BT's submission was chosen from over two dozen entries representing organizations in industry and government. The seven finalists for the INFORMS® Edelman Award, all of whom were recognized by the award committee, are AT&T; British Telecommunications plc; Dana Corporation Off-Highway Systems Group; IBM; Towers Perrin; the U.S. Department of Energy; and Visteon Automotive Systems. The Edelman Award winner was IBM.
BT employs thousands of field engineers across the United Kingdom to maintain networks, make repairs, and provide service to customers. To achieve efficient work allocation, BT developed an information system, known as Work Manager, which automates work management and field communication processes.
BT Labs enhanced Work Manager in 1996 with a dynamic scheduler (DS). Introduced in 1997 and reaching 20,000 engineers in 1998, DS with Work Manager is saving BT $150 million a year on operational costs. These included savings on engineer and controller personnel costs and workforce related costs such as vehicles, equipment, tools, training, and administration.
DS has paved the way for the automated management of 12,000 additional engineers. It has also improved field control operations, allowing management to be more pro-active in their task jeopardy management and short-term resource planning. Using a visualizer and "what-if" capability, they can identify and resolve resource bottlenecks and other problems in advance.
Customer satisfaction has improved, as well. Due dates, appointment windows, and skill requirements are met more consistently than before.
The honored research is entitled "Dynamic Workforce Scheduling." The authors are David LeSaint, Christos Voudouris, and Nader Azarmi, BT Laboratories.
The Franz Edelman Award for Achievement in Operations Research and the Management Sciences recognizes outstanding work in operations research that has had a significant impact on the performance of the client organization. The award is jointly sponsored by The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) and CPMS, the Practice Section of INFORMS. This is the 28th year that the prestigious competition has been held.
The judges of the 1998 Edelman competition were Russ Labe, Merrill Lynch Private Client Group, Chair; Joseph Discenza, Wagner & Associates; Howard Finkelberg, BBDO; H. Newton Garber, Garber Associates; Stephen C. Graves, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Yoshiro Ikura, Saitech; Peter V. Norden, Columbia University; Rick Rosenthal, Naval Postgraduate School; and Michael Rothkopf, Rutgers University.
All the finalist papers will be published in the January 2000 issue of the INFORMS publication Interfaces.
The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS®) is an international scientific society with 12,000 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, the stock market, and telecommunications. The INFORMS website is at http://www.informs.org.
British Telecommunications plc is one of the world's leading providers of telecommunications services. With a market capitalization in excess of £60 billion, it is one of the largest private sector companies in Europe. Its principal activity is the supply of local, long distance and international telecommunications services and equipment in the UK, serving 27 million exchange lines. International direct-dialed telephone service is available to more than 200 countries and other overseas territories -covering 99 per cent of the world's 800 million telephones.
BT is expanding its presence overseas rapidly and has operations in more than 30 countries worldwide, with joint ventures in the Republic of Ireland, France, Switzerland, Spain, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Korea and India. Concert, a wholly-owned subsidiary of BT, is based in the US and develops advanced networking services for global companies. Today, Concert's intelligent network platform provides an array of global telecommunications services to more than 4,400 companies in over 50 countries.
In July 1998, BT announced the formation of a US$10 billion global venture combining its trans-border assets and operations with those of AT&T and developing an intelligent Internet Protocol (IP)-based network which will support services such as global electronic commerce, global call centres and new Intranet based solutions. The joint venture, which includes Concert, is expected to be completed during the second half of 1999.
In the last financial year (1997-98), BT's turnover was £15,640m with a pre-tax profit of £3,219m.
The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) is an international scientific society with 12,000 members, including Nobel Prize laureates, dedicated to applying scientific methods to help improve decision-making, management, and operations. Members of INFORMS work primarily in business, government, and academia. They are represented in fields as diverse as airlines, health care, law enforcement, the military, the stock market, and telecommunications.