Welcome to the Companion Website for Decision Science Software Support Page.

This site contains support information for Versions 4, 3 and 2 of POM-QM for Windows including POM for Windows and QM for Windows and for Version 3 and 2 of Excel OM/QM by Howard J. Weiss. In the new version of the Windows software, POM for Windows, QM for Windows and DS for Windows have been combined into one flexible product - POM-QM for Windows. The software can be set to display the POM modules, the QM modules or both POM and QM modules. This package is the most user-friendly available in the fields of Operations Management, Quantitative methods or Management Science due to standardization with the Windows interface, flexibility, user-oriented design, and user support. POM-QM for Windows can be packaged with the Management Science texts Introduction to Management Science by Taylor and Quantitative Analysis for Management by Render, Stair & Hannah as well as the the Operations Management textbooks Operations Management, Principles of Operations Management, and Operations Management: the Flex version all by Heizer & Render and Operations Management by Krajewski, Ritzman and Malhotra. In addition, POM-QM for Windows can be purchased as a stand alone item with or without a manual. Excel OM/QM is a user-friendly add-in for Excel that can be used to create Excel spreadsheets for problems in Management Science, Quantitative Methods or Operations Management. It is the only add-in of its type as it creates custom-sized spreadsheets rather than using preconfigured Excel templates. Excel OM/QM can be packaged with the Management Science texts Introduction to Management Science by Taylor and Quantitative Analysis for Management by Render, Stair & Hannah as well as the the Operations Management textbooks Operations Management, Principles of Operations Management, and Operations Management: the Flex version all by Heizer & Render. Excel OM/QM is not available as a stand-alone product; it must be packaged with one of these Prentice-Hall textbooks.

Howard J. Weiss
Academic Director, Fox Executive MBA Program and Fox Professional MBA Program

Professor, Management Science/Operations Management

MSOM Department 1801 Liacouras Walk 514 Alter Hall (006-25)

Philadelphia, PA 19122-6083 Phone: (215) 204-6829 Fax: (215) 204-6237 E-mail: hweiss@temple.edu Howard J. Weiss received his undergraduate degree from Washington University in St. Louis and received his MS and PhD degrees from Northwestern University. His research includes articles on inventory, scheduling, waiting lines and sports that have appeared in several journals including Management Science, Operations Research, Naval Research Logistics and Interfaces. He has co-authored two textbooks - Introduction to Mathematical Programming published by North Holland and Production and Operations Management published by Allyn & Bacon. He is the author of several software packages including POM-QM for Windows, Excel OM/QM, and Finite Math for Windows. He has served as an associate editor for Naval Research Logistics, and Computers and Operations Research and was the Deputy Editor of Interfaces. He has been on the faculty at Temple University since 1976 and has served as the Academic Director of the Executive MBA program since July 2000 and as Academic Director of the Professional MBA program since July 2006

Sumber http://astro.temple.edu/~hweiss/

What Operations Research Is In a nutshell, operations research (O.R.) is the discipline of applying advanced analytical methods to help make better decisions. By using techniques such as mathematical modeling to analyze complex situations, operations research gives executives the power to make more effective decisions and build more productive systems based on:

More complete data Consideration of all available options Careful predictions of outcomes and estimates of risk The latest decision tools and techniques

A uniquely powerful approach to decision making Youve probably seen dozens of articles and ads about solutions that claim to enhance your decision-making capabilities. O.R. is unique. It's best of breed, employing highly developed methods practiced by specially trained professionals. Its powerful, using advanced tools and technologies to provide analytical power that no ordinary software or spreadsheet can deliver out of the box. And its tailored to you, because an O.R. professional offers you the ability to define your specific challenge in ways that make the most of your data and uncover your most beneficial options. To achieve these results, O.R. professionals draw upon the latest analytical technologies, including:

Simulation Giving you the ability to try out approaches and test ideas for improvement Optimization Narrowing your choices to the very best when there are virtually innumerable feasible options and comparing them is difficult Probability and Statistics Helping you measure risk, mine data to find valuable connections and insights, test conclusions, and make reliable forecasts

Already at work around you O.R. has enhanced organizations and experiences all around us. From better scheduling of airline crews to the design of waiting lines at Disney theme parks. From two-person start-ups to Fortune 500 leaders. From global resource planning decisions to optimizing hundreds of local delivery routes. All benefit directly from O.R. Shouldn't you? To learn more about what operations research is and how it works, go to More Resources. Ready to find out how O.R. can create significant value to you and your organization? Go to What It Can Do for You.

WHAT IT CAN DO FOR YOU The Operations Research Value Proposition O.R. consistently delivers significant value strategic to tactical, top-line to bottom-line to the organizations and executives who use it. Organizations worldwide in business, the military, health care, and the public sector are realizing powerful benefits from O.R., including:

Business insight Providing quantitative and business insight into complex problems Business performance Improving business performance by embedding model-driven intelligence into an organizations information systems to improve decision making Cost reduction Finding new opportunities to decrease cost or investment Decision making Assessing the likely outcomes of decision alternatives and uncovering better alternatives Forecasting Providing a better basis for more accurate forecasting and planning Improved scheduling Efficiently scheduling staff, equipment, events, and more Planning Applying quantitative techniques to support operations, tactical planning, and strategic planning Pricing Dynamically pricing products and services Productivity Helping organizations find ways to make processes and people more productive Profits Increasing revenue or return on investment; increasing market share Quality Improving quality as well as quantifying and balancing qualitative considerations Recovery Gaining greater control and achieving turn-around Resources Gaining greater utilization from limited equipment, facilities, money, and personnel

Risk Measuring risk quantitatively and uncovering factors critical to managing and reducing risk Throughput Increasing speed or throughput and decreasing delays

Answering the challenges you face today Organizations and the world in which they operate continue to become more complex. Huge numbers of choices and relentless time pressures and margin pressures make the decisions you face more daunting and more difficult. Meanwhile, new enterprise applications and software are generating massive amounts of data and it can seem like an overwhelming task to turn that data into insight and answers. But all that data and the availability of more and cheaper computing power are creating an important opportunity for decision makers one O.R. is ideally designed to help you take advantage of. O.R. professionals thrive on challenges that involve large numbers of variables, complex systems, and significant risks. As a result, O.R. can help todays executives with many of the specific challenges they face, such as:

Deciding where to invest capital in order to grow Getting more value out of ERP, CRM, and other software systems Figuring out the best way to run a call center Locating a warehouse or depot to deliver materials over shorter distances at reduced cost Forecasting sales for a new kind of product that has never been marketed before Solving complex scheduling problems Planning for a potential terrorist attack Deciding when to discount, and how much Getting more cycles out of manufacturing equipment Optimizing a portfolio of investments, whether it contains financial securities or pharmaceutical product inventory Deciding how large a budget to devote to Internet vs. traditional sales Planting crops in the face of uncertainty about weather and consumer demand Speeding up response time, whether selling a product or responding to a 911 call

For dozens of O.R. cases that you can search by industry, functional area, and benefit, go to Success Stories. WHAT IT CAN DO FOR YOU Success Stories We've put together a library of dozens of brief O.R. cases for you to browse or search by industry, functional area, or benefit. A few examples of the value you'll find:

Ford used O.R. to optimize the way it designs and tests vehicle prototypes, saving $250 million. UPS used O.R. to redesign its overnight delivery network, saving $87 million plus an additional $189 million over the following decade. The U.S. Army used O.R. to increase recruiting 17.5% while saving 20%. NBC used O.R. to improve advertising sales plans, increasing revenues by over $200 million. The City of New Haven used O.R. to determine definitively that its needle exchange program was reducing HIV infection rates.

FEEDBACK >> WHAT IT CAN DO FOR YOU Optimizing Prototype Vehicle Testing at Ford Motor Company THE O.R. VALUE PROPOSITION SUCCESS STORIES TESTIMONIALS 5 SIGNS YOU COULD BENEFIT FROM O.R.

The Problem The prototype vehicles that Ford Motor Company uses to verify new designs a major annual investment. Ford must construct prototype vehicles so that it examine the interactions of systems in their operating environments. But the cost of building a prototype routinely exceeds $250,000, while complex vehi programs commonly require over 100 full-vehicle prototypes and sometimes require over 200 in the course of product development. Using operations research to construct models capable of generating numerous iterations of possible solutions would allow the company to identify the most efficient us the prototypes, thus cutting costs while still meeting demands for high qualit

The O.R. Solution A team of engineering/operations research managers in a Wayne State University program taught for Ford noted that prototypes sit idle much of the time waiting for various tests, so increasing their usage was a clear path to co savings. The barrier to sharing these idle prototypes among design groups la determining an optimal set of vehicles that could be used to satisfy all the testing needs. Ford and the Wayne State team developed what they called a Prototype Optimization Model (POM) to reduce the number of prototype vehicles Ford needed to verify the designs of its vehicles and perform necess tests.

The Value Ford uses POM and its related expert systems to budget, plan, and manage prototype test fleets and to maintain testing integrity, reducing annual protot costs by more than $250 million. POM's first use on the European Transit vehicle reduced costs by an estimated $12 million. The model dramatically shortened the planning process, established global procedures, and created a common structure for dialogue between budgeting and engineering.

From its modest beginnings as a student project, POM eventually became an integral part of Ford's tactical and strategic planning of product development Along the way, the team cut the time for planning and created new processes that have become global standards. The POM project also opened the door fo other working-student teams to bring O.R. techniques to bear on a wide arra critical decisions and processes at Ford.
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WHAT IT CAN DO FOR YOU More Efficient Planning and Delivery at UPS The Problem The world's largest package delivery company, UPS relies on the efficient design and operation of its hub-and-spoke air network seven hubs and nearly 100 additional airports in the U.S. to move over a million domestic Next Day Air packages every night. Bringing greater efficiency to such an enormous system was a challenge. Known methods for solving large-scale network design problems were inadequate for planning the UPS air network. The primary obstacles were the complexity and immense size of the air operation, which involves over 17,000 origindestination flows and more than 160 aircraft of nine different types. Solving these problems required operations research expertise in large-scale optimization, integer programming, and routing. The O.R. Solution UPS Air Group worked with an MIT specialist in transportation. The joint research and development effort resulted in an optimization-based planning system for designing the UPS aircraft network. To ensure overnight delivery, the approach simultaneously determined minimal-cost aircraft routes, fleet assignments, and allocation of packages to routes. The project team built integer programming formulations that were equivalent to conventional network design formulations, but yielded greatly improved linear programming-based bounds. This enabled realistic instances of the original planning problem to be solved typically in less than six hours, with many instances solving in less than one hour substantial time savings. The Value UPS planners now use solutions and insights generated by the system to create improved plans. UPS management credits the system with identifying operational changes that have saved over $87 million to date, and is anticipating additional savings of $189 million over the next ten years. Other benefits include reduced planning time, reduced peak and non-peak costs, reduced aircraft fleet requirements, and improved planning.

WHAT IT CAN DO FOR YOU

Reinventing U.S. Army Recruiting The Problem In 1999, the U.S. Army Recruiting Command (USAREC) faced sustained, increasing challenges. By year's end, the organization was 6,300 personnel short of the annual required number of regular army enlisted soldier accessions. The fiscal year (FY) 2000 forecast projected a further shortfall of 17,500 22% of the requirement. Furthermore, those applicants USAREC managed to recruit and place in its traditional inventory-delivery system, known as the Delayed Entry Program (DEP), were dropping out in record numbers. The projected FY 2000 manpower shortfalls were quickly becoming a binding constraint on the army's ability to support the United States' national security strategy. Addressing these problems required operations research expertise in marketing science applications and inventory control. The O.R. Solution The multidisciplinary team combined production-forecasting expertise and resource allocation methodologies, augmented by marketing and market research techniques, to develop a new, comprehensive strategic recruiting plan that would reinvent Army recruiting for the next decade. The Value As a result of the strategic recruiting plan, the U.S. Army increased fiscal year 2000 military recruiting production by 17.5%. This achievement eliminated the forecasted 17,500 manpower deficit and provided an estimated efficiency savings of $204 million from a $1 billion program a 20% savings. The new strategy continues to pave the way for successful Army recruiting. WHAT IT CAN DO FOR YOU Increasing Advertising Revenues and Productivity at NBC The Problem The National Broadcasting Company, a subsidiary of General Electric, is primarily in the business of delivering audiences to advertisers. Every year, NBC sells 60% to 80% of its air-time inventory in a brief period lasting 2 to 3 weeks in late May. Traditionally, each sales plan was written by hand. The network sought to automate this system to better handle the tremendous amount of work required in this brief span. Automating this time-consuming process and better pricing the advertising inventory would require operations research expertise in optimization and revenue management. The O.R. Solution GE's corporate research and development center developed optimization-based sales systems to improve NBC's revenues and productivity, as well as its advertising sales processes. These systems removed bottlenecks caused by manual development of sales plans, helping NBC to respond quickly to client requests with sales plans that met their requirements. The systems also enabled NBC to make the most profitable use of its limited inventory of valuable advertising slots by estimating demands for airtime by show and week, and to schedule commercials.

The Value Between 1996 and 2000, the systems increased revenues by over $200 million, improved salesforce productivity, reduced rework by over 80%, and improved customer satisfaction. As a result, they've become an integral and essential part of NBC's sales process.

WHAT IT CAN DO FOR YOU Testimonials Leading executives at organizations worldwide have used operations research techniques to make better decisions. Here are testimonials from some of O.R.'s satisfied customers. Robert C. Wright Vice Chairman & Executive Officer, General Electric Chairman & CEO, National Broadcasting Company "Operations research and management science techniques have given us a significant competitive advantage during the 'Up Front Market.' All the hard work and creativity that went into this project definitely has paid off. In fact, these new systems have an impact of over $50 million in annual revenues and have greatly boosted the productivity of the NBC sales staff. Thanks to GE's corporate research and development center, our network sales organization has seen firsthand how operations research methodologies can revolutionize how we work. We will continue to deploy these technologies across all functions as we grow and improve our business." Robert L. Crandall Chairman, President, & CEO AMR and American Airlines "I believe that yield management [an O.R. driven process] is the single most important technical development in transportation management since we entered the era of airline deregulation in 1979.... The development of yield management was a key to American Airlines survival in the post-deregulation environment. "Without yield management, we were often faced with two unsatisfactory responses in a price competitive marketplace. We could match deeply discounted fares and risk diluting our entire inventory, or we could not match and certainly lose market share. Yield management gave us a third alternative match deeply discounted fares on a portion of our inventory and close deeply discounted inventory when it is profitable to save space for later booking higher value customers. By adjusting the number of reservations which are available to these discounts, we can adjust our minimum available fare to account for differences in demand. This creates a pricing structure

which responds to demand on a flight-by-flight basis. As a result, we can more effectively match our demand to supply. "The development of the American Airlines yield-management system has been long and sometimes difficult, but this investment has paid off. We estimate that yield management has generated $1.4 billion in incremental revenue in the last three years alone. This is not a one-time benefit. We expect yield management to generate at least $500 million annually for the foreseeable future. As we continue to invest in the enhancement of DINAMO, we expect to capture an even larger revenue premium." Launny Steffens President, US Private Client Vice Chairman, Merrill Lynch and Company "The decision to implement Integrated Choice was an unprecedented change in strategy for us. Management science and strategic pricing [operations research] provided the modeling and analyses that enabled me and my executive management team to better understand the revenue risks. The overall risk ranged from $200 million to $1 billion in revenues. This is the kind of thing that kept me up nights! The risks were also very critical at the individual financial advisor levels. "Analysis of many scenarios, with different pricing points and how the offering should be structured in terms of open vs. closed architecture, blended vs. asset-specific pricing, and across the universe of securities and services, helped us to mitigate these risks. This helped me and the board of directors to make the final decision to proceed with both Unlimited Advantage and Direct offerings. It was also used to help convince the sales force that Integrated Choice was the right strategy for the long term. "ML Unlimited Advantage has been an unqualified success. To our clients, it delivers the total financial relationship for one simple fee. For us, it puts renewed power into our asset gathering engine. MLUA had leaped to $83 billion under management by the end of 2000 and accounted for $22 billion of net new money. And it allowed us to seize the initiative in the marketplace. We have moved forward like a bullet train and it is our competitors that are scrambling not to get run over." Nick Donofrio Senior Vice President, Technology and Manufacturing IBM "Operations research professionals are the key to harnessing the opportunity created by ebusiness and deep computing. I'm convinced that organizations that make the best use of

decision technology [operations research] are those that will be the most successful from now on." Robert Ritchie President & CEO Canadian Pacific Railroad "We have developed the best scheduled railway model in the industry.... The result has been huge gains in efficiency and productivity and better service for our customers. Our job, however, is never over ...I learned that an awful lot of opportunities still exist for us in the area of revenue management and contract negotiations. We're continuously looking for new ways to improve, and operations research... [is] going to be crucial to our success in the future." Looking for more examples of the value operations research has delivered for organizations worldwide?

WHAT IT CAN DO FOR YOU 5 Signs You Could Benefit from Operations Research If one or more of the following signs applies to your situation, an O.R. professional may offer the insight you and your organization need. 1. You face complex decisions. Are you faced with more decision factors than you can get your arms around? Do your key operational computer systems lack intelligence? O.R. professionals can analyze complex situations and build intelligence into key systems, revealing the best options. But before you act, talk with an O.R. professional to confirm that taking an O.R. approach will pay dividends. 2. You're having problems with processes. One or more of your processes is broken or needs to work a lot better. Many small, day-to-day decisions are not being made well, and it's having an impact on your bottom line. O.R. can help improve these processes and their outcomes dramatically. 3. You're troubled by risk. Do you want to limit or reduce risk? Assessing the risk of a new project or contract can be tricky. O.R. can help you quantify risk, which is key to controlling it. O.R. can assist you in planning how best to balance risk against the gains you expect. 4. Your organization is not making the most of its data. Do you track information about your organization and have data that is begging to be used for decision making? O.R. specializes in working with data extracting the most valuable information from what's currently collected, and showing what additional data you could collect to increase the value even further.

5. You need to beat stiff competition. Others in your field are probably already using O.R. to gain competitive advantage. Can you afford not to? An O.R. professional can help you stay on top with the latest methods and open up important new sources of advantage.

How To Start Using It No matter what size or at what stage your organization is, no matter what kind of decision, problem, or opportunity you face, theres likely a way for operations research (O.R.) to help. And the sooner you make O.R. part of your decision-making processes, the more far-reaching the benefits can be. Recognizing the opportunity How to identify your real opportunity, and how an O.R. professional can help you do that, too. Go >> Sources of O.R. expertise Where to look for the right expertise inside and outside your organization. Go >> Working with an O.R. professional Tips for evaluating a resource, structuring the engagement, and setting up projects to succeed. Go >>

OW TO START USING IT Recognizing the Opportunity Begin with a general review of your organization, its departments, and its processes. Look for difficult decisions that could benefit from the analysis of large amounts of data like where to locate a new plant or how to make a manufacturing process more efficient. Look for complex processes that are being performed manually or with outdated systems. Look for important decisions that are made every day that might benefit from real-time data driven insight. Are you gaining the most from your supply chain, logistics, or ERP system? Your manufacturing processes? The way you deliver your services, set your prices, or evaluate your portfolio? These are all areas where O.R. can help you make significant

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improvements. Looking for other ways to spot O.R. opportunities? Go to 5 Signs You Could Benefit from Operations Research. An O.R. professional can help you assess your challenge One of the most important things an O.R. professional can do for you is help you determine to what extent O.R. could deliver improvements in response to the challenge or opportunity you have in mind. Usually you will want to call in a senior professional whose experience is at least generally, if not specifically, in the realm of your prospective application. Sometimes one conversation is sufficient to identify how O.R. could help and what benefits it could deliver. Other times a conversation, a quick investigation by the O.R. professional, and a second conversation will complete the assessment. In the most complex situations, the O.R. professional may need to carry out a systematic assessment study that entails gathering information and possibly trying out analytical approaches. Where can you find the O.R. resources you need to take advantage of your opportunities? Go to Sources of O.R. Expertise.

HOW TO START USING IT Sources of Operations Research Expertise There's more than one way to engage O.R. professionals who have the expertise you need. Inside your organization: You may find employees with O.R. training in one or more departments engineering, R&D, IT, scheduling, planning, logistics, pricing, etc. If you don't, consider hiring an O.R. professional and adding him or her to the mix, or even

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creating a new department. Outside your organization: There are many qualified O.R. professionals offering their services as independent consultants or members of consulting firms. There are also companies delivering O.R. solutions like optimization software and services. To search for O.R. professionals or companies, go to Find an O.R. Professional. Inside and outside: Combining both internal and external resources has its advantages. You can leverage external specialties beyond your own resources, while building solution and system expertise internally for long-term support after the outside resources are gone. Inside or outside resourceswhich are better? To determine what arrangement fits your organization, consider some probing questions:

As you look to the future, how will your organization appear in three years generally the way it does today, or very different from the perspectives of employees, customers, and shareholders? If you foresee an extended period of change in your organizational structure, internal O.R. should become a core competency because it can help you perform best-available analysis to inform key management decisions, design new processes, and plan the most promising future path. Is your company rapidly adding new processes and technologies? Or are traditional ways stable? If your company's structure is not evolving rapidly yet within the current structure you are adding processes and technologies, an internal O.R. department can help you make the new systems and processes highly effective and efficient. Can an operations researcher build a model and leave you in charge or do you need follow-up expertise? If you plan to embark on a one-time project with a finite end, outsourcing probably is the way to go. But if a project results in future activity that calls for O.R. expertise, you

may want to bring operations research inhouse. For tips on ensuring the success of your O.R. engagement, go to Working with an O.R. Professional.

HOW TO START USING IT Working with an O.R. Professional You'll find helpful guidelines here for ensuring the success of your O.R. projects. Working with internal resources Working with external resources Structuring an engagement Key consulting agreement elements Working with internal resources If you decide to start an operations research department in your organization, get the most out of it.

Organization chart: Let the O.R. function report to an executive who is an O.R. enthusiast. Place O.R. where its able to serve the range of clients you want organization-wide or within a part of the organization. Project mix: Naturally you want the O.R. team to work on those applications that offer the most potential to benefit the organization. If your top-priority projects are developing major systems with "O.R. inside," these require significant time and cost. However, dont overlook O.R. as an important resource for quick-turn-around work under tight deadlines; with specialized O.R. software, giving advantageous support quickly is practical. Finding more opportunities: Include your operations research director in executive group meetings so that you may explore ways different parts of your organization might take advantage of O.R. expertise. Staffing your department: You can recruit operations research staff from various sources. o Contact the Job Placement Service of INFORMS (the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences), the non-profit sponsor of this Website, at 1-800-4INFORMS or INFORMS Job Placement Service. o Different universities train O.R. professionals in different places. At an engineering school, you may find them in an O.R. department or sometimes in

o o

one or several of the other engineering departments. At a business school, O.R. often is called management science. Contact your local university or consult a list of universities with operations research or management science departments by going to Operations Research Educational Programs. Several professional recruiters have staff who place O.R. professionals. Among them are Smith Hanley and Analytic Recruiting. If you're already working with O.R. consultants, ask them to recommend others who might join your organization fulltime.

Back to top Working with external resources You will find O.R. expertise at small, one-person firms, at medium-sized firms, and at large consulting firms. Larger consulting firms usually offer at least some O.R. specialists. Also, O.R. professors in engineering schools and business schools often accept consulting assignments. When you evaluate candidates, consider examining their:

Experience in your industry, shown by references from previous clients Experience working with specific challenges similar to yours General experience in O.R. practice Degrees earned and the institutions that granted their degrees Awards, such as those bestowed by INFORMS (go to INFORMS Prizes for more information on leading O.R. awards)

As would be true hiring any consultants, when you hire O.R. consultants try to agree up front on a clear statement of the assignment. And arrange to give the consultants the support they require in access to people, cooperation, and tangible resources. Great results usually come from a true team effort between members of the organization and the consultants. You should also consider how you will evaluate the success of an O.R. project. Have your O.R. consultant recommend ways to measure the effectiveness of the implementation. Back to top Structuring an engagement The four basic phases of typical O.R. engagements are described below. You may also want to consult the 90-Day Plan for putting O.R. to work. Step 1: Assessment (1 day to 1 month) Start by calling in an O.R. professional to assess how O.R. might help you address your challenge or opportunity. Depending on the subject matter, you may accomplish this step with a conversation or an assessment study.

Step 2: Quick-turn-around analysis (1 day to 2 months) If you and the O.R. professional agree to proceed, the next steps are determined by the nature of the assignment. Some examples:

Critiquing technical material or evaluating a software package with "O.R. inside": The O.R. professional performs the work and reports results. Advanced analysis for a one-time, critical decision: The professional prepares and interprets an advanced analysis, in ongoing interaction with you and others who either furnish input or participate in the decision. Preparing for system development to improve recurring decisions: The professional designs an information system with "O.R. inside" to identify preferred choices on demand.

Step 3: Prototyping for system development only (1 month to 3 months) A development team (including O.R. professionals, software engineers, and operations staff as required) is assembled. The team constructs, tests, and refines a system prototype while interacting frequently with prospective users. The O.R. professional also recommends changes in processes and procedures necessary for effective system performance. Step 4: Implementation for system development only (1 month to 1 year) The development team works with management and users to develop the system, install the system, train operators, revise processes and procedures, provide for maintenance and future upgrades, and measure benefits. Back to top Key consulting agreement elements When you begin working with O.R. consultants, ordinarily you will create a formal consulting agreement. Examples of contents:

Clear description of the assignment Consultant and client responsibilities Deliverable materials content, format, level of detail Schedule for both the consultants and the organization, including project milestones Project risks (if any) agreed upon by the client and the consultant Fees Change-control procedure

Back to top Ready to engage an O.R. professional with the right expertise? Go to Find an O.R. Professional.