'Global' Optimization

Sixteen-row boats set out from La Gomera in the Canary Islands, headed for Port Charles in Barbados, 2,500 nautical miles away. Forty days later, Team Holiday Shoppe from New Zealand crossed the finish line first in world-record time. Holiday Shoppe was so dominant that the second-place finisher figured that the winners must have cheated. After all, how else could you explain Holiday Shoppe's huge margin of victory? Holiday Shoppe didn't cheat, but they did have a secret weapon: operations research. The key to the team's success: a set of routing charts developed using stochastic optimization techniques. 

Welcome once again to the annual Special International Issue of OR/MS Today, the ninth in a series of special issues aimed at giving readers a taste of the wide, wonderful world of operations research wherever it happens to be practiced or preached. While stochastic optimization is familiar ground for operations researchers, we doubt it has ever been applied before to a transatlantic rowboat race. Co-authors Andy Philpott and Geoff Leyland take readers (and O.R.) on a high-seas adventure in "Rowing to Barbados" (page 42).

Speaking of optimization, consider the case of French automaker Renault. Faced with fierce competition, Renault launched a "New Delivery Project" geared toward offering its customers all the diversity of the company's product range while cutting delivery times in half. How did they do it? By using an optimization tool to overhaul its supply chain from a built-to-inventory to a built-to-order perspective. For the rest of the story, see "Renault Speeds Up Delivery" (page 24).

Does any industry present juicier optimization problems than the transportation sector? BVG, Berlin's public transport company, transports 800 million passengers a year through a network of subways, buses, and trams. BVG maintains a 2,423-kilometer network; operates 197 lines with 3,286 stops, using 1,554 busses, 1,391 subway cars and 599 trams from 12 depots; and has 13,409 employees. Raise your hand if you smell the makings of a great O.R. problem.

Sure enough, Martin Grötschel, Ralf Borndröfer and Marc Pfetsch of the Zuse Institute Berlin (ZIB), a research institute for applied mathematics and computer science, tackle the complex problem by cutting it down to size in "Public transport to the fORe!" (page 30). En route, they make a strong case that public transportation doesn't have to operate in the red if decision-makers (i.e., politicians) are willing to unleash the full power of O.R.

Continuing our international trek that gives new meaning to the term "global optimization," authors Les Foulds and Martin West report on a new scheduling system they developed that dramatically improves scheduling for harvesting maize in New Zealand ("Farmers Reap the Benefit of Maize Manager," page 50).

Optimization, of course, is the holy grail of O.R., but oftentimes just approaching optimality is worth its weight in gold to the client. We think these international examples of applied O.R. work more than pass the ultimate "optimal" test.

Finally, we want to acknowledge Andres Weintraub of Chile, a past president of the International Federation of Operational Researchers, who was instrumental in bringing much of this work to our attention, just as he has done with our previous international O.R. expeditions.