Operations researchers Sharif Melouk and Burcu Keskin at the University of Alabama, in Tuscaloosa, developed a method to reduce travel distances when assigning teams to the initial tournament game locations. The method maintains the guidelines expressed by the NCAA, such as rewarding top teams with games relatively close to home and avoiding early-round battles between teams from the same conference. See the news story on this paper: NCAA Tournament Math: More than Adding Up Ones, Twos and Threes The story on FoxNews: NCAA proposes math-based bracket tweak to boost attendance, lower costs For the original article, please see the journal's website: Journal of the Operational Research Society, Vol. 63, Issue 5, pp. 620-630, 2012 My article on NCAA tournament scheduling that is co-authored by Dr. Sharif Melouk is highlighted on ESPN, Fox Sports, and UA research magazine.
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A four-member team of operations management graduate students from The University of Alabama’s Manderson Graduate School of Business placed ninth in the Avnet Tech Games RedPrairie Supply Chain Challenge.
The event, sponsored by Avnet and Red Prairie, included 105 teams and 351 students from 46 colleges and universities around the world, with 97 teams successfully completing the competition. The event is a virtual competition using a customized, web-based version of the Littlefield Technologies game from Responsive Learning Technologies. Students manage a make-to-order factory by forecasting and making capacity, inventory and contract decisions. The winning team is the one that manages the factory assets (inventory, equipment and cash) to earn the most money. The winning team this year was from Vanderbilt University. The team achieved a game ending cash balance (score) of $3,149,778. The UA team produced a cash balance of $2,522,401, finishing behind Vanderbilt, New York University, Arizona State (two teams), Virginia (two teams) and Indiana. For the whole story, please click here. |
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