Arbeitsgemeinschaft Simulation), IEEE/ SMC (Systems, Man and Cybernetics) and NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology). ORMS

Meetings INFORMS Annual & International Meetings July 26-28, 2017 INFORMS 2017 Healthcare Conference

De Doelen International Congress Centre Rotterdam, the Netherlands Chair: Joris van de Klundert, Erasmus University Rotterdam http://meetings2.informs.org/wordpress/healthcare2017/

Oct. 22-25, 2017 INFORMS Annual Meeting

George R. Brown Convention Center & Hilton Americas, Houston Chair: William Klimack, Chevron http://meetings2.informs.org/wordpress/houston2017/

2018 April 15-17, 2018 INFORMS Conference on Business Analytics & Operations Research Marriott Waterfront Hotel, Baltimore Chair: Jack Kloeber, Kromite, LLC

Nov. 4-7, 2018 INFORMS Annual Meeting

Phoenix Convention Center & Sheraton Phoenix Hotel, Phoenix Chair: Young-Jun Son, University of Arizona

INFORMS Community Meetings June 8-10, 2017 INFORMS Marketing Science Conference University of Southern California, Los Angeles Chair: Gerry Tellis https://marketingscience2017.usc.edu

June 26-27, 2017 INFORMS Advances in Decision Analysis

The University of Texas at Austin Austin, Texas Chair: Casey Lichtendahl, University of Virginia https://www.informs.org/Community/DAS/ADA-2017Conference

June 29-30, 2017 INFORMS Revenue Management & Pricing Section Conference Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) Amsterdam Chair: Arnoud Den Boer http://connect.informs.org/rmp/conferences/new-item2

July 10-12, 2017 INFORMS 19th Applied Probability Conference Northwestern University Evanston, Ill.

July 27-29, 2017 INFORMS Transportation Science and Logistics Conference

Loyola University Chicago Chicago Chair: Pitu Mirchandani, Arizona State University http://connect.informs.org/tsl/conferences/tsl-conference

Go to www.informs.org/Conf for a searchable INFORMS Conference Calendar.

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Industry News

Frontline shipping V. 2017 of Solvers for Excel and Analytic Solver.com Frontline Systems is shipping a new product line release for desktop and cloud, Version 2017 of its Solvers for Excel and AnalyticSolver.com, its SaaS equivalent.The new release unifies and simplifies Frontline’s products, makes learning predictive and prescriptive analytics accessible to everyone at very low cost, is easier to upgrade for larger models or data sets, and is easier to use across multiple desktop machines and the cloud. “We’re making advanced analytics power tools and learning aids accessible to every business analyst,” says Daniel Fylstra, Frontline’s president and CEO. “Our users can build models with point-andclick ease of use, while taking advantage of the most advanced analytic algorithms and methods.” In this release, Frontline is making available to all users Analytic Solver Basic V2017, a new version of its Analytic Solver Platform for Education product, formerly offered only for university MBA programs and used to learn by hundreds of thousands of students. Analytic Solver Basic includes every feature of Frontline’s analytics software, but handles only limited-size models and data sets, suitable for learning. (All of the 100+ example models and data sets included with the software can be used.) Paired with Solver Academy, Frontline’s new Open edX-based online learning platform, Analytic Solver Basic offers a way for business analysts to gain “advanced analytics ninja” skills. Analytic Solver Basic gives the user an ongoing “free trial” opportunity for all the large-capacity products that Frontline offers. Users can simply create or open models or data sets larger than Analytic Solver Basic’s limits – and run them.The software enters “Test Run Summary Only” mode, and runs the problem but delivers only summary information such as the final objective in optimization or key statistics in simulation/ risk analysis, then recommends the best upgrade option. After a simple, point-andclick upgrade step, the user has both the large-capacity product and Analytic Solver Basic, with its ongoing “free trial” of other functions. 60 | ORMS Today

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Also in this release, Frontline has implemented a new cloud-based software licensing system, similar to the approach taken by Adobe Systems. Users can now install and use Frontline’s software on multiple computers, such as a desktop, laptop, home PC or virtual machine – but only one of these at a time. A multi-user license option enables organizations to share a license among multiple users and multiple machines, without having to run a special “license server.” The V2017 release features further significant enhancements to Frontline’s popular Evolutionary Solver for optimization, focusing on the most difficult nonsmooth, non-convex models with integer variables. The new V2017 release is available at AnalyticSolver.com. AIMMS and UniSoma renew partnership agreement AIMMS, an award-winning vendor of prescriptive analytics software, and UniSoma, a leading provider of Advanced Planning solutions, have renewed their partnership agreement, celebrating years of collaboration. Through their partnership, the companies have served many industry giants like JBS, Suzano, ArcelorMittal, Marfrig, Votorantim, Gerdau and others. With their renewed agreement, they formalize their commitment to bring innovative AIMMS-based analytics solutions that result in significant business value to clients at a global level. UniSoma has worked closely with AIMMS for two decades and became an AIMMS Partner not long after they started using AIMMS. UniSoma was the first company in Latin America to use the AIMMS platform to develop complex decision-making solutions.The companies have thus far provided supply chain, planning and production optimization solutions for leading corporations in food production, pulp and paper, steel, agribusiness, among others. As a partner, UniSoma is primarily responsible for developing decision models, designing, implementing and maintaining AIMMS Apps for customers.AIMMS is accountable for developing and maintaining the AIMMS software and supporting UniSoma in sales and implementation.

The two organizations work closely together to ensure customer success and have enabled their clients to achieve substantial financial return through optimized decision making.Two great examples of clients being serviced in this partnership are: JBS, a global leader in beef, lamb and poultry processing with annual revenue of $45 billion, is a joint customer. Using an AIMMS-based tool developed by UniSoma for cost-to-serve optimization, the company increased its original margin by 25 percent. The system and decision models developed enable them to respond rapidly to changing market prices on a daily basis at over 50 primary processing plants for 2000+ SKUs. AcelorMittal, the world’s leading integrated steel and mining company with an annual revenue of $ 63 billion, also benefited from this cooperation.The company chose AIMMS and UniSoma to develop personalized planning tools to facilitate the expansion of its operation in the Brazilian Market. Strategic and operational decisions were improved by comprehending millions of variables crucial to optimize the coal-tosteel-to-client process, enabling AcelorMittal to increase profitability. FICO named a leader in predictive analytics and machine learning solutions FICO was named as a leader in the March 2017 report, “The Forrester Wave: Predictive Analytics and Machine Learning Solutions,” Q1 2017. The report explains, “FICO’s Decision Management Suite encompasses the end-to-end capabilities needed to create, deploy and monitor models for use in complex, consequential enterprise decisions.” Forrester also noted, FICO’s “software division is strong, with an impressive customer base across multiple industries.” “We believe our position in the Forrester Wave is a great achievement and a testament to the strength of our products and savvy customers,” said Bill Waid, vice president and general manager, FICO Decision Management Solutions. “Our team is passionately committed to delivering the best in predictive and prescriptive analytics that our customers need to drive digital transformation and gain competitive advantage.” ORMS ormstoday.informs.org

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DEA SolverPro has been widely used all over the world. In response to numerous customer requests, we have released Version 13 with “SBM Max.” On top of more than 186 models in 48 clusters, Version 13 added a new model, called SBM Max, replacing SBM Variations released earlier. The basic slacks-based measure models (SBM) usually report the worst efficiency scores for inefficient DMUs, i.e. the projected point is the farthest one on the associated efficient frontier. In contrast, SBM Max looks for the nearest point on the associated efficient frontier. Hence, the efficiency score is approximately maximized as contrasted to the ordinary SBM models. This KAIZEN model will open the door to the QC community. Note network or floating licenses are available for multi-user or multi-machine options. Visit our website for pricing and ordering information.

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Applications are invited at Amrut Mody School of Management, Ahmedabad University for candidates in fields of Business Analytics, Big Data Analytics, Information Systems, Operations Management, Operations Research, Statistics, Supply Chain Management and Technology Management. Amrut Mody School of Management (AMSOM) has over 2500 students across various programmes under the umbrella of Management, covering the entire range from undergraduate to Doctoral degrees and certificate programmes for practitioners. We invite applications for faculty positions at all levels. Candidates at the Assistant Professor level must demonstrate capability for carrying high quality research, and should have completed Ph.D. However, those who are in the final stage of their PhD can also apply. Associate Professors should have a track record of research and teaching. Professors are additionally expected to provide academic leadership at the School.

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DEEP-LEARNING POSTDOCTORAL OR FACULTY RESEARCHER (POSITION ID: PDA#005) Vermont EPSCoR is recruiting a postdoctoral or faculty researcher with expertise in machine learning and complex systems modeling to join our cutting-edge NSF funded research on Basin Resilience to Extreme Events (BREE). We are in the second year of a five-year award of large-scale interdisciplinary studies which will determine how the Lake Champlain Basin’s landscape, watershed and lake conditions respond to extreme weather events and will test policy scenarios for enhancing resilience using our comprehensive Integrated Assessment Model (IAM). As a member of the BREE team, you will participate in unique learning and professional development experiences including learning to communicate your science through our program with the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science and have access to significant cyberinfrastructure including a programming team and local and national compute resources. QUALIFICATIONS: • A PhD (or equivalent) in computer engineering, computer science, systems engineering or a related field • The demonstrated ability to model physical (social and/or natural) systems with an emphasis on embedding machine learning and complex systems methodologies in the models • Experience in the use of deep learning network frameworks (e.g. Tensorflow) to explore decision-making machine learning challenges such as those that might be used to drive agent behavior in an agent-based model • Experience in complex systems analysis including multi-objective optimization and the quantification of uncertainty as it propagates through a complex system • The ability to work effectively on a large, interdisciplinary team and contribute to the integration of their work into a larger modeling framework This research position will be funded through May 2019. Intended start date is June 1, 2017. TO APPLY: Please send your CV and a cover letter outlining research interests, expertise and availability to epscor@uvm.edu. Please visit http://www.uvm.edu/EPSCoR for more information and additional positions including Climate Statistics PhD Student.

BNSF Railway is seeking an Operations Research & Advanced Analytics (OR&AA) professional with managerial experience to join the team as a Manager II. This role is responsible for managing a team of OR&AA professionals. As a leader in the BNSF OR&AAGroup, this position will participate in several high-profile initiatives involving cutting-edge technologies with our business units and develop solutions to challenging problems facing the railroad. RESPONSIBILITIES INCLUDE: • Hire and coach team in accordance with organization’s policies • Develop business strategies to meet ever changing marketing conditions in freight transportation industry • Coordinate tactical and strategic activities with technical and functional teams across the enterprise • Communicate team/department goals to team members and motivate them to achieve • Prepare comprehensive analysis and report on key insights to senior leadership QUALIFICATIONS INCLUDE: • A Ph.D. degree in OR/Statistics or a Masters in Computer Science/OR/Statistics/Applied Math or a related field with 5+ years of experience • Prior experience managing teams while applying quantitative statistical techniques to solve real-world problems • Excellent written and verbal communication • Prior experience using commercial analytics software, such as CPLEX, Gurobi, SAS, and SPSS • Experience with JAVA, C++, Python, or R To view a complete job description and submit an application, please visit www.bnsf.com/careers. BNSF Railway is an Equal Opportunity Employer Minorities/Women/Veterans/Disabled.

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ORacle

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The ethicist’s parable As the analyst conversed with the rabbi after the ethics seminar, several other people joined in. “So you want to organize a seminar on ethics for your professional society’s conference?” the philosopher inquired. “Be sure to include people from different backgrounds, as the organizers did for this panel.” “Sure,” the analyst agreed. “I’m sure there will be many points of view on the interesting questions.” “Judging from my experience,” the philosopher said, “there will be fewer differences than you might expect about what to do in most situations. You can get sharp differences on abortion, or some end-of-life and who-gets treatment issues, but on scientists’ and engineers’ issues, most of the answers from ethicists tend to be similar: Don’t lie, don’t cheat, don’t plagiarize, be careful about being pulled into dishonest studies by crooked sponsors.” “Yeah, I suppose,” the analyst shrugged, uncertainly. “But ethics isn’t just about answers on specific issues,” the philosopher went on. “It’s even more about how you get to answers on issues you hadn’t considered before. And that’s where we all differ!” “I noticed that in the panel discussion, Father Healy kept referring to the Church’s teachings. Rabbi Lipman here,” the analyst said, nodding to the rabbi, “referred to Jewish law, but talked about differences in how to interpret it, working in reasoning about what the law that didn’t exist on certain subjects should have been. Imam al-Youssuf talked about disagreements among imams who are considered authoritative – but unlike the Catholic Church, he explained, Islam has no for mal structure to resolve arguments about how to interpret the Koran and apply it to new situations. Pastor Jones tries to find examples of what Jesus would have done in similar situations. And, of course, you, Professor Scott, as a philosopher, try to reason things out without 64 | ORMS Today

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basing it on any religious position. It seems the more you discuss ethics, the more there is to think about, and you never necessarily arrive at an answer to the question.” The experts laughed. “Yes, that’s about right,” Professor Scott affirmed. “And that’s why you have to study ethics, not just consult one or two experts when you have an issue.” “And not just rely on one text, either,” Father Healy said, “even if you have one that’s authoritative, as our Jewish and Muslim friends do, or one that’s sort of authoritative, as we Christians have – after a lot of wrangling over what should be in it.You may have heard,” he added with a twinkle in his eye, “that at Nicea, Saint Nicholas settled one dispute by punching Aryas in the mouth! Can you imagine how annoying a person would have to be to get punched out by Santa Claus? And don’t forget, as well, that most of the basic religious texts were written in languages other than English, and translations can get controversial, too.” “Now you’re getting me nervous about that session I was planning to organize,” the analyst frowned. “You all get along, but you’ve known each other for a while and you’re happy doing seminars like this one today. But isn’t there a chance I could pick ethics experts who wouldn’t be so agreeable, and the discussion could turn into a bickering free-for-all?” “That could happen,” Pastor Jones acknowledged, “but it’s unlikely. The people who feel strongly that they have the one true faith position that gives all the answers typically won’t even participate in a forum like this. They’ll just preach to their own faithful and anyone else who will listen.” “Like a lot of politicians these days,” the analyst grumbled.The panelists joined in a rather hollow laugh. “But that does point you to the real hazard in trying to get your colleagues to discuss ethics,” Professor Scott noted. “The first and hardest challenge is getting

people to recognize that they have ethical issues. And the people who most need to think hard about the ethical aspects of what they’re doing are often the most resistant to the subject.” “Or,” the philosopher added, “they get their view of the field spoiled by the lawyers. One of my students became a very successful businessman and decided to get an executive MBA from a prestigious school. He told me later that he loved every course except the ethics course. It was taught by a corporate lawyer, and it turned out, my student told me, that it was all about ‘here’s what the laws mandating ethical behavior require, and here’s how you do most of what you wanted to do anyway.’ What’s actually the decent way to act didn’t seem to be in the syllabus.” “That explains some things I’ve seen,” the analyst grimaced. “But now, so what do I do? And what do I try to get my profession to do?” Father Healy suggested, “Try starting with developing a code of ethics for your society, and some process for following up on problems and complaints. Without a policy document and some consequences for violating it, not much is likely to happen.” “My profession doesn’t have any of that,” the analyst said soberly. “It’s not that bad,” Professor Scott smiled reassuringly. “You still start with scientific ethics in general, and laws mandating honesty in consulting. Most people act decently most of the time. You just have to get people to focus more on how to decide what acting decently means, and how you resolve differences when they arise. Get them to tell their stories about issues they’ve faced, and the discussion will take off. Keep at it, and good luck!” ORMS Doug Samuelson (samuelsondoug@yahoo.com) is president and chief scientist of InfoLogix, Inc. in Annandale, Va.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Several people pointed out that my parable last issue focused on just one panelist, the rabbi. You didn’t really think I’d leave such a promising situation after just one conversation, did you?

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