CHICAGO, April 12, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Midwest ISO, which manages one of the world's largest energy markets, won the 2011 Franz Edelman Award for Achievement in Operations Research and the Management Sciences at a banquet sponsored by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) in Chicago last night.

The Franz Edelman competition attests to the contributions of operations research and analytics in the profit and non-profit sectors. Since its inception 40 years ago, cumulative dollar benefits from Edelman finalist projects has reached over $170 billion.

"By leveraging operations research, Midwest ISO and its stakeholders added significant value to the region through improved reliability and increased efficiencies of the region's power plants and transmission assets," said John Bear, President and CEO of Midwest ISO. "We are honored and pleased that INFORMS recognized the value of this collaborative project."

Driven by the goal of minimizing delivered wholesale energy costs reliably, Midwest ISO, with the support of Alstom Grid, The Glarus Group, Paragon Decision Technology, and Utilicast, used operations research and analytics to design and launch its energy-only market on April 1, 2005, and introduced its energy and ancillary services markets on Jan. 6, 2009.  

The Midwest ISO improved reliability and increased efficiencies of the region's power plants and transmission assets. Based on its annual Value Proposition study, the Midwest ISO region realized between $2.1 and $3.0 billion in cumulative savings from 2007 through 2010. The Midwest ISO estimated an additional $6.1 to $8.1 billion of value will be achieved through 2020.

The six finalists competing in the 2011 Franz Edelman Award Competition also included CSAV, the Chilean shipping company; Fluor Corporation; the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC); InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG); and the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance.

More information about all the competitors is in the News Room at www.informs.org.

Every year, the Franz Edelman competition recognizes outstanding examples of operations research-based projects that have transformed companies, entire industries, and people's lives. O.R. uses advanced analytical methods to help make better decisions.

Past Franz Edelman winners include HP, Indeval, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and IBM. Additional information about the Edelman Competition is online at http://www.scienceofbetter.org/Edelman.

About INFORMS

The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS®) is an international scientific society with 10,000 members, including Nobel Prize laureates, dedicated to applying scientific methods to help improve decision-making, management, and operations. Members of INFORMS work in business, government, and academia. They are represented in fields as diverse as airlines, health care, law enforcement, the military, financial engineering, and telecommunications. INFORMS serves the scientific and professional needs of operations research analysts, experts in analytics, consultants, scientists, students, educators, and managers, as well as their institutions, by publishing a variety of journals that describe the latest research in operations research. INFORMS Online (IOL) is at www.informs.org. Further information about operations research can be found at www.scienceofbetter.org.

SOURCE INFORMS