LOS ANGELES, May 5, 2011- The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS®) today congratulated Jack Levis, Director of Process Management at UPS, who led his team at UPS to win the coveted Gartner Business Intelligence Excellence Award.
Mr. Levis serves on the INFORMS board of directors as Vice President of Practice Activities.
“Analytics, operations research, and business intelligence are revolutionizing business in America and throughout the world today,” said Rina Schneur, President of INFORMS. “On behalf of INFORMS, I salute Jack Levis and UPS for their leadership in applying advanced techniques to the way we do business today.”
UPS was awarded the 2011 Gartner BI Excellence Award following a presentation and subsequent vote of more than a thousand delegates at the Gartner Business Intelligence Summit that was held from May 2-4 in Los Angeles. INFORMS Vice President Jack Levis, director of process management at UPS, made the presentation and accepted the award on behalf of the package delivery and logistics behemoth headquartered in Sandy Springs, Ga.
The Gartner award recognizes the most successful recent BI implementations by organizations that demonstrate high levels of business impact and overall excellence in the integration of business, decision, analytical and information processes. Fifty-five organizations submitted nominations for the 2011 event. A committee of Gartner analysts evaluated the nominations before announcing 10 semifinalists and then three finalists –Yahoo!, fashion designer Elie Tahari and UPS – who were invited to present their BI case at the 2011 Summit.
In his presentation, Levis outlined how UPS used BI and advanced analytics such as operations research to build systems and processes that made its operations more efficient (including a 30-million mile reduction in annual miles driven) while offering more products and delivering better service.
Levis noted that one of the biggest challenges UPS faced was taking specific route and delivery information held only in each driver’s head and putting it into integrated databases that were used to run the operation in real time.
As Levis noted, with this process change, UPS went from a “manual-, methods- and procedure-driven operations to a data-driven, scientific process.”
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.
About UPS
UPS (NYSE:UPS) is a global leader in logistics, offering a broad range of solutions including the transportation of packages and freight; the facilitation of international trade, and the deployment of advanced technology to more efficiently manage the world of business. Headquartered in Atlanta, UPS serves more than 220 countries and territories worldwide. The company can be found on the Web at UPS.com and its corporate blog can be found at blog.ups.com. To get UPS news direct, visit pressroom.ups.com/RSS .
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