BALTIMORE, MD, April 17, 2023 – INFORMS, the largest association for the decision and data sciences, announced it has awarded Walmart its 2023 Franz Edelman Award for Achievement in Advanced Analytics, Operations Research and Management Science for its use of operations research (O.R.) to enhance retail truck routing and load planning.
Walmart, the world’s leading retailer, used advanced optimization models to build a transformation roadmap for long-term supply chain capital investments as well as an application supporting daily decisions of truck routing and loading. The application avoided 72 million pounds of CO2 and resulted in a savings of $75 million during fiscal year 2023.
First awarded in 1972, the Franz Edelman Award recognizes and rewards outstanding contributions of analytics and O.R. in the for- and nonprofit sectors around the globe. Each year, INFORMS honors finalist teams that have improved organizational efficiency, increased profits, brought better products to consumers, helped foster peace negotiation and saved lives. Since its inception, the cumulative dollar benefits from Edelman finalist projects have surpassed $400 billion.
Walmart received the Edelman Award this evening at the Edelman Gala, a highlight of the 2023 INFORMS Business Analytics Conference in Aurora, Colorado.
Franz Edelman Award Finalists
In addition to Walmart, five other organizations were finalists for this year’s Franz Edelman Award:
- DHL Supply Chain for “Network Mode, Mixed Fleet, and Staging Optimizations for the DHL Supply Chain”
- Huawei Cloud for “Huawei Cloud Adopts Operations Research for Live Streaming Services to Save the Network Bandwidth Cost: The GSCO System”
- JD.com, Inc. for “Socially Responsible Planning Strengthens Supply Chain Capability for JD.com”
- Lyft, Inc. for “The Perfect Match for Drivers and Riders: Real-time Reinforcement Learning at Lyft”
- Meituan for “Meituan’s Real-time Intelligent Dispatching Algorithms Build World’s Largest Minute-level Delivery Network”
Additional information about the 2023 INFORMS Franz Edelman Award finalists and competition can be found at:
https://www.informs.org/Recognizing-Excellence/2023-Edelman-Award.
About INFORMS
INFORMS advances and promotes the science and technology of decision making to save lives, save money and solve problems. As the largest association for the decision and data sciences, INFORMS members support organizations and governments at all levels as they work to transform data into information, and information into insights, that lead to more efficient, effective, equitable and impactful results. INFORMS’ 10,000+ members are composed of a diverse and robust international community of practitioners, researchers, educators and students from a variety of fields.
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Contact:
Ashley Smith
443-757-3578
Media Contact
Ashley Smith
Public Affairs Coordinator
INFORMS
Catonsville, MD
[email protected]
443-757-3578