Past Awards
Ranganath Nuggehalli is the Principal Scientist of UPS. Dr. Nuggehalli has provided high-impact service to the profession since joining ORSA more than 30 years ago. He stewarded the Franz Edelman Award winner, the UPS ORION Project, that has become a model for implementing O.R. methodologies, and is regarded as one of the most impactful O.R. projects in the world. During his tenure, UPS became the first company to win two INFORMS prizes. To promote and support the practice of the operations research profession, he conceived the INFORMS UPS George D. Smith Prize and spearheaded its creation. Awarded to an academic program for effective and innovative preparation of practitioners, the prize is regarded as the highest honor in O.R. education globally. The unique competition provides needed benchmarks and has positively impacted O.R. education and the discipline itself. Dr. Nuggehalli served as president of the INFORMS Practice Section, and an officer of the INFORMS Roundtable and Service Science Section. He was an inaugural recipient of the INFORMS Volunteer Service Award and a founding CAP. For his many contributions to the field of O.R. and his distinguished service to INFORMS, the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences expresses its sincere appreciation to Ranganath Nuggehalli by awarding him the 2022 George E. Kimball Medal.
UPS On-Road Integrated Optimization and Navigation (ORION) Project
UPS, the leading logistics provider in the world, and long known for its penchant for efficiency, embarked on a long journey to streamline and modernize its Pickup and Delivery Operations in 2003. This journey resulted in a suite of systems that are collectively known as Package Flow technologies (PFT), and an advanced optimization system known as ORION (On Road Integrated Optimization and Navigation). ORION uses the data foundation of PFT to provide an optimized manifest to its drivers so that they can meet the complex demands of providing service. Costing $250 million to build and deploy, ORION is expected to save UPS $300 to $400 million annually. By building efficient routes and reducing the miles driven, and fuel consumption, ORION also contributes to UPS’s sustainability efforts by reducing the CO2 emissions by 100,000 tons annually. ORION provides the foundation for a new generation of advanced planning systems for UPS. Because of its sheer size and scope, it has come to be regarded as one of the largest operations research projects in the world.