Saving money is one thing. Saving lives is another. Saving huge amounts of money and an untold number of lives through the innovative application of operations research is the stuff that Edelman Award judges’ dreams are made of. Thus, despite a formidable list of finalists loaded with Fortune 500-type companies like Coca-Cola Enterprises, Hewlett-Packard and Daimler Chrysler, the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center won the 2007 Franz Edelman Award for Achievement in Operations Research and the Manage-ment Sciences by achieving breakthrough success on a human as well as a financial scale.
Volume 34, Number 3, June 2007
FEATURE ARTICLES
DIGITAL EDITION
DEPARTMENTS 
Inside Story
Heavy Dose of Irony
Another round of quick shots from the O.R. Three-Dot Lounge, where everybody knows your name but not your acronym:
President's Desk
Practice Makes Near Perfect Conference
I’ve just returned from the INFORMS Practice Conference in Vancouver. I’ve attended all seven of the practice conferences, and I think this one was almost perfect. I say “almost,” not because of any specific flaw, but because I lack a proof of optimality. The city of Vancouver was beautiful; the conference facilities were perfect for a group of our size; the technical session were appropriate, well prepared and presented (and well attended); the plenary talks were informative and entertaining; the reception and banquet were well produced; and the participants were interesting and engaging. It was great to see many familiar faces, to meet students and young researchers, and to interact with attendees from other professions who had discovered the benefit that O.R. could bring to their organizations.
Issues in Education
Your Next Teaching Vehicle may be a Hybrid
Among the many challenges faced by educators in our field is shrinking real estate in MBA programs. Never has our material been more important to the needs of organizations around the world. Likewise, never has its value been more readily available to students of general management, due to the reach and accessibility of computing technologies. However, at the same time that we are presented with this enormous opportunity to both shape the mental models and stock the analytical toolkits of all MBAs, we are being pressed – quite severely in some cases – to reduce our footprints in many MBA curricula.
INFORMS Online
Life in the Blogosphere
It has been more than six years since I wrote my last column in this space, coinciding with the end of my six years as editor of INFORMS Online. I will say that I was relieved when my term ended since that meant I did not have to think up any more columns. When I became president of INFORMS in 2002, it was back to the bimonthly grind. A former president told me that writing the columns was the most stressful and time-consuming aspect of the job, and I agree!
Was It Something I Said
The Bullwhip Effect
I had a guest speaker last month – a veteran Indian entrepreneur who had spent his entire career in the garment industry. In his informal and highly engaging style, he spoke to my students about off-shore manufacturing and how the business had evolved over the last 30+ years. During the question and answer period, one of my undergrads asked the speaker where his factories were located. After a very slight hesitation, the speaker replied that he had sold all of his factories several years ago, and had since then been focused on creating sourcing agreements to provide product to large retailers by contracting manufacturing out to factories owned by others.“Why did you get out of the export manufacturing business?” was the immediate follow-up question.
ORacle
What Is It Going to Take?
The O.R. analyst, usually known for his sense of humor, seemed to be in a strikingly gloomy mood.“What’s the matter?” one of his friends asked after a few days of this.