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 Mark S. Daskin - Sunday, 11:40am-12:30pm
Marshall Fisher - Sunday, 3:10pm-4:00pm
Patrick T. Harker - Monday, 11:40am-12:30pm
Paul H. O'Neill - Monday, 3:10pm-4:00pm
Margaret L. Brandeau - Tuesday, 11:40am-12:30pm
Edelman Reprise - Tuesday, 3:10pm-4:00pm
Keynote - Tuesday, 3:10pm-4:00pm
William R. Pulleyblank - Wednesday, 11:40am-12:30pm
Sunday, November 5
11:40am-12:30pm
Everyday Lessons from Operations Research
Mark S. Daskin
Professor, Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences
Northwestern University
President, INFORMS
Operations research has much to teach us about everyday living. In this talk, Mark S. Daskin will highlight a number of the key life lessons that operations research models, algorithms and theories can teach us. Examples will be drawn from such areas as optimization, stochastic modeling, probability, statistics and decision theory.
 Mark S. Daskin is a Professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences at Northwestern University. Prior to 1995, he was in the Civil Engineering Department. Before joining the Northwestern faculty in 1980, he was a faculty member at the University of Texas at Austin. Daskin received his PhD from the Civil Engineering Department at MIT in 1978. He also holds a BSCE degree from that department and a Certificate of Post-Graduate Study in Engineering from then University of Cambridge, England.
Daskin’s research focuses on the application and development of O.R. techniques for the analysis of transportation, supply chain and manufacturing problems. He is the author of roughly 50 refereed publications as well as a text entitled, Network and Discrete Location: Models, Algorithms, and Applications (John Wiley, 1995). He is the recipient of the Fred C. Crane Award for Distinguished Service from the Institute of Industrial Engineers (2005), the Fellow Award from INFORMS (2004), and the Institute of Industrial Engineers Technical Innovation Award (2001). Daskin was recently elected a fellow of IIE and is a past editor-in-chief of IIE Transactions and Transportation Science. He is currently the president of INFORMS.
Sunday, November 5
3:10pm-4:00pm
Rocket Science Retailing
Marshall Fisher
UPS Professor of Operations and Information Management
The Wharton School
University of Pennsylvania
Retailing is a huge industry. In the U.S., retail business represents about forty percent of the economy and is the largest employer. Retail supply chain management is still more art than science, but this is changing rapidly as retailers begin to apply analytic models to the huge volume of data they are collecting on consumer purchases and preferences. This industry-wide movement resembles the transformation of Wall Street that occurred in the 1970s when physicists and other “rocket scientists” applied their analytic skills to investment decisions.
To better understand this phenomenon, over the last decade Ananth Raman of Harvard Business School and Marshall Fisher have been leading a group of academics working with about 50 leading retailers to assess their progress towards rocket science retailing and to accelerate that progress through selected research projects. This presentation will review the current state of industry practice in retail supply chain management and summarize research in four areas:
- Assortment planning, which involves determining the set of products a retailer will carry at each store at each point in time to optimize a profit function. A new algorithm for using sales history to determine an assortment by store and describe its application at various retailers will be presented.
- Store execution, where Fisher is working with several colleagues and five retailers to analyze large data sets at the store-week level on sales, customer satisfaction and store execution to determine what most influences customer satisfaction and sales.
- A product life cycle approach to inventory management at the store-SKU level that has been successfully applied at a number of retailers.
- Approaches of several successful retailers such as World and Zara in creating a responsive supply chain.
 Marshall Fisher is the UPS Professor of Operations and Information Management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and co-director of the Fishman-Davidson Center for Service and Operations Management. His research has focused on supply chain management, with a varying emphasis that has included private truck fleet scheduling, supply chain management for hard to predict fashion products and a scientific approach to retail buying.
In 1981, Fisher co-founded Distribution Analysis, Research and Technology, Inc., a company that provided private truck fleet optimization software based on his research to major clients, and served as Chairman until its merger with Manugistics Inc. in 1990. He is also a co-founder and Chairman of 4R Systems, Inc., a company that provides supply chain planning software to retailers of short lifecycle products.
Numerous awards, including the 1977 Lanchester prize for the best paper in operations research, and the 1983 Edelman Prize from The Institute of Management Sciences for the best application of management science, have recognized Marshall Fisher’s research. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of INFORMS, the Production and Operations Management Society, and the Manufacturing and Service Operations Management Society. In 2005, Fisher’s paper, "The Lagrangian Relaxation Method for Solving Integer Programming Problems," published in Management Science in 1981 was voted by the membership of INFORMS as one of the ten most influential papers published in Management Science during its 50 year history.
Monday, November 6
11:40am-12:30pm
The Science and Art of Service Management: From Customer to Co-Producer
Patrick T. Harker
Dean, The Wharton School
University of Pennsylvania
A dramatic transition of the customer’s role in many service industries (e.g. retailing, banking, health care, software development and even education) is underway. Instead of being a passive recipient of a service production and delivery process, the customer is playing a much more active and even leading role in the process. Innovations in technology and service design have increasingly enabled firms to incorporate self-service technology to augment or substitute for “traditional” employee-provided service channels. Although it is clear that self-service can reduce cost, less is known about how customers utilize self-service channels in a multi-channel service delivery system and the resulting impact on firm performance. An important aspect of service operations is that customers are co-producers of the service. Thus, the performance of the delivery system and customers’ use of service channels can be affected by customers’ own efficiency or productivity in service co-production (customer efficiency).
This talk explores the concept of customer efficiency management, the ability of an organization to effectively manage a customer's efforts in a co-producing a service. Examples of this concept will be provided along with empirical evidence from the financial services industry. The implications of this concept to managers of service organizations will also be explored (including how it applies to my own business, higher education!).
 Patrick T. Harker is the Dean of The Wharton School and the Reliance Professor of Management and Private Enterprise. With a budget over $260 million annually and an endowment over $475 million, Wharton is one of the premier schools of business in the world. He also created Wharton West, the school’s San Francisco-based campus, as well as creating an alliance with INSEAD, the leading non-U.S. based business school. Dr. Harker is also a Senior Fellow at the Wharton Financial Institutions Center and holds a secondary appointment as a Professor of Electrical and Systems Engineering at Penn.
Dr. Harker currently serves as a Trustee of the Goldman Sachs Trust and the Goldman Sachs Variable Insurance Trust, is a member of the Advisory Board of Juniper Bank and Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board for Traffic.com, Inc. In addition, he serves as a member of the Board of Managers of the Goldman Sachs Hedge Fund Partners Registered Fund LLC and as a founding member of the Board of Advisors of Decision Lens, Inc.
Dr. Harker received his BSE and MSE in civil engineering in 1981, and an MA in economics and a PhD in civil and urban engineering (transportation planning and economics) from the University of Pennsylvania in 1983. The National Science Foundation named him a Presidential Young Investigator in 1986. In June 1991, President Bush named him a White House Fellow, one of sixteen chosen in the country. Dr. Harker is the youngest faculty member to be awarded an endowed professorship in the history of the Wharton School. He served as Editor-in-Chief of Operations Research from 1996-1999.
Monday, November 6
3:10pm-4:00pm
Systems Analysis and Social Action – The Basis of Hope for a Better Future
Paul H. O’Neill
Former Secretary of the Treasury and CEO of Alcoa
Productivity is rising at a rapid pace in the U.S. economy. The combination of systems analysis and the implementation of ideas that produce continuous learning and continuous improvement is a major contributing factor. At the same time, important sectors of our society such as medical care and primary and secondary education have been left behind. Much systems analysis of these sectors has been done but actual implementation of proven beneficial change has been painfully slow. The challenge for operations research and management science professionals is to turn their talents to understanding why change has been so slow to come in these critical sectors and to devise ways to accelerate progress.
 Paul H. O’Neill was the 72nd Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, serving from 2001-2002. He was chairman and CEO of Alcoa from 1987 to 1999, and retired as chairman at the end of 2000. Prior to joining Alcoa, O’Neill was president of International Paper Company from 1985 to 1987, where he was vice president from 1977 to 1985. He worked as a computer systems analyst with the U.S. Veterans Administration from 1961 to 1966 and served on the staff of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget from 1967 to 1977. He was deputy director of OMB from 1974 to 1977.
Paul O’Neill received a bachelor’s degree in economics from Fresno State College in California, and a master’s degree in public administration from Indiana University. He is the recipient of the National Institute of Public Affairs Career Education Award (1965), the William A. Jump Meritorious Award (1971) and the National Committee for Quality Assurance-2003 Heath Quality Award. He holds honorary degrees from Georgetown University, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Pittsburgh and Duquesne University. O’Neill serves on the boards of prominent corporations and organizations, including Celanese Corporation, Eastman Kodak, the Heinz School, RAND and the National Quality Forum.
Tuesday, November 7
11:40am-12:30pm
Using Mathematical and Systems Models to Inform Policy Decisions: A Personal Perspective
Margaret L. Brandeau
Professor, Department of Management Science and Engineering
Stanford University
 How can physicians make good decisions about patient care when no relevant evidence from clinical trials is available? What is the most effective way to use limited resources to slow the spread of HIV? To what extent should local communities stockpile antibiotics for response to a potential bioterror attack? This talk will describe examples from past and ongoing research projects of OR-based analysis of policy questions. We describe some of the most important ways in which public policy questions differ from planning problems faced in the private sector. We provide perspective on key elements of a successful policy analysis, ways in which such analysis can influence policy, and modeling and policy challenges for the future.
Margaret L. Brandeau is Professor of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University. She holds a BS in mathematics and an MS in operations research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a PhD in engineering-economic systems from Stanford. She is an operations researcher and policy analyst with extensive background in the development of applied mathematical and economic models, and a distinguished investigator in HIV. Among other awards, Professor Brandeau has received a Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation, the Pierskalla Prize from INFORMS for research excellence in health care management science, and the departmental Outstanding Teaching Award. She also holds a patent on a method for operation assignment in printed circuit board assembly.
Professor Brandeau has published numerous articles in areas of applied O.R. and policy analysis, has co-edited the books Modeling the AIDS Epidemic: Planning, Policy, and Prediction and Operations Research in Health: A Handbook of Methods and Applications, and has served as Principal Investigator on a broad range of funded research projects. She has served on the boards of several journals, including Operations Research, Management Science and Health Care Management Science. Her HIV research focuses on using mathematical and economic models to assess the value of different HIV and drug abuse interventions, both in the U.S. and abroad. Her recent research has focused on preparedness planning for potential bioterror attacks, including modeling and analysis of the bioterrorism response supply chain.
Reprise Presentation
Tuesday, November 7
3:10pm-4:00pm
Streamlining Aircraft Repair and Overhaul at Warner Robins Air Logistics Center
William D. Best, Warner Robins Air Logistics Center
Mandyam M. Srinivasan, University of Tennessee, College of Business Administration:
Sridhar Chandrasekaran, Realization Technologies, Inc.
The Warner Robins Air Logistics Center (WR-ALC) used operations research in 2005 to arrive at a radically different approach to manage the repair and overhaul activity on its C-5 transport aircraft. WR-ALC used an OR technique called Critical Chain to reduce the number of C-5 aircraft undergoing repair and overhaul in the depot from twelve to seven in just eight months. The time required to repair and overhaul the C-5 aircraft was reduced by 33 percent. The five additional aircraft now in operation have generated immediate additional revenue of at least $49.8 million per year. The replacement value for these aircraft is estimated at $2.37 billion. The additional workload the center is accommodating will bring in additional revenue of $119 million through 2008, with this number projected to increase to $248 million by 2009.
Tuesday, November 7
3:10pm-4:00pm
Your 15 Minutes of Fame: Want Better Press Coverage? Here's How...
Moderator:
Carol McGarry, Executive Vice President, Schwartz Communications, Inc.; Consultant to the INFORMS Public Information Committee
Panelists:
- Brenda Dietrich, Director, Mathematical Sciences, IBM Research; President-Elect INFORMS
- Irvin J. Lustig, Manager, Technical Services, Optimization and Visualization, ILOG, Inc.; Member, Public Information Committee
- Vijay Mehrotra, Professor, San Francisco State University; Former CEO, Onward Inc.; Member, Public Information Committee
- Stefanos Zenios, Professor, Stanford University
You may not be a Hollywood star, but your latest project can garner its share of the limelight. All it takes is a little PR savvy. This panel will give you the basic recipe for success as you juggle your wish to get media coverage for your work, your employer and the umbrella OR profession. We'll discuss how to identify the most promising projects to publicize, talk with the media so that they quote you, and at the same time help promote the profession. Carol McGarry will moderate the panel of experts who have already won their 15 minutes of fame and can share their experiences.
Wednesday, November 8
11:40am-12:30pm
Optimization Everywhere? Five Critical Issues
William R. Pulleyblank
Vice President, Center for Business Optimization
IBM Global Business Services
 Business and industry are steadily, but slowly, transforming the way that they perform their operations and planning. The types of tools that were at one time limited to very large enterprises are now being used by smaller businesses and even individuals. There is an increasing desire to combine data from a variety of sources with analytic methods to enable more rapid and better decision-making. This is driven in part by the economic pressures created by the need to both compete globally and to exploit global resources. This is enabled by the maturing of methods and tools and takes advantage of continuing advances in the underlying technologies. However, for this transformation to continue and accelerate, we must overcome five major obstacles:
- How do we deal with massive amounts of noisy data - both repository and streaming?
- Can we develop adequate methods for handling risk and uncertainty?
- How should we deal with issues of distributed data and computation?
- What does it require for operational systems to match the sophistication of long term planning systems?
- How do we adapt these capabilities to the emerging networked business world?
Pulleyblank will discuss these issues as well as some approaches that are yielding success in dealing with them.
William R. Pulleyblank is the Vice President of the Center for Business Optimization within IBM Business Consulting Services. This group is leading the development and deployment of high powered optimization and analytic capabilities to improve the business performance of IBM's clients and customers.
Prior to this, he was the Director of Exploratory Server Systems and Director of the Deep Computing Institute within IBM Research. These teams provided broad-based support to IBM's server activities as well as leading research in high performance computing. This included the Blue Gene project, which led to the creation of the Blue Gene/L supercomputer, since November 2004, certified as the most powerful supercomputer in the world. He was Director of Mathematical Sciences in IBM Research from 1995 to 2000 and was the Research relationship executive responsible for the Financial Services sector in IBM, the Utility and Energy Services industry, and for the Business Intelligence group.
He has served on a number of boards and advisory panels, including the Advisory Committee of the Division of Mathematics & Physical Sciences of the National Science Foundation, the Board on Mathematical Sciences of the National Research Council, the iCORE Board of Directors, the Science Advisory Board of the National Institute of Aerospace, and the Scientific Advisory Panel of The Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences. He also serves on the editorial boards of a number of journals.
His personal research interests are in operations research, combinatorial optimization and applications of optimization. In addition to writing scientific papers and books, he has consulted for several companies including: Mobil Oil on helicopter routing; Marks and Spencer on depot management; Statistics Canada on survey validation; and CP Rail on train scheduling.
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