Bulletin
101, December 97
Message from Prof. Derigs
to Helle Welling, IFORS Secretary
DGOR becomes GOR
The German Operations Research
Society (DGOR) and the German Society for Mathematics, Econometrics and
Operations Research (GMÖOR) have merged.
The new society named GOR
(German Operations Research) will officially start on January 1, 1998 and
will become the German member of IFORS and EURO respectively.
During the last years the
cooperation between DGOR and GMÖOR had become very close with the
internationally recognized Symposium on Operation Reseach organized jointly
since 1995 being a significant step and recognizable signal. On the occasion
of the 1996 annual meetings the idea of a merger was presented to the members
with the announcement of a detailed plan of action.
By the end of 1996 all necessary
questions concerning legal norms were investigated (which was not a trivial
but very sensitive task because of German bureaucracy) and a constitution
for the new society and a merger agreement was formulated. I admit that
we were not so creative as our American friends and came up with the name
GOR - not baroque or sexy but functional : It simply is the interaction
of our initials.
In the beginning of 1997
this package was presented to the members of both societies for a first
yet according to German law legally not binding voting but with the common
agreement that all activities should be stopped if in one society more
than 25% of the members would refuse. The result was more than promising
since only a handful were not in favour of the merger. Accordingly, the
merger agreement, the constitution and the first board was presented for
voting at the 1997 annual meetings of both societies in Jena. The result
was unisono : a Yes for new GOR.
Well, what was the motivation
behind this merger ? Certainly the possibility to work more efficiently
in the future, to be able to improve the service for our members, but more
than this and first of all the recognized need to be more effective with
our mission, that is to be able to improve on making Operations Research
more visible, accepted and succesful within the German scientific community,
German business, German universities, thus within the German society in
general.
OPERATIONS RESEARCH SPEAKING
WITH TWO VOICES CANNOT BE CONVINCING !
At the moment we are trying
to stay a little bit longer on this first wave of enthusiam : We are planning
to adjust our instruments (meetings, working groups, journals) to our customers'
needs and thereby hoping to sharpen and extend the profile of our potential
customers and number of actual members, too. A first materialized result
is our newly designed newsletter : OR-News, which will be published four
times a year and should inform about recent trends, past and future events,
facts and meaning ... written for and consumable by not only the OR Expert
but all those interested in improving decision making and open to discuss
scientific ideas and methods.
Well, what might be the
relevance of this merger for IFORS. From 1998 on the German IFORS-society
will count about 1200 members and thus GOR will be one of the larger European
communities. After years of discussion our internal German problems have
been solved, and you can imagine that their solution has concentrated and
consumed quite a lot of our resources (not money, but time of people).
GOR is now free and open for new activities and we are prepared and willing
to become committed in supranational issues, too. The application to host
the 2002 Triennial IFOR Meeting in Berlin and the nomination (and later
elction) of Professor Schneeweiss as EURO President-elect should be understood
by our sister societies as the offer for more cooperation.
Thus I hope that you share
our good feelings about this German merger.
Professor Dr. Dr. Ulrich
Derigs
President-Elect of GOR
Universität zu Köln,
Seminar für Wirtschaftsinformatik,
Pohiligstrasse 1,
D - 50969 Köln
Phone: ++ 49 221 470 5328
Fax.: ++ 49 221 470 5329
E-mail: derigs@informatik.uni-koeln.de
Announcement
The annual meeting of the
recently founded Society GOR (German Operations Research) will be part
of the conference OR 98
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