INFORMS announces 2025 Franz Edelman Award finalists

INFORMS has announced six finalists for the prestigious 2025 Franz Edelman Award for achievement in advanced analytics, operations research and management science. Recognized as the pinnacle of achievement in the application of analytics and operations research, the award, often referred to as “The Nobel Prize” of O.R. and advanced analytics, celebrates groundbreaking research and innovations that are transforming industries, improving lives and shaping a smarter, more sustainable future.

For more than 40 years, Edelman Award winners have reshaped how we tackle the world’s toughest challenges. This year’s finalists have made groundbreaking strides in regionalization strategy, smart supply chains, airline disruption management, logistics network optimization, data-driven cycling strategies and route optimization technology. Their innovations are transforming industries, saving lives, cutting costs and solving complex problems. Collectively, finalists for the Edelman Award have had a profound impact, contributing more than $419 billion in value since the award’s inception, along with countless other nonmonetary benefits that continue to drive positive change across the globe.

The finalists for the 2025 Edelman Award include:

Amazon. By 2021, Amazon was shipping billions of packages every year through its large network of warehouses across the U.S. However, as the company grew, it faced rising costs and challenges in delivering items quickly. To solve this, Amazon brought together a team of experts in supply chain and operations research that used network optimization, machine learning and simulation to create a new strategy called Regionalization. In 2023, this strategy helped reduce cost to serve by $0.45 per item in the U.S., and helped Amazon achieve its fastest delivery speeds ever globally, improving both efficiency and customer satisfaction. 

Flipkart. Flipkart is one of the leading e-commerce marketplaces in India, delivering millions of orders per day. Over the past few years, Flipkart has developed an advanced supply chain planning platform that has substantially increased the level of intelligence in demand estimation, inventory management for sellers, and network and capacity planning. Based on methods from operations research and data science, this platform has significantly improved operational planning for Flipkart and sellers, and thereby enabled both Flipkart and sellers to grow rapidly while significantly reducing operational costs and improving customer experience.

Lufthansa Group. In 2019, Lufthansa Group began working to improve how airlines handle disruptions like flight delays using advanced operations research techniques. In partnership with Google Research, they developed new methods to optimize the scheduling of aircraft, passengers and crew, ensuring smooth recovery when problems arise. This system is used by Lufthansa’s subsidiary, SWISS International Airlines, saving 12 million euros and reducing CO2 emissions by 14,000 tons. The system is being rolled out to other airlines in the Lufthansa Group, with plans to generate multimillion euros in savings and cut up to 50,000 tons of CO2 each year. 

SF Express. SF Express is Asia’s largest integrated logistics service provider, ranking fourth globally. Since 2018, a team of experts has been optimizing its integrated network using advanced operations research techniques. These strategies help SF Express enhance its operational and strategic decisions, including the planning of Asia’s first cargo-focused air hub. Since 2018, this project has reduced service times for more than 1 billion parcels, saved the company more than $1 billion and reduced carbon emissions by millions of tons. This success shows how smart planning can yield substantial benefits, enhance customer experience and help protect the environment.

USA Cycling. Project 4:05 was a data-driven initiative that improved USA Cycling’s Women's Team Pursuit strategy for the Paris 2024 Olympics. The project focused on key factors such as rider power, aerodynamics and team coordination to create the perfect race plan, aiming for a time under 4 minutes and 5 seconds. By analyzing performance data and using advanced technology, the team identified the best riders and strategies. This approach helped them go from 8th place at the World Championship to winning Olympic Gold one year later, showing how data and smart planning can lead to big improvements in sports performance.

WM (Previously Waste Management). WM is the leading provider of environmental solutions. Post-pandemic, WM struggled with optimizing industrial waste collection routes due to unpredictable conditions and customer needs. Manually creating routes was inefficient with too many factors to consider. To address these challenges, WM developed and implemented dynamic route optimization. Using advanced analytics and operations research, the company now automatically constructs efficient routes while enhancing safety and customer service.  Using this first-of-its-kind technology suite, WM’s industrial business realized a 50% reduction in overhead strike safety incidents and unprecedented increases in efficiency and profitability.

About the Franz Edelman Award

First awarded in 1972, the prize is named in honor of Franz Edelman, who founded the Operations Research division within RCA, one of the first corporations to embed operations research as a business imperative. Often referred to as “The Nobel Prize” of O.R. and advanced analytics, previous winners of the Franz Edelman Award include Molslinjen (2024), Walmart (2023), Government of Chile (2022), U.N. World Food Programme (2021), Intel (2020) and Louisville Metropolitan Sewer District (MSD) (2019), as well as Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Holiday Retirement, UPS, IBM, Syngenta, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Hewlett-Packard and General Motors, among others.

The 2025 Edelman Award will be presented at the Edelman Gala during the INFORMS Analytics+ Conference in Indianapolis, on April 7. For more information on the Franz Edelman Award, visit https://www.informs.org/Recognizing-Excellence/Edelman-Award.