Volume 34, Number 5, October 2007

FEATURE ARTICLES

Mass Egress and Post-Disaster Responses

What can be done if, despite best efforts, a disaster strikes, leaving hundreds or thousands of people in danger?
- Doug Samuelson
Adventures in O.R.

THE ANNUAL INFORMS PRACTICE CONFERENCE is a well-known platform for professionals to share experiences, successes and lessons in operations research. The team went to pre-conference workshops, seminars and the Young Researcher Connection events. Our expectations were to discover new applications in advanced statistics, data mining and supply chain management. Specifically, we wanted to see how companies were using O.R. to improve their efficiency and increase their revenues and profits. We wanted to network, share our experiences and meet peers in other companies. The conference provided all that and much more.
New Frontiers in Simulation

WE USE SIMULATION TO REALIZE OUR IMAGINATION in a specific and detailed way – rendering what we imagination in a way that we can grasp. For instance, one may use laser devices to simulate the effect of actual arms during a military exercise, while preserving the dust, heat and fatigue that soldiers experience during actual operations; or simulate the equations of motion to provide the sensation of flying an airliner under adverse conditions to prepare a pilot to deal with an emergency; or model the interactions among producers and suppliers to predict the performance of an international supply chain. However we use it, simulation tools are there to aid our imagination to probe the frontiers of knowledge, to teach or simply to entertain.
- James J. Swain
DES: STRENGTHS & WEAKNESSES

THIS ARTICLE PRESENTS THE FINDINGS OF AN EXTENSIVE THREE-STAGE SCREENING PROCESS TO EVALUATE AND SELECT THE MOST SUITABLE COMMERCIAL DISCRETE-EVENT SIMULATOR (DES) WITH GRAPHICAL INTERFACE FOR SIMULATION OPTIMIZATION. The process was based on a set of desired features (including a subset that was considered critical) and was applied to a collection of 52 commercial packages. The list of DES software was built from information provided by publications (Swain, 2005; Tewoldeberhan et al, 2002), the Internet and simulation practitioners. During the compilation of the list, though the focus was on DES, packages that had this modeling technique as part of a broader set of capabilities were also considered. The packages were screened and evaluated through a three-stage evaluation strategy along the lines of Tewoldeberhan et al (2002).

DIGITAL EDITION

DEPARTMENTS

Inside Story

Goodbye to a Good Guy

Peter Horner

As is so often the case in this age of text messaging, e-mail and assorted instant communication, the news arrived multiple times – swift, cold and harsh – like a couple of slaps across the face. Lloyd Clarke had died the day before in a bicycling accident in Incline Village, Nev

President's Desk

Profession Faces Tough Questions

Brenda Dietrich

I recently attended the 40th anniversary celebration of the Institute for Operations Research at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. I was asked by the organizers to speak on the challenges facing the field of operations research, specifically the health and future of INFORMS.

Issues in Education

Building, Operating a Hybrid Course

Patrick S. Noonan

This month’s column concludes a short series on the notion of a “hybrid” course. The first installment, “Your Next Teaching Vehicle may be a Hybrid” (OR/MS Today, June, 2007) discussed the pressures that OR/MS courses face in the MBA Core and the increasing need for a range of allied quantitative and analytic passengers to ride together in a single required course. One approach to doing more with less is a hybrid course, a deliberate fusion that “derives its power from the ideas and techniques of all the constituent courses,” but with the ability to “switch back and forth seamlessly.”

INFORMS Online

By Integration by Differentiation

ManMohan Sodhi

In my August 2007 column,I wrote about the growing expectations of, but also growing, complexity at INFORMS Online (IoL). I focus on a more tangible issue here: integration. Integration is an IT consulting buzzword in industry and usually vacuous, so I first explain what I mean by it. Then I discuss how to achieve it in a way that is not far from how we operate today, at least informally.

Was It Something I Said

The Gift Economy

Vijay Mehrotra

In graduate school, we spent a lot of time sitting around trying to avoid working on our own research by listening to our friends talk about theirs. At the core of my research, I had formulated a non-linear program to represent relationships within a queueing network. After coming up with this formulation, I spent a long time trying to figure out whether/when this NLP had a unique solution. One morning, my officemates Nathan Chan and Steve Murray listened to me ramble on about this problem for nearly an hour. At some point, I offhandedly offered up a desperate conjecture that I had no idea how to prove. Eventually, I grew tired and left for lunch.

Forum

Research Videos: a Star is born

Sheldon H. Jacobson

Richard Larson’s article “Web Video: Transformational Option for O.R.” in the April 2007 issue of OR/MS Today suggests that the time has arrived for the operations research community to use new technologies and avenues to disseminate and promote the interesting work being conducted. His comments on using videos to further the reach and attraction of O.R. are right on target. Not all of our members are either interested in or suited for such activities, but with a membership of approximately 10,000, we certainly have our fair share of individuals who can “wave the O.R. flag” and serve as “O.R. ambassadors” for our profession within this medium.

ORacle

The ORacle Reflects

Doug Samuelson

Fall’s early slight chill was in the air. The kids were back in school. The leaves had not quite begun to turn color. The season’s first football games had been played. The group of friends gathered on one couple’s large back patio rejoiced that the party could still be outdoors.