Research

Optima is committed to excellence in Operations Research. We sponsor post-graduate research at The University of Auckland and are corporate sponsors of The Operational Research Society of New Zealand.

The following research papers have been published by Optima members. They give some examples of the operations research techniques and solutions that can bring significant profit improvements to organisations.

E. Rod Butchers, Paul R. Day, Andrew P. Goldie, Stephen Miller, Jeff A. Meyer, David M. Ryan, Amanda C. Scott, Chris A. Wallace, Optimized Crew Scheduling at Air New Zealand, Interfaces, Vol. 31, 1 January - February 2001, pp. 30-56.
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Mason, A.J., Siren: An Ambulance Simulation System, presented at Mathematical Models for Optimizing Transportation Services, The University of Auckland, 19 - 22 April 2005
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Henderson, S.G., Mason, A.J., Ambulance Service Planning: Simulation and Data Visualization, in Brandeau, M.L., Sainfort, F., and W.P. Pierskalla, Eds., Operations Research and Health Care: A Handbook of Methods and Applications, Volume 70, Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp77-102, 2004
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Shane Henderson, Andrew J. Mason, 2000, Development of a Simulation and Data Visualisation tool to assist in Strategic Operations Management in Emergency Services , School of Engineering Technical Report 595, January 2000
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Andrew Mason, Shane Henderson, BartSim: A Tool for Analysing and Improving Ambulance Performance in Auckland, New Zealand, in Proceedings of the The 35th Annual Conference of the Operational Research Society of New Zealand, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, 1-2 December, 2000, pp 57-64
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Andrew J. Mason, David Nielsen, 1999, PETRA : A Programmable Optimisation Engine and Toolbox for Personnel Rostering Applications presented at the 15th Triennial International Federation of Operational Research Societies (IFORS) Conference IFORS 99, August 16-20, 1999, Beijing, China; available as School of Engineering Technical Report 593
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Shane G. Henderson, Andrew J. Mason, Ilze Ziedins, Richard Thomson, 1999, A Heuristic for Determining Efficient Staffing Requirements for Call Centres, School of Engineering Technical Report 594, August, 1999
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Shane G. Henderson, Andrew J. Mason, 1999, Estimating Ambulance Requirements in Auckland, New Zealand, "Proceedings of the 1999 Winter Simulation Conference", Phoenix Arizona, December 1999
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Andrew J. Mason, David M. Ryan, David M. Panton, 1998, Integrated Simulation, Heuristic and Optimisation Approaches to Staff Scheduling, Operations Research, Vol 46, Number 2, pp161-175
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Shane Henderson, Andrew J. Mason, 1998, Rostering by iterating integer programming and simulation in Proceedings of the 1998 Winter Simulation Conference, edited by D. Medeiros and E. Watson.
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Andrew J. Mason, Mark C Smith, 1998, A Nested Column Generator for solving Rostering Problems with Integer Programming in International Conference on Optimisation : Techniques and Applications, L. Caccetta; K. L. Teo; P. F. Siew; Y. H. Leung; L. S. Jennings, and V. Rehbock (eds.), Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Australia, p827-834
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