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On May 6, Canadian Pacific Railway received Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences' (INFORMS®) 2003 Franz Edelman Award for "Achievement in Operations Research and the Management Sciences."


Known as the "Tech World Series," the award recognizes "Perfecting the Scheduled Railroad: Model-Driven Operating Plan Development," a document detailing the Class I's operating plan developed by Phil Ireland, Rod Case and John Fallis of CPR, and Carl Van Dyke, Jason Kuehn and Marc Meketon of MultiModal Applied Systems Inc.


CPR and MultiModal created a plan more tightly matched to the railroad's traffic patterns, including classification and routing plans tailored for each rail-car movement, criteria that helps determine which trains to run, and contingency plans for high- and low-volume days.


Since it began operating on a fixed schedule, CPR reduced costs more than $285 million, increased profitability and improved service reliability.


INFORMS awarded second place to UPS Air Group. Other finalists were Bank Hapoalim, Hewlett-Packard, Menlo Worldwide Forwarding and Texas Children's Hospital.


The Franz Edelman Award recognizes best-practice projects that "change organizations and people's lives," according to a prepared statement. As top finalist, CPR receives $10,000 and INFORMS plans to publish the railroad's document in the January 2004 issue of the institute's publication.


An international scientific society with 10,000 members — including Nobel Prize laureates — INFORMS seeks to apply scientific methods to help organizations improve decision-making, management and operations.