Midlands OR Society (MORS) Seminar and Networking Event

The OR in the Third Sector (ORiTS) special interest group aims to help OR analysts working or
planning to work in third sector organisations (charities, social enterprises, voluntary and not for
profit groups and non-government organisations). In this talk, we will present a case study of an
ORiTS project with the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI, http://rnli.org): how an project
starts, how it progresses and what is involved.

The RNLI is an independent charity, wholly funded by voluntary donations, which provides, on
call, a 24-hour lifeboat search and rescue service crewed by volunteers, a seasonal lifeguard
service and safety advice. The aim of the RNLI is to save lives at sea.

The ethos of the RNLI is one of volunteering – over 97% of its staff are volunteers and each
volunteer is valued not only for the time they give, but for the diversity and skills they can bring
to the organisation. It was therefore natural for the RNLI to get involved with ORiTS, which
encouraged OR volunteers to engage with third sector organisations. One of the first projects
that presented itself was to better understand the impact on cover when a lifeboat goes off
service, and therefore what metrics might be used to maintain cover whilst reducing relief fleet
and maintenance costs wherever possible.

One of the first projects the ORiTS volunteers have been asked to investigate is the application of
condition based maintenance to the lifeboat fleet. Specifically the impact on risk calculator
metrics of classifying station assets according to the amount of time they can spend off-service.
This sort of problem lends itself to a simulation, but before we could start we had to get a better
understanding of RNLI operations.

We used a systems dynamics model to represent the flows of resources (lifeboat assets) and the
flow of incidents (rescues) over time. This gave us some useful insights into the way the RNLI
worked and some initial results showing us how robust the overall system was to changes in
incident types and rates as well as changes in the way the lifeboat fleet was being managed.
Simulation was also used, to investigate the dynamic between the availability of lifeboats, the
utilisation of lifeboats and the response times to incidents when modelling the deployment of life
boats to incidents around the coast of Wales, England and Ireland.

More information

On Friday November 30th, 2:15pm-5pm, British Airways will hold an interactive session at WBS for our MSc MSOR and MSc BAC students focussing on the application of Revenue Management strategies and Game Theory to an activity where the aim is to manage the sale of seats on a flight to gain maximum total revenues.

The students will go into teams and compete to make the most money. No previous Revenue Management background is needed. More details will be made available shortly prior to the event.

Professor Bo Chen, Chair in Operational Research & Management Science in the ORMS Group at Warwick, was awarded a higher doctorate, the degree of Doctor of Science, by the University of Warwick.

Higher doctorates, a form of 'lifetime achievement award', are awarded to academics who have shown a considerable, original, and sustained contribution to their field of scholarship at the very highest international level. It involves the consideration of the candidate's peer-reviewed research by external assessors who are themselves of the highest academic distinction, who then make a recommendation to the University as to whether the higher doctorate should be awarded.

Professor Chen holds a B.Sc. from Zhejiang University, China, an M.Sc. from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a Ph.D. from the Erasmus University, The Netherlands. He started his academic career as an Assistant Lecturer in 1982 at Zhejiang University (China). After obtaining his Ph.D., he joined the faculty of the University of Warwick (UK) in 1994.

Past or current roles include: Head of Operational Research & Management Sciences; Director for MSc Management Science & Operational Research, for MSc Business Analytics & Consulting; Member of the Management Board of the Centre for Discrete Mathematics and its Applications.

Other past or current professional affiliations are: Adjunct Professor of Shanghai Second Polytechnic University; International Doctoral Supervisor of Zhejiang University; Adjunct Professor of Shanghai University; Visiting Professor of Stanford University; Guest Professor of Wuhan University; Chair Professor of Tsinghua University; Guest Professor of Zhejiang University; Tai-Shan Scholar Chair Professor of Shandong Province, China; Visiting Professor of University of Cambridge.

Researchers at the University of Warwick, Graz University of Technology and Eindhoven University have solved a 30-year-old special case concerning the travelling salesman problem (TSP). The team succeeded in proving that it is possible to find an optimal solution to the X-and-Y-axes TSP special case within a polynomial – or mathematically reasonable – amount of time.

The TSP was defined approximately 150 years ago and concerns the identification of the optimal route for a salesperson calling at numerous addresses. The salesperson must visit each of their customers once and return to their starting point within the shortest possible period of time. Solutions relating to the TSP provide useful applications within fields such as haulage, air traffic control and even DNA sequencing.

Great news for anyone interested in studying Operational Research: a recent ranking of the Top 10 graduate jobs by lifetime salary published in The Telegraph sees Operational Research on place 9 with an average lifetime salary of £36,540. Only a single business school subject pays better on average, namely Industrial Relations.

See also this interview with Professor Juergen Branke.