mem·o·ry·less·ness

I got home from INFORMS 2010 yesterday.  It was a good conference.  I learned a lot and met some interesting people, but I’m glad to be home.

On Tuesday evening, I met Kay-Yut Chen.  He’s an economist at HP Labs, and he wrote a book called Secrets of the Moneylab:

Secrets of the Moneylab offers practical lessons being put to use right now at HP and other leading companies. It explains, for instance, how to:

• Use incentives to influence employees, suppliers, and buyers
• Determine whom to trust, and how much
• Reduce the negative effects of irrational behavior by noticing patterns that don’t seem logical—but are utterly predictable
• Overcome the human tendency to game the system
• Profit from motives beyond money

I’m looking forward to reading it.  While I’m guessing it’s directed at a firm’s management, I’m sure it will be interesting.

I’ve met several interesting people at INFORMS 2010.  I’ve even met (and reconnected with) some that are connected to me.

For instance, yesterday I met Chung-Yee Lee.  Dr. Lee was the PhD advisor of one of my MS advisors, Surya Liman.  He told me that he is my grandfather; I’m not sure if that’s entirely correct as I don’t know if academic genealogy applies to master’s degree holders (and I didn’t finish my thesis - my MS is non-thesis - so maybe I’m his step-grandson or something).  Regardless, it was nice to meet him and I’m looking forward to his keynote talk tomorrow.

Then at last night’s reception, I ran into John Kobza, my other MS advisor, and Tim Matis, who’s a professor at Texas Tech that wasn’t there when I was.  Dr. Kobza joined us for dinner tonight.  It was nice catching up with him and he gave me some good insights into questions I had regarding an OR career.

This morning, as we were leaving a session, my boss spotted Saravanan Venkatachalam.  Saravanan worked in our group from 2005 to 2007 or so.  He and I worked closely on some projects and we were co-authors on an INFORMS presentation in 2005, but I’d never met him in person.  He’s now at Texas A&M, where he’s about to start the PhD program in Industrial Engineering.

I’m not going to INFORMS in Seattle this year, but I am a co-author on two presentations:

1. “Forecasting and Planning Diagnostic Techniques for Service Operations” (first author, along with V. Buraparate and A. Dhawan; to be presented in the “Operations Management” session on Tuesday November 6 from 4:30 – 6:00pm)
   
   Abstract: The authors propose a systematic methodology to identify problems existing in the forecasting and planning processes for service operations. This procedure enables the identification of areas where improvement is needed and also helps aid the Operations Research Analyst in the selection of appropriate tool(s) to resolve these issues. This process has been deployed in several consumer electronics service operations (e.g., contact and repair centers) and examples will be shared.
2. “Inventory Control for Automated Drug Dispensing Machines: A Service Level Policy” (corresponding author, along with J. Kobza, S. Dunagan, G. Heath, and S. Liman; Dr. John Kobza is presenting this work I did for my MS degree because INFORMS only allows each person to be listed as first author on one paper; to be presented in the “Inventory Management” session on Wednesday November 7 from 3:30 – 5:00pm)
   
   Abstract:The authors present a service level inventory policy for automated drug dispensing machines. Through simulation, it is shown that there could be a significant reduction in pharmaceutical shortages for a case study hospital. A pilot study was also performed to validate the simulation results. The model performed well compared to theoretical predictions and pre-implementation data.

Finally, my MS research is being presented. Look for the presentation here after it’s given in Seattle. The paper will probably be posted here at some point as well.