Visteon'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.
The organization was cited for introducing an innovative decision support system to its Visteon Sterling Plant in Sterling Heights, Michigan. Visteon introduced the system to increase productivity of parts for Ford Motor Company's Expedition, Lincoln Navigator, and F-Series Trucks. The 4x4 trucks and sports utility vehicles have enjoyed increasing popularity with consumers.
As a result of the new system, productivity improved by more than 30% and an "extra" 145,000 front axles were produced due to productivity gains between January 1997 and July 1998. The system was also instrumental in cost avoidance of $10 million for expansion of the line and used in the design of a separate line with higher productivity and lower cost.
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 honored research is entitled "Productivity on the Fast Track: Simulation-Based Decision Support Drives Training, Operations, and Planning at Visteon Sterling Plant." The authors are George Pfeil, Ron Holcomb, and Charles T. Muir, Visteon Automotive Systems; and Shahram Taj, University of Detroit Mercy.
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 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.