2022 INFORMS Pacific NW Chapter Quarterly Event
Presented By PNW Chapter
All current and prospective members of the Pacific Northwest Chapters are welcome!
Date and Time: September 21, 2022 from 5:30pm - 8pm PT
Location: Amazon Coral Building, Seattle, WA
Event Webpage - Learn More and RSVP
Past Events
2022 CORS INFORMS International Conference - Vancouver
Presented By INFORMS
All members of the Pacific Northwest Chapters are welcome! Register here!
Date and Time: June 5 - 8, 2022
Location: Vancouver, BC
Conference website
2021 INFORMS Regional Analytics Conference - Seattle
Presented By INFORMS
All members of the Pacific Northwest Chapters are welcome! Register here!
Date and Time: Thursday, May 13th & Friday, May 14th 2021
Location: Virtual via Zoom
Demystifying Analytics and its Practical Business Application
Companies are increasing the use of data to make decisions and while on the way, have adopted and customized solutions and technology to fit their needs.
Conference website
Research Seminar: Mediating Tardy Medications with Staggered Schedules and Swarm Staffing
Presented By Dr. Fred F. Easton from Syracuse University
All members of the Pacific Northwest Chapters are welcome!
Date and Time: Friday, May 15th, 2015, 3-4:30pm
Location: Parks Hall 441, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA.
Driving direction/parking: http://www.wwu.edu/ps/parking/directions.shtml
Speaker Bio
Fred F. Easton earned his Ph.D. in Operations Management from the University of Washington in 1985 and currently heads the Robert H. Brethen Operations Management Institute at Syracuse University. His research focuses on capacity and demand management issues in both service and manufacturing organizations and is often oriented toward issues found in the health services, auto manufacturing, emergency services, and light manufacturing industries. Prior to embarking on an academic career, Professor Easton was an executive with an energy utility.
Abstract
Each year over 800,000 adults with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are admitted to U.S. hospitals. Because low oxygen affects most organ systems, they could be treated for any of several different illnesses. However, that treatment typically involves inhaled medications administered three or four times per day according to a common, hospital-wide medication schedule. Administered by a respiratory care practitioner (RCP) assigned to the unit where the patient is located, each treatment takes about 20 minutes. Unfortunately, lengthy administration times and common medication schedules interact to create significant workload peaks for RCPs, causing a large fraction of the scheduled medications to be administered late. This contributes to lengthier hospital stays and other undesirable outcomes.
RCP workload peaks can be attenuated by assigning different scheduled medication times to each care unit. However, this strategy does little to improve on-time performance if individual RCPs only treat the patients in one or two care units. We propose un-tethering RCPs from their traditional unit assignments, allowing them to move together as a team from care unit to care unit administering inhaled medications. Combined with staggered medication schedules, this “swarm” strategy can dramatically reduce late medication errors. Perhaps more importantly, swarm staffing enables a primary care relationship between RCPs and their chronic patients; a key element of an effective chronic care model. This research characterizes the late medication problem, presents stochastic models to select and assess alternative staggered medication schedules, and reports the experience of one hospital that adopted this strategy.
KEYWORDS: Health Care Quality, Medication Errors, Scheduling Policies and Systems, Stochastic Programs
Technical Event
When: Wednesday, June 19th from 5:30pm-7:00pm
Where: UW Bothell Eastside Leadership Center (ELC), 2515 140th Ave. NE, Bellevue, http://www.uwb.edu/business/centers/elc/elcvisitor#Directions. Free parking.
Speaker: Professor Zhe George Zhang, Department of Decision Sciences, Western Washington University
Topic: Information Effects on Performance of Two-tier Service Systems with Strategic Customers
Abstract: This paper considers a two-tier service system with one free service channel and one toll service channel. While the free system offers free service with a long waiting time, the toll service system offers paid service with a guaranteed maximum expected waiting time at a price. This kind of service system can be found in many public service situations. For example, for a certain type of non-emergency surgery, the free system may represent the public hospital service covered by the government medical insurance plan and accessed by all patients and the toll system may represent the private hospital service with limited number of patients admitted at any point in time. We study the information effects on the performance of such a two-tier service system with strategic customers. First we find that providing real-time delay information to customers can significantly improve the performances of both toll and free systems. Furthermore, we show that the system performance characteristics remain similar for both with real-time and without real-time delay information scenarios. The implication of this observation is that a system with real-time delay information can be approximately analyzed by a model without real-time delay information. We also investigate the effects of the pricing and service guarantee on the performance of the two-tier service system and reveal that there is an inconsistency between the toll system's profit goal and the customer service goal of the public service. *This is a joint work with Hsing Paul Luh
INFORMS PNW Social Event
when: Tuesday May 7, 2013; 6:30PM
Seattle
Where? Ram Restaurant and Brewery Seattle University Village, 2650 Northeast University Village Street, Seattle WA 98105. When you arrive at the venue, ask for Deanna from INFORMS and they will direct you to our table. We will also have an INFORMS sign at the table.
When you arrive at the venue, ask for Peter from INFORMS and they will direct you to our table. We will also have an INFORMS sign at the table.
Eugene, OR
Where? Lucky Noodle, 207 E 5th Ave, Eugene, OR 97401, http://www.luckynoodle.com When you arrive at the venue, ask for Ben from INFORMS and they will direct you to our table. We will also have an INFORMS sign at the table.
INFORMS PNW Social Event
when: Tuesday May 8, 2012; 6:30PM
Seattle
Where? Ram Restaurant and Brewery Seattle University Village, 2650 Northeast University Village Street, Seattle WA 98105. Please RSVP at: http://www.pingg.com/5mk6ivyt2n38zq2pi
When you arrive at the venue, ask for Peter from INFORMS and they will direct you to our table. We will also have an INFORMS sign at the table.
Vancouver, BC
Where? Indian Oven, 2006 West 4th Avenue, Vancouver, BC V6J 1M9. Please RSVP at: http://www.pingg.com/zz2jm753zda28p3wi
When you arrive at the venue, ask for Yasin from INFORMS and they will direct you to our table. We will also have an INFORMS sign at the table.
Eugene, OR
Where? Lucky Noodle, 207 East 5th Avenue, Eugene, OR 97401. Please RSVP at:http://www.pingg.com/ky22c7rky8t7bt7ja
When you arrive at the venue, ask for Ben from INFORMS and they will direct you to our table. We will also have an INFORMS sign at the table.
INFORMS PNW Social Event
Seattle
When? Tuesday, Feb 22, 2011 6:00 PM
Where? Ram Restaurant and Brewery Seattle University Village http://www.theram.com/washington/seattle.shtml
RSVP by Sunday, Feb 20, to Archis Ghate archis@uw.edu
When you arrive at the venue, ask for Archis from INFORMS and they will direct you to our table. We will also have an INFORMS sign at the table.
Vancouver
When? Tuesday, Feb 22, 6:00 PM
Where? Railway Club (579 Dunsmuir Street, upstairs) http://www.therailwayclub.com/
RSVP by Sunday, Feb 20, to Abelardo Mayoral Abelardo.Mayoral@fraserhealth.ca
When you arrive at the venue, ask for Abelardo from INFORMS and they will direct you to our table. We will also have an INFORMS sign at the table.
October 20, 2010
"Lean Six Sigma Design for new Healthcare facilities" by Laurent Barbeau, Principal Consultant
"Scheduling of Oil and Gas Drilling Operations" by Ken Jackson and Richard Schuller, Data Realm Software Inc
September 2, 2010
"Operations Research in an Agricultural Setting", Michael Hair (Romaric Corporation)
"Stochastic Dynamic Optimization in Cancer Radiotherapy", Archis Ghate (UW)
"Nonlinear Optimization with AIMMS in the chemical industry", Peter Nieuwesteeg (AIMMS)
May 12, 2010
"INFORMS Pacific Northwest Chapter"
Laura Kang, Operations Research Group, Boeing
Laura Kang is a current president of INFORMS Pacific Northwest Chapter. In this presentation, Laura will discuss the survey result among members on what they expect from our chapter and where the chapter should/could go from here.
"Customer Analytics for the Automotive Industry"
Mariah Jeffery,IBM Global Business Services
Mariah Jeffery received her Ph.D. in Operations Research from the University of Central Florida in 2005. Prior to that, she had three years of experience in manufacturing and supply chain management in the semiconductor industry. She has been a Managing Consultant with IBM Global Business Services' Advanced Analytics and Optimization for the past four years. Her clients have included the United States Postal Service, Intel, and General Motors.
"Performance Management in Airline Operations"
By Anna Gordon, Managing Director, Alaska Airlines System Operations Control
Anna Gordon is a 27 year employee of locally based Alaska Airlines, responsible for daily tactical Operations Performance (on time operations, cancellations, disruption management) as well as ongoing analysis of key operational performance indicators. Anna started her career on the front line at the airport handling customers and load control, transferring into the SOC as part of the Crew Scheduling group, with other roles in labor negotiations, and flight scheduling. Jim Thorp, Manager, Operational Research and Analysis will also be joining in the discussion.
February 17, 2010
Speakers:
Vincent Chow, UBC
Abelardo Mayoral, Fraser Health
Michael Grant, Boeing
Benjamin Hugues, Genie Industires
Martin Jetton, Kronos Hiring Solution Division, Inc