Introduction: 2012 Daniel H. Wagner Prize for Excellence in Operations Research Practice

One way CPMS, the Practice Section of INFORMS, strives to help advance OR/MS and analytics is by making practice success stories available to the profession. We are therefore pleased to present the results from the 2012 competition for the Daniel H. Wagner Prize for Excellence in Operations Research Practice, an INFORMS prize administered by CPMS and established in memory of the late Dr. Daniel H. Wagner.

Dan Wagner earned his PhD in mathematics from Brown University in 1951. His dissertation, “On Free Products of Groups,” was published in Transactions of the American Mathematical Society in 1957 (Wagner 1975). He began his career in the U.S. Navy’s Operations Evaluation Group (OEG) at the Pentagon, where he worked on operations research for naval warfare. He worked there until 1956, with a one-year leave of absence for postdoctoral research on free algebras at MIT. Dan then joined Burroughs Research Center, where he directed a group of mathematicians performing analysis for the development of digital computers.

In 1957, Dan’s entrepreneurial spirit took over, and with John D. Kettelle, he formed the partnership of Kettelle and Wagner, which was dissolved in 1963. That same year, he formed a new company, Daniel H. Wagner Associates, Inc. This company did leading-edge work in the mathematics of naval tactics, especially antisubmarine warfare, detection theory, and search planning.

During his years as president and principal owner of Wagner Associates, Dr. Wagner brought many high-quality mathematicians into the operations research community. This led to significant advances in the firm’s fields of endeavor and the delivery of significant applications to Navy, Coast Guard, and other clients; many of these applications are still in service today.

After retirement from his eponymous company, Dan continued his commitment to the field of operations research, serving in various teaching and research positions with the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School and the U.S. Naval Academy. He was an active member of ORSA, and then INFORMS, for more than 40 years.

The idea for this prize began at Dan’s memorial service in April 1997, where many of his former colleagues gathered. Following the agreements made on that day and subsequent pledges, the firms Metron, Inc., Daniel H. Wagner Associates, Inc., and Applied Mathematics, Inc. generously donated a total of $51,000 as an endowment to ensure the availability of a cash award in perpetuity. Each of these companies is an outgrowth in large part of Dan’s early efforts.

Metron, Inc. (President and COO Tom Corwin, http://www.metsci.com) is a scientific consulting company dedicated to solving challenging problems in national defense through the development and application of advanced mathematical methods. Problem solutions are realized using computer software with graphical interfaces that allow a user to understand and act on the results without having to comprehend the models’ intricacies.

Daniel H. Wagner Associates, Inc. (President Allen Butler, http://www.wagner.com) specializes in innovative mathematical solutions to problems in government and business. The firm provides consulting services in operations research, mathematics, and related software development. It also offers a variety of ready-made products for financial analysis.

Applied Mathematics, Inc. (President Bill Browning, http://www.applmath.com) develops and implements mathematical models that are used in real time for decision making. Current application areas include submarine warfare, search and tracking, search and rescue, clinical informatics, and vineyard analytics.

We are grateful to the judges who donated their time to evaluate the entries and select the winners of this year’s competition: C. Allen Butler, Daniel H. Wagner Associates, Inc. (Committee Chair); Susan L. Albin, Rutgers University; William J. Browning, Applied Mathematics, Inc.; Manoj Chari, SAS Institute; Joseph H. Discenza, SmartCrane LLC; Randall S. Robinson, Past Chair CPMS; and Lawrence Stone, Metron, Inc.

The judging committee selected semifinalists on the basis of their abstracts and verification of success in practice. The semifinalists were then invited to submit drafts of their full papers. Based on the draft papers, the judging committee selected the finalists, who presented their work at the 2012 INFORMS annual meeting and whose papers constitute this special issue. Judging of the final papers and selection of the winning entry were based on the following criteria: quality and coherence of analysis and originality of mathematical solutions, quality and clarity of writing, utility or success of the work in one or more real-world practice applications, and quality and clarity of the oral presentation.

The finalist papers describe innovative operations research applications in the diverse worlds of health applications, port protection, voting redistricting, and safety stock optimization.

Unfortunately, terrorism on U.S. soil has become a concern that we no longer take lightly. As the winner of the 2012 Wagner Prize, a dedicated team from the University of Southern California and the U.S. Coast Guard are working to make our ports safer from terrorist attack. In their paper, A Deployed Quantal Response-Based Patrol Planning System for the U.S. Coast Guard, we learn about the model, theory, and implementation of PROTECT (Port Resilience Operational/Tactical Enforcement to Combat Terrorism), a game-theoretic system in use by the U.S. Coast Guard for scheduling patrols. Now operating in the Port of Boston, under evaluation in the Port of New York, and with the potential for nationwide deployment, PROTECT makes optimal use of limited patrolling resources, while taking into account the relative importance of the different targets to be protected and the presence of adversaries who can observe security measures before deciding to attack.

In today’s globally oriented world, the effective use of inventory can mean the difference between a profitable business and a failed enterprise. In survey after survey, top leaders identify inventory optimization as the key element of their supply chain management. In what can fairly be described as a breakthrough, a Boston-based group of researchers has shown how to account for lead-time variability, particularly in multiechelon networks. By creating closed-form equations for the expected safety stock in the system, the classical guaranteed service optimization model of safety stock placement can be extended to encompass stochastic lead times. Comparison of this enhanced model with more traditional deterministic lead-time models reveals significant improvements in resulting stocking strategies.

Imagine a bed as soft as a cloud. That’s not quite what you’ll get at the Mount Sinai Medical Center (MSMC) in New York. However, a team from General Electric Global Research has installed an optimization-based bed-management system at MSMC in the form of a cloud application. Placement of patients in the right beds at the right times can reduce costs, increase patient satisfaction, and improve patient care. This requires merging information pertaining to clinical histories, hospital operations, interdependencies between hospital units, and the real-time status of patients, resources, and workflows. Thus, bed assignment at MSMC, with roughly 1,200 beds, 38 clinical departments, and 58,000 annual inpatient discharges, presents a complex, challenging problem in a dynamic, clinically critical environment.

Patient flow was also addressed by another of our finalists, this time in the more focused environment of a large cancer center. A team from North Carolina State University collaborated with the Duke University Health System and the Duke Cancer Institute to show how nurse availability critically affects patient waiting time. Combining discrete event simulation with optimization methods, they optimized nurse shift schedules and nurse shift start times to minimize average patient waiting time at the Duke Cancer Institute.

Although radiation is an effective way to kill cancer cells, the specific method of radiation delivery determines both its effectiveness and the collateral damage to surrounding organs. A team from the Georgia Institute of Technology, together with researchers at the Rush University Medical Center, investigated improvements in the use of high-dose radiation treatment via short-term implantation of radioactive seeds. Attacking the problem of determining the best seed type, spatial configuration of seeds, and dwell time per treatment, they showed that it is possible to simultaneously achieve high levels of local tumor eradication and low levels of organs-at-risk toxicity. To accomplish this, they formulated an original multiobjective, nonlinear, mixed-integer programming model that was initially intractable; however, after the application of innovative methods, it rapidly produced accurate solutions. Clinical trials by the Rush University Medical Center were successful. The approach is applicable to cervical cancer, the subject of the work, and to other types, including breast, lung, and prostate cancer.

In 1812, Governor Gerry signed a bill that partitioned Massachusetts into voting districts with bizarre shapes, thereby benefiting his own party; thus, the term “gerrymandering” was born. Rational redistricting is difficult because of conflicting goals (geographical compactness, equal population, common interests) and the imprecise notion of political fairness. An eclectic team of local OR professionals competed in, and won portions of, a contest held to design better voting districts for the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This is the story of the various criteria used in the contest, the original methodologies the team developed, and how this work led to a public presentation before the Philadelphia City Council.

We congratulate all the authors for their outstanding work and we again thank the loyal judges for their volunteer efforts that made this competition possible. We look forward to a strong competition during the 2013 INFORMS meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota and to recognizing the winner at the Edelman Gala during next year’s INFORMS Conference on Business Analytics and Operations Research in Boston, Massachusetts.