Arthur Geoffrion
UCLA Anderson School of Management

Professionally-oriented essays and papers

• "Restoring Transparency to Computational Solutions," in Decision Modelling and Information Systems, by Nikitas-Spiros Koutsoukis and Gautam Mitra, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002. This paper advocates and illustrates an approach to using conceptually simple models, arguments, exhibits and spreadsheets as adjuncts to complex computational models to help explain important aggregate properties of detailed computational solutions. This can improve the transparency, and hence the value, of such solutions.
• "Progress in Operations Management," Production and Operations Mangement, Spring 2002. Here I examine and illustrate a simple 4-stage framework for thinking about the implications of the digital economy for Operations Management (and also OR): advances in digital technology (Stage 1) lead to business developments (Stage 2), which impact the views of O.M.-relevant thought leaders (Stage 3), which influence the conduct of O.M. activities (Stage 4).
• "Prospects for Operations Research in the E-Business Era," with R. Krishnan, Interfaces, March-April, 2001. This paper and issue of Interfaces are devoted to the practical implications of the digital economy for OR/MS.
• "Forces, Trends, and Opportunities in MS/OR," Operations Research, May-June 1992. OR/MS will flourish in proportion to how astutely individuals, organizations, professional societies, and universities adapt to forces, trends, and opportunities like those discussed in this paper.
• "Readability Counts"  OR/MS Today, 12/91. Arugments in favor of writing for readers, and a few suggestions for how to do so.
• "Why Referee?"  OR/MS Today, 12/91. Arguments in favor of giving priority to refereeing assignments.
• What Is the Business of MS/OR?  One of the persistent problems of OR/MS is that the essence of the profession often is not communicated effectively to others. Here are 14 crisp messages that can be used to craft such communications. 
• Maxims for Modelers  This informal note lists some of my beliefs about how to do successful applied work. The maxims, about 20 of them, are organized into two broad groups: (A) personal conduct and project management, and (B) conceptualizing and designing models.

I've been associated with the INFORMS Roundtable, an organization of OR/MS leaders, since its inception in 1982 and continue to be actively involved. Its Website includes publicly-accessible, abridged minutes of its meetings since 1989. Many of the items therein are of professional interest.

 

Other  

• What is Research?  This brief, informal essay was born of my struggle, as chair of a promotion review committee, to think through how to evaluate research very different from what is usually found in OR/MS.
• Transcript of opening remarks at the Winter Interim INFORMS Board Meeting, February 8-9, 1997. These comments set the stage for my year in office.
• INFORMS Student Union aims to help make INFORMS mission-critical to students. Here is the original design document.
• Reading path: some suggestions for those new to Structured Modeling.
• Structured Modeling has an obvious affinity for the hypertext paradigm, which makes it attractive to explore (1) how the Web can be used as a vehicle for SM, and (2) how SM can be used beneficially as a discipline for designing Web pages. The payoffs for the latter seem potentially large, but the former provides the most natural starting point. Here are three different ways to render a structured model as a Web document; the chosen illustrative example is a structured model of the basic concepts of Structured Modeling.