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It was a privilege and an honor to serve as chairman of the 30th annual international competition for the Franz Edelman Award for Achievement in Operations Research and the Management Sciences. I have so many satisfying memories: receiving the initial set of entries and seeing the depth, diversity, quality, and impact of operations research and management science that they represented; working with dedicated professionals to evaluate, verify, and select the six finalists; observing how the entrants worked with their coaches to develop extremely polished, clear presentations; and working with the judges to determine the eventual winner. Our decisions were often difficult to make, but they were made professionally with sound judgment and consensus. The difficulties of the decisions were somewhat compensated by the knowledge that we were working with an abundance of quality. Although there is one winner of the competition, there are no losers. All the finalists whose papers are presented in this issue can justifiably be proud of their work. Also, there were many quality entries that regrettably were unable to become finalists.
The competition is sponsored jointly by INFORMS and CPMS, the Practice Section of INFORMS. The primary purpose of the competition is to recognize outstanding accomplishments in the practice of our profession. The prizes recognize verifiable results that had a major impact on the client organization. The awards are given to both the client organization, which receives the award citation, and the individuals producing the work, who receive the cash awards. In 2001, the prize money totaled $15,000 with $10,000 going to the first prize winner. More important, all prize winners have the honor of knowing their work has been recognized by their peers as the best in the business. In addition to having their efforts described in this special issue of Interfaces, all the finalists will have their presentations added to the Edelman Prize videotape collection.
The award is named in honor of Franz Edelman. Dr. Edelman established the Operations Research Group at RCA, which was one of the earliest industrial OR/ MS groups in North America. He worked for over 30 years at RCA and is counted among the fathers of innovation in management science.
The Edelman process takes the best part of a year to determine the winner....