Robin Roundy

Citing research which "exhibits problem focus, technical excellence and great ingenuity," the 1988 Lanchester Committee selected Prof. Robin Roundy for two of his papers. The citation presented with the prize summed it up nicely: "It is entirely possible that these two papers will provide a paradigm for coping with classes of seemingly intractable problems."

Prof. Roundy teaches at the School of Operations Research and Industrial Engineering at Cornell University. His papers are entitled: "A 98%-Effective Lot-Sizing Rule for a Multi-Product, Multi-Stage Production/lnventory System," (Mathematics of Operations Research 11:4, November 1986, pp. 699-727); and "A 98%-Effective Integer-Ratio Lot-Sizing for One-Warehouse Multi-Retailer Systems," (Management Science, 31:11, November 1985, pp. 1416-1430).

The citation briefly commented on the impact of these papers. "For a fundamental class of multifacility production/inventory scheduling problems, he has found a simple heuristic and proved that it yields schedules within 2% of the optimal solution. The nature and exact values of the optimal solutions to the problems of this class remain unknown to this day."