ORSI 2018 Post-Conference Summary


The 51st Annual Convention of the Operational Research Society of India (ORSI) and International Conference (hereafter, ORSI 2018) was conducted at Victor Menezes Convention Centre (VMCC), IIT Bombay, Mumbai, India, from 16th -19th December 2018. ORSI-2018 was organised jointly by ORSI-Mumbai chapter and IIT Bombay, and was sponsored by Optym (Gold sponsor), JDA, Palisade, Spashta Technologies, Opex Analytics, Springer Publisher and IIT Bombay Diamond Jubilee office. The theme of ORSI-2018 was "Emerging Trends in Operations Research and Management Science". The event saw a total of about 215 participants, and included students, faculty members, industry professionals and consultants. The conference saw participants from 7 countries: India, USA, Canada, France, Belgium, Nigeria, and South Korea. A total of 119 presentations were held, including 7 keynote lectures as well as ORSI Endowment Lecture, 10 invited talks, 91 contributed papers in parallel sessions, 4 workshop/tutorial sessions and 6 on-the-spot Blitz talks. The main conference spanned three days, 17th to 19th December 2018, with pre-conference tutorials/workshops held on 16th December 2018.



The conference was inaugurated by Prof. P. V. Balaji, Dean (R&D) IIT Bombay and Prof. Vijay Chandru (IISc), President-ORSI, with the inaugural keynote presented by Prof. Suvrajeet Sen (University of Southern California). The event also saw keynote presentations by Prof. Nicholas Hall (President-INFORMS), Prof. Luis Rabelo (University of Central Florida), Prof. Eitan Altman (INRIA, France), Prof. Vittal Prabhu (Penn State), Prof. Kavita Raman (Brown University) and Dr. Sven Leyffer (Argonne National Labs). Prof. Sandeep Juneja (TIFR, India) presented the ORSI Endowment Lecture (instituted by Prof. P. Rajasekar Reddy). Invited talks were given by Prof. N. Ravichandran (IIMA), Prof. Vijay Chandru (IISc), Prof. V. Kavitha (IITB), Dr. Satyam Sahay (John Deere), and our sponsors. Several interesting papers on methodology as well as applications were presented during the parallel sessions, which were organised into tracks on ‘Optimisation Methods and Applications’, ‘Stochastic Models’, ‘Simulation & Statistics’, ‘Data Analytics & Machine Learning’, ‘Game Theory’, ‘Supply Chain’, ‘Transportation & Logistics’, ‘Inventory’, ‘Quality’, ‘Scheduling’, ‘Pricing & Revenue Management’, ‘Health Care’, and ‘Urban Planning & Ecology’.



The final round for the ORSI’s newly constituted Best Practice Award was also held during the conference. A total of six finalists, from TCS, Tata Steels, IBM and JSW, presented their work, which was evaluated by a panel of jury. All finalists received a citation from ORSI and a book by Springer. The first place was won by Tata Steels (Team: Satish Agarwal, Shweta Srivastava et. al.) for their work on “Prediction of coke strength post reaction using time series modelling”. The award included a plaque and citation from ORSI.



A panel discussion was held on the broad theme of the conference. The panel members included Prof. Y. Narahari (IISc), Dr. Girikant Avadhunala (SAP-India), Dr. Arvind Kumar (Optym) and Dr. Badri Narayan (Indian Railways). They gave their views on how the field of Operations Research may evolve in the near and long term, given the various technological developments, especially in the area of data sciences and machine learning. The discussion was moderated by Prof. Narayan Rangaraj (IITB).



Workshop tutorials were conducted on Sunday, 16th December as a pre-conference event. Sessions of 3 hours each were conducted on the topics "Design of markets and service systems with strategic agents" by Prof. Krishnamurthy Iyer (Cornell University), "Introduction to Machine Learning", by Prof. Manjesh Hanawal & Prof. N. Hemachandra (IITB), and "Risk modelling and optimisation using simulation” by Prof. Pankaj Dutta (IITB), while the “Workshop on Computational Optimisation” by Prof. Ashutosh Mahajan & team (IITB) was for 5 hours. About 30 participants attended each session.



An exhibit hall was arranged in the foyer of VMCC, with booths by the sponsors JDA, Palisade, Spahsta, Springer and Optym, showcasing their products and services. Further, a stage was arranged in the exhibit hall for Blitz talks, featuring on-the-spot information sharing during breaks by any participant. There were a total of 6 blitz talks. Students of IEOR, IIT Bombay, conducted Puzzle-of-the-Day contest, featuring one puzzle on each day of the conference. A cultural evening was also organised as part of the conference events, performed by students of IIT Bombay.



The Annual General Body Meeting of ORSI was also held during the conference, where Prof. Vijay Chandru (IISc), President ORSI, handed over the responsibilities and welcomed Prof. Goutam Dutta (IIMA) as the new President of ORSI for the term 2019-2020. In the ORSI awards ceremony, Prof. Y. Narahari (IISc) was felicitated with the M. C. Puri award. The P. C. Mahalanobis award for educators was presented to Prof. P. K. Ray (IIT Kharagpur) under Engineering category, Prof. R. K. Mohanty under Management category and Prof. Goutam Dutta (IIMA) under Operations Research category. Other notable attendees at the conference included Prof. M. R. Rao (ISB), Dr. Raj Sivakumar (Jet Airways), Prof. Sankarshan Basu (IIMB), Dr. Sanjay Kumar (IBM), Dr. Mathirajan (IISc), Dr. Siddhartha Sengupta (IITB/TCS), among others.



The conference organisers also promoted eco-sensitivity through simple initiatives. As part of the registration kit a high quality notebook, pen and pencil, all three made from recycled paper, were provided to the conference participants. Use of small bottled water was eliminated and instead filtered water in reusable water bottles and paper cups were used during the conference. Also, a survey was used to better estimate the food requirement of the participants, which helped reduce food wastage significantly during the ORSI 2018 conference.