More Edelman Award Finalists Choose ILOG CPLEX
Than Any Other Optimization Product

The annual Franz Edelman Award is the world's most prestigious honor for operations research applications. And ILOG CPLEX is the most popular tool for Edelman Finalists.

Every year, dozens of commercial projects apply. Only five or six are selected as finalists. Roughly two-thirds of Edelman Finalists are optimization projects. Over the past decade, more than 40% of these projects have used CPLEX. In fact, Edelman Finalists have used CPLEX four times more often than any other optimization technology.

We’ve gathered some outstanding CPLEX results in the table below. To see much more, visit the INFORMS operations research website, The Science of Better.

Edelman Finalist Business Problem ROI South African National Defense Force Force and equipment planning $1.1 billion saved per year Motorola Procurement management $150 million saved per year UPS Air network planning $87 million saved first two years 10% reduction in number of aircraft used Menlo Worldwide Air/truck network planning $80 million saved first full year 21% reduction in expenses NBC Advertising sales and scheduling $50 million in additional revenue per year Continental Airlines Crew rescheduling $40 million saved in one year Chilean Forestry Timber harvesting and transportation $20 million saved per year 30% reduction number of trucks needed SNCF Train scheduling $19 million saved per year Grantham, Mayo & Van Otterloo Portfolio optimization $4 million saved per year 85% reduction in trading; 60% fewer securities held Samsung Electronics Semiconductor manufacturing 50% reduction in cycle time Hundreds of millions of dollars from higher prices and reduced inventory-carrying costs AT&T Network traffic restoration and planning 35% reduction in capacity required Tens of millions of dollars in capital savings

Competition, innovation and ROI
The Franz Edelman Award recognizes achievement in operations research and the management sciences. For the past 30 years, INFORMS has presented the honor annually.

Applications put into production by industry are eligible. Some two-thirds of Edelman Finalist projects employ optimization technology. The remainder address efficiency problems using statistics, queuing theory and other forms of mathematics.

Competition is intense, and standards are rigorous. Each finalist must submit extensive documentation describing the business problem being solved; the approach used; the model or models developed; and the savings or other benefits generated.

This is an award that requires hard ROI – and CPLEX makes it possible.