Lessons for O.R. from the World of Banking

This paper will be of interest to the reader concerned with O.R. in banking and to the more general reader concerned with the successful development of O.R. The paper describes and analyses the complex historical development of the O.R. Group in the National Westminster Bank, which, since 1966, has grown into one of the leading O.R. groups in finance. As well as providing a new and original documentation of the type of problem areas and approaches that have been examined in the relatively short history of O.R. in banking, the paper draws on the experience of O.R. at NatWest and that of other O.R. groups in other European banks in order to identify the factors which determine whether or not an O.R. group will develop successfully.     

Pricing Policy Models: A Case Study in Practical O.R.

A simple but robust and widely applicable approach to determining the price discount to use during periodic sales promotions is described. The approach provides an illustration of O.R. methodology, and it is discussed in the context of a problem formulation exercise used for O.R. courses. This discussion clarifies alternatives and provides cautionary notes for those wishing to implement the approach.     

Vehicle Scheduling — A Case Study

An application of vehicle scheduling techniques to the planning and operation of medical specimen collection services is described and a decision-making procedure suggested for use in this problem area. Some interesting results concerning the behaviour of vehicle scheduling savings algorithms, obtained during the course of the study, are also presented.     

A Routing and Scheduling Problem for a Rail System: A Case Study

Railways are extensively used in the Australian sugar industry to transport cane from farms to the factories. Development of efficient schedules manually is difficult, given a weak set of constraints and the need to consider operating and capital costs and the deterioration of cane in the period between harvesting and processing. The Cane Railway Scheduling Problem deals with the design of a regular schedule. The algorithm devised is based on a serial decomposition (with routing and scheduling considered separately) to generate a trial solution, modification of the trial solution to provide a first feasible solution and iterative refinement to provide the final solution. Comparison of solutions produced by the algorithm and those generated manually suggests potential savings ranging from 20% to 30% in annual operating costs with accompanying reductions in rolling stock requirements. Use of the model in the industry is noted.     

Production Scheduling for High-Volume Assemblies -- A Case Study

This paper reports the results of a study designed to evaluate the shipping and production scheduling procedures used by a large manufacturer of radiators for the transportation industry, and to recommend possible improvements. Evaluation of current and suggested scheduling procedures was based upon the three management goals of: (1) using production facilities efficiently, (2) controlling finished goods inventory levels while providing adequate delivery service, and (3) coordinating production schedules with shipping schedules so as to minimize materials handling time and corresponding costs.     

Vehicle Scheduling with Timed and Connected Calls: A Case Study

A manual method was developed for scheduling the vehicle fleet of a contract transport undertaking. The main requirements were observance of time limits on individual calls and the ability to allocate pairs or groups of related calls to the same vehicle. These objectives were achieved by introducing an initial allocation of calls to vehicles prior to sequential routing of the calls. The allocation was based on a model relating work density (calls per unit area) to vehicle loading (calls per unit of vehicle time), and on fact-finding research on the main parameters of calling time, travelling speed and distance. This relationship was embodied in a visual scheduling aid for use by the route planners. Implementation was successful and resulted in about 15 per cent of vehicle time being made available for additional revenue-earning work without increase in fleet size. When utilized this represented an effective saving in operating costs of about 12 per cent.     

O.R. Education — A Survey of Young O.R. Workers

This paper presents the results of a survey into O.R. education that was conducted with the help of those attending the Young O.R. Conference (YOR II) held at Nottingham University in March 1982. The results of a workshop debate held at the conference into the direction of O.R. education are also discussed.The conclusions drawn are that O.R. education in this country appears to be quite successful but that it is failing to deal satisfactorily with a number of issues. These issues relate to keeping up-to-date with changes in computer technology and their impact upon O.R. workers; the teaching of methodology to deal with ill-defined problems; preparation for the political and working environment of organizations; and the fostering of desirable personal characteristics.     

A Teachers' Network for Third World O.R.

The progress of O.R. in developing countries has been hampered by the lack of appropriate educational materials. A contribution has been made with the writing of a book of case exercises. Several teachers in different countries have tried the book with a variety of students. The feedback has been encouraging. Initiatives are being taken, supported by IFORS, to build a wider network of teachers of O.R. for developing countries.     

Scheduling of Telephone Betting Operators — A Case Study

A case study of the application of two O.R. techniques for determining optimal shift sizes for telephone betting operators is described. The first formulation uses linear programming and the second, network flow techniques. The network flow model has a considerable computational speed advantage, but the L.P. model is currently in operation.     

Optimization of the Relaxation Parameter for S.S.O.R. and A.D.I. Preconditioning

We present and compare several approaches for the optimization of the relaxation parameter both for A.D.I. and S.S.O.R. basic iteration and preconditioning conjugate gradient method. For each kind of preconditioning a detailed link between estimates of the spectral radius of the iteration matrix and of the condition number resulting from preconditioning is proposed. It allows to choose the best approach in order to obtain the optimal relaxation parameter and the corresponding optimal estimates either of the spectral radius of the iteration matrix and of the resulting condition mumber of the S.S.O.R. and A.D.I. preconditioning.     

New Opportunities for O.R.

This paper is a summary of the introductory talk at the two day seminar ‘Management, Operational Research and the Micro’, held in London during November 1980. It discusses the value and place of computers in O.R and the effect of the micro on these factors.     

A Constantly Evolving O.R. Team

The aim of this paper is to present the activities of the Operational Research team of the Paris Transport Authority (the R.A.T.P.), but without going into the technical details of methods and results. The paper is in three parts:

• - general information on the O.R. team and its environment;
• - the history of its activities;
• -its present and future tendencies.

     

Evaluations of Parameters for the Optimization of S.S.O.R. and A.D.I. Preconditioning

The main goal of this paper is to give two ways to estimate the needed parameters in order to obtain the condition number of S.S.O.R. preconditioned matrices, namely, the algebraic matricial formulation of convexity Riesz theorem and the tridiagonal Fourier analysis. The improvement with respect to Axelsson's approach is explicitly given. Estimations of the condition number in the case of A.D.I. preconditioning is also considered.