Introduction: 2010 Franz Edelman Award for Achievement in Operations Research and the Management Sciences

This special issue of Interfaces is devoted to the finalists of the 39th annual competition for the Franz Edelman Award for Achievement in Operations Research and the Management Sciences, the profession's prestigious award for the practice of operations research. The six finalists this year cover a wide range of industries, functions, and countries around the globe. The winning entry demonstrates the use of operations research (OR) by INDEVAL, Mexico's central financial securities depository, to decrease daily liquidity requirements by $130 billion. One finalist entry describes the OR analyses and the politics that led to the implementation of optimization-based water-release policies by the Delaware River Basin Commission. Another entry shows how OR models were used to increase the brand value of Deutsche Post DHL in Germany by over $1 billion in five years. A fourth reflects the development and deployment of OR-based tools at New Brunswick Department of Transportation to save over $70 million per year in maintaining 18,000 kilometers of roads. Yet another entry discusses the use of single-stage and multiechelon inventory optimization techniques to reduce Procter & Gamble's investment in inventory by $1.5 billion. A sixth entry describes the use of simulation models to save approximately $230 million over a 10-year period at the Sasol Synfuels coal-to-liquids conversion facility in South Africa.