This year’s Edelman Competition will take place in a few days at the INFORMS Practice Conference. The Edelman Competition presents projects in practical operations research that have a significant impact on an organization. This year’s finalists include work from Travelocity, the TSA, Warner Robbins Air Logistics, Center and more. I really like the Edelman: the finalists put papers into Interfaces, and those papers are a tremendous resource for my MBA classes.
Of course, every competition could be improved. I was mulling on the thought of turning this competition into a reality show. Lock a bunch of ORers in a plant for six weeks with cameras everywhere, and watch them try to out-optimize each other to be the last one standing. Probably wouldn’t compete with American Idol, but I certainly would watch it!