August 1996 € Volume 23 € Number 4

It's Atlanta! (again)

Now that the Summer Games have come and gone, city gets ready to host the "Olympics of Operations Research"

The Atlanta Organizing Committee of INFORMS invites you to the site of the 1996 Summer Olympic Games for the Institute's Fall 1996 Meeting scheduled for Nov. 3-6, 1996.

If you have ever wondered how much $2 billion will buy, come to Atlanta this fall. The Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games (ACOG) spent well over $2 billion in preparing venues for the 1996 Summer Games. Local industries and governments added to that in infrastructure, transportation and lodging upgrades to get ready for the estimated 15,000 athletes and over one million visitors.

The Fall INFORMS Meeting will be held at the Hilton and Towers, which is located in downtown Atlanta, only minutes away from the Olympic Village and several venues. The Local Organizing Committee has prepared an outstanding program to make the meeting a memorable experience.

The theme of the meeting is "International Business Logistics." Here logistics is used in the broadest sense to capture most operations research and management science decision problems that arise in the production and delivery of goods and services. For over a century Atlanta has been a major hub for many transportation and communication networks. This concentration, coupled with its location, make Atlanta an excellent staging point for international business activities with South America, Africa, Europe and the Middle East.

Atlanta is home to Coca Cola, CNN, Delta Airlines, Georgia-Pacific, UPS and many other internationally recognized companies. BMW's selection of South Carolina and Mercedes Benz's selection of Alabama for their first U.S. manufacturing facilities were influenced in no small part by the proximities of the new assembly plants to Atlanta.

The conference will feature a strong lineup of plenary and keynote addresses by distinguished speakers, including: Jim Kelly, CEO/COO, United Parcel Service (UPS); George Gourlay, senior vice president, Coca Cola Co.; Bill Pierskalla, UCLA, Omega Rho speaker; and Jonathan Rosenhead, London School of Economics, Beale Medalist. S. Botha, et al., 1996 Edelman Prize winners from South Africa, will make a special presentation of their work.

There will be an opening awards plenary session in which the Lanchester Prize, INFORMS Practice Prize, Kimball Medal, Dantzig Dissertation Award and the INFORMS Expository Writing Award will be presented.

Conference highlights include 25 software tutorial sessions, panel discussions, the College of Organization Science's "Meeting within a Meeting," the High School and Junior College Teachers Program and the Ph.D. Colloquium.

The meeting boasts 30 presentation tracks (and approximately 1,350 individual presentations) on topics covering all aspects of theory and applications. Extended clusters will be offered in the following areas: Management of Medical Technology; Global Optimization; Linear Programming; Nonlinear Programming; Complementarity; Scheduling; Processing Networks; Applied Probability; Aviation Applications; Computer Science; Decision Analysis; Energy, Natural Resources and the Environment; Manufacturing & Service Operations Management; Military Applications; Technology Management; Transportation Science; Education; and Simulation.

Attendees can also take advantage of a series of specially arranged tours to be held in conjunction with the conference, such as recreational tours of Atlanta gardens, World of Coke, CNN Center, "Beverly Hills" Homes of Atlanta, Marietta, Ga. (in conjunction with AGIFORS Conference) and Old Roswell, Ga. (in conjunction with AGIFORS), and business tours of Delta Air Lines, WORLDSPAN, Ford (Taurus assembly plant), Milliken and Co., Lucent Technologies (fiber fabrication plant) and Scientific Atlanta.

The abridged Meetings Bulletin that accompanies this issue of OR/MS Today offers a snapshot of the "living" program available on the INFORMS On-Line web site, http://www.informs.org. Visit the site for updates to the program.

Finally, because the November national election will occur during the conference, attendees are reminded to submit an absentee ballot before heading to Atlanta.