News Room

Companies from Patagonia to Nike to Levi’s are leading the charge on social responsibility and supply chain transparency and they’ve encouraged their competitors to follow suit. But getting better visibility into a supply chain is an expensive and time-consuming endeavor for apparel makers. But do customers really care, and if so, are they willing to reward a company for its efforts? A new study in the INFORMS journal Manufacturing & Service Operations Management finds that customers do indeed value information related to a company’s supply chain — and many are prepared to pay a premium for greater supply chain visibility. 

Former INFORMS President Ed Kaplan coauthored a study that explores how much runners actually slow as the age, and the good news is, not as much as was originally thought. The study showed that older runners start to decline gradually after the age of 40, and only start to slow more dramatically in their late 70s. 

The UPS ORION software, in use since 2012 after a decade of development, calculates a driver's most efficient path for the typical shipping day, which consists of about 100 stops, by analyzing more than 200,000 routing options. 

Senior Program Manager Jack Levis, winner of the INFORMS Franz Edelman Award, president of the INFORMS Analytics Society, and chair of the INFORMS Analytics Certification Board, is considered the father of the software which is operational across the entire U.S. system and currently being tested internationally.

INFORMS member and Georgia Tech professor Eva Lee gives a behind the scenes look at how a flu vaccine is created and adapted each year to combat that season's flu strains.

INFORMS member and Brock University professor Michael J. Armstrong, with Carleton University professor Aaron Luntala Nsakanda discuss the ins and outs of loyalty awards programs, from airline frequent flier clubs to retail stores, using their research that utilized stochastic linear programming to model and earning and redemption of points in rewards program over time.