Every forward-looking organization hopes to catch and ride the next big technology wave. INFORMS, which jumped on the analytics wave in a big way almost a decade ago, has established itself as a leader on a number of fronts by launching a series of analytics-oriented initiatives including continuing education, certification, corporate maturation and the publication of Analytics magazine.
In their book “Freakonomics,” Levitt and Dubner note that the average adult in a global sample has one breast and one testicle – an extreme example of being precisely inaccurate. Unfortunately, not all sampling produces insights that are precisely inaccurate and as stark and easy to catch. Hence, they go unnoticed or even worse, they are noticed and serve as the basis for decisions that lead to losses and heartache.
One recent Monday morning, I received an unexpected “cold call” at my office. The caller identified himself as a consultant with an IEOR background from a reputable graduate program, and he wanted to talk to me about call centers. Having recently done some operational improvement projects in a few call centers, he was very surprised to discover powerful call forecasting and agent scheduling software packages (known in the industry as “workforce management” systems, or WFM for short) whose capabilities were highly underutilized.
Just returned from HIMSS 2015 in Chicago, the largest healthcare IT conference in the United States. This year about 40,000 people from all over the world attended, and more than 1,400 exhibitors from the healthcare technology market showcased their products. Clearly, healthcare buyers have woken up to the technology explosion, and they are purchasing and adopting more and more technology products, much of it software. Healthcare IT (HIT) is now a big business and promises to be even bigger during the next five years. The demand is global as is evident from the presence of many foreign attendees at the conference. Developing countries are buying technology solutions as they look to expand their healthcare infrastructure.
Syngenta, which uses high-end analytics to improve food supplies for an increasingly crowded planet, won the 2015 Franz Edelman Award for “distinction in applications of analytics, operations research and management science.” Sponsored by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), the leading association for analytics professionals, the Edelman Award is considered the “Super Bowl of O.R.”
Just returned from HIMSS 2015 in Chicago, the largest healthcare IT conference in the United States. This year about 40,000 people from all over the world attended, and more than 1,400 exhibitors from the healthcare technology market showcased their products. Clearly, healthcare buyers have woken up to the technology explosion, and they are purchasing and adopting more and more technology products, much of it software. Healthcare IT (HIT) is now a big business and promises to be even bigger during the next five years. The demand is global as is evident from the presence of many foreign attendees at the conference. Developing countries are buying technology solutions as they look to expand their healthcare infrastructure.
If you’re into birdwatching, shorebirds are among the most difficult to identify, not unlike analytics professionals. But one way to stand out from the flock and make yourself easy to identify is by becoming a Certified Analytics Professional (CAP®).
“Battleship Lean” is fully loaded with every initiative, terminology and genealogy ever associated with “lean” or any of its sister or in-law or neighbor entities in the business process improvement realm, including TQM, TPS, TPM, TWI, TOC, JIT, VSM, VOC, WCM, OEE, QRM, KPI, DFMA, DOE, 3P, takt, kaizen, kanban and Six Sigma to name a few.
The 2015 INFORMS Healthcare Conference will be held in Nashville, Tenn., on July 29-31. Over the past two decades, Nashville spawned more than 500 healthcare companies, many of them spun off from Hospital Corporation of America (HCA), Vanderbilt University Medical Center and HealthTrust. Today those companies, including 13 publicly traded companies, generate more than $70 billion in annual revenue and more than 400,000 jobs globally.
Vaccines are important for both individual and public health. INFORMS has a longstanding interest in the topic, with last year’s Edelman Award [1] winners awarded for their work in polio vaccines, as well as a very good TutORial article on the subject [2]. Analytics magazine editor Peter Horner has also written an excellent essay [3] on the personal impacts of preventable polio.
You find yourself washed up on a deserted island with no water, shelter or food. In order to survive you need to quickly secure a water source, build a shelter and find a reliable food source (in that order).
