President's Medal

The President’s Medal is one of The OR Society’s most prestigious awards, and we’re inviting entries for the competition.

The President’s Medal is awarded for the best practical application of OR submitted to the competition (a wide definition of OR is used). Entries are welcomed from both industry based OR workers and consultants as well as from academics. One of the main qualifications for entry is that the work has been implemented before submission. If you’re thinking of giving a case study based paper at our annual conference, why not consider aiming a bit higher and going for the President’s Medal?

Criteria for judging include:

  • The level of demonstrable benefit
  • The intellectual and novel content of the solution
  • The likely longevity of the solution
  • The excellence of the OR process

The entry deadline is 30 June 2024 and should be submitted to the Head of Professional Services, [email protected] .

Citation for President's Medal 2023

The Net Zero Strategy Directorate at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, led by Adam Mackenzie-Jones (Net Zero Systems Lead)

Net Zero Systems tool (NZST) for use in government departments.

The President’s Medal has been awarded for a Government project that combined technical expertise in a tool that delivered a variety of application. It has been seen through to implementation in supporting planning and policy decision making. Tackling the complex challenge of achieving Net Zero emissions targets requires collaborative efforts across various government departments.

To help decision makers better understand and navigate this intricate landscape, Adam, and his team collaborated with a number of other government departments, including DfT, Defra, Cabinet Office, and DLUHC, to design and create an innovative interactive visualisation tool using systems approaches known as the Net Zero Systems Tool (NZST).

The NZST is helping decision makers to understand and navigate the interconnected nature of this landscape, enabling identification of opportunities, and driving further collaboration across government. It complements other tools and models that are used by policy professionals and analysts alike.

A mix of hard and soft OR techniques were used in the development of the tool. The combination of excellence of process, technical challenge, impressive impact and the longevity of the tool made this project a worthy winner in the judges’ eyes, mirroring the sentiment of the audience at the conference.

Gilbert Owusu, President of The OR Society, commented, “The President’s medal is an annual opportunity to celebrate the remarkable work of OR specialists and share how they are using OR techniques to solve complex issues in government or industry. The Net-Zero Systems tool captures the innovative spirit of operational research and its potential to drive positive change.”

Seb Hargreaves, Executive Director of The OR Society, added, “We are immensely proud to recognise the exceptional contribution of Adam and his team to the field of operational research. His work exemplifies the mission of The OR Society, which has been at the forefront of advancing the discipline for 75 years.”

Team members:

DESNZ
Adam Mackenzie-Jones (Net Zero systems lead)
Beth Green (Buildings systems lead)
Adam Stannard (Energy systems lead)
Charlie Stewart (Industry systems lead)

Defra
Yaadwinder Sidhu (Land Use systems)

DfT
Katie Gronow (Transport systems)
Mary McKee (Transport systems)

Citation for President's Medal 2022

The Tesco data science team, led by Dr Ramon Fuentes (Lead Data Scientist)

Clearance Pricing Optimisation for UK’s Largest Supermarket.

The President’s Medal has been awarded for a project that combined technical expertise in a solution that delivered both the necessary scale, speed and variety of application, and has been seen through to full implementation into operational systems. The issue of balancing the need to maximise revenue whilst minimising waste is seen in both food and non-food items, and in both seasonal and non-seasonal goods. The scale of the solution is impressive enough in itself, with more than half a million pricing decisions across more than 3,000 UK stores being made daily.

The clearance optimisation problem is handled as a Markov decision process, with a series of interlinked demand forecasting and optimisation steps. The team had to overcome two sides to the optimisation challenge – the sheer number of decisions presented a computational challenge and having to optimise over fundamentally uncertain estimates which propagates further over the stages. This is book-ended with familiar challenges of bringing all the necessary data together and implementing the final models into store systems.

The results were impressive too. The initial trials in the Summer of 2019 were positive, but the second phase was able to deliver increased revenue and reduced waste. Whilst the total financial impact wasn’t shared (being highly sensitive, of course), the improvements in the levels of waste were 3-7% and that clearly represents significant savings. There are knock-on effects for the local communities too, with a much more accurate forecast of the amount of goods to be donated to food banks and other projects.

The project involved combining different approaches based on soft systems and lean service improvement methodologies. It ensured that core OR techniques were at the heart of evaluation processes that brought together service providers and users (in the form of patients). The combination of excellence of process, technical challenge, impressive impact and the longevity of the solution made this project a worthy winner in the judges’ eyes, mirroring the sentiment of the audience at the conference.

The team:

Ekaterina Arafailova, Francesco Bucci, Tim Butler, George Dikas, Sivaji Doguparthi, Ramon Fuentes, Ross Hart, Akshay Kishan, Can Kocer, Aleksandar Kolev, Sebastian Lautz, Stephen Logan, Fabio Milano, Edwin Reynolds, Himanshu Singh, Stephen Spurri, Hamish Teagle, Benjamin White, Da Wei Wong.