A single outstanding organization receives the award every year.
Glenn Wegryn, Associate Director, Global Analytics at Procter & Gamble and the INFORMS Prize Committee Chair, presented the award to GE Research Risk & Value Management Laboratory at the 2008 INFORMS Conference on O.R. Practice: Applying Science to the Art of Business.
The prize, he said, recognized GE Research’s demonstrated record of using operations research (O.R.) throughout the company’s strategic, tactical, and operational levels.
“The INFORMS Prize is the ultimate recognition of sustained application and use of O.R. within an organization,” said Dr. Wegryn. “GE has provided testimonials to how companies can drive significant value, and competitive advantage by utilizing O.R. throughout an organization.”
Mark Little, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, The General Electric Company, Srinivas Bollapragada, Principal Scientist of Operations Research, and Chris Johnson, manager of the Risk & Value Management Lab at GE Global Research Center, accepted the award on the company’s behalf.
“At GE, management science is having a tremendous impact on our company because it is so relevant to how we perform for our customers,” said Little. “The initiatives cited in the INFORMS Prize span diverse global businesses, yet they share the leverage of operations research and management science technology at their core – to create more customer value at lower risk.”
Added Dr. Bollapragada, “The diversity of GE businesses has given us the opportunity to apply operation research techniques in pioneering ways to solve a wide variety of industrial problems, providing great value to GE while advancing the profession. We are deeply honored by this recognition.”
The award committee found that GE Research’s Risk & Value Management Lab had an impressive track record applying operations research methods throughout the many distinctive business areas at GE, driving significant, sustained value. GE applied a mix of O.R. technologies to a range of business units and types of problems. Substantial value was created and quantified via the use of O.R. GE established a track record of recognition from INFORMS for its entries in key competitions and publications in INFORMS journals.
“The professional validation from receiving the INFORMS Prize is a tremendous milestone for our Lab that we are deeply grateful for,” said Johnson. “We've built an applied research agenda that targets many of the challenges of our time - healthcare, energy/environment, financing, performance based services, transportation, communications/entertainment, engineering, and services design. It is an honor being connected to the society and perhaps some of our work can help advance the art.”
The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences annually awards the INFORMS Prize for effective integration of operations research into organizational decision making. The award is given to an organization that has repeatedly applied the principles of O.R. in pioneering, varied, novel, and lasting ways.
Past recipients of the award include UPS, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Procter & Gamble, and Air Products and Chemicals.
Operations research is the application of advanced analytical methods to help make better decisions.
The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS®) is an international scientific society with 10,000 members, including Nobel Prize laureates, dedicated to applying scientific methods to help improve decision-making, management, and operations. Members of INFORMS work in business, government, and academia. They are represented in fields as diverse as airlines, health care, law enforcement, the military, financial engineering, and telecommunications. The INFORMS website is www.informs.org. More information about operations research is at www.scienceofbetter.org.
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