Bulletin 106, September 99 

Greetings to you all from South Africa and thank you for this opportunity to inform you of our activities. I have tried to include all aspects of our society that I could think of but the report below must be regarded as a personal view of ORSSA.

Conferences

A highlight of being a member of the Operations Research Society of South Africa (ORSSA) is the annual national conference. These are very friendly occasions where the after hours discussions are as important as the presentations. This is where one really finds out about the OR scene in South Africa. And the venues for these conferences are often superb! Over the last decade two conferences have been held in game reserves including one in the famous Kruger National Park. The talks are also always very well-presented. We usually invite an overseas speaker to give a plenary address. Two years ago our guest was Andres Weintraub the current IFORS president who gave us an excellent talk on OR applications in the forestry industry.

Our conferences cover a broad array of topics. In the past few years presentations have included applications of OR relating to fighting crime, development issues, hospital management, financial problems, university management, forestry, agriculture, water resource management, ecosystem management as well as the usual business and industrial problems.

Presentations often focus on the problem and the solution rather than the technical aspects. The lack of technical aspects in these talks makes them accessible to all conference participants including students. Students are not only encouraged to attend our conferences but also to present a paper. The technical detail of each talk is usually published elsewhere and references are available direct from the authors.

International Links

ORSSA is affiliated to Euro as there are no other OR societies in Africa. We have established links with some groups of OR enthusiasts in Zimbabwe and Swaziland in an attempt to foster the formation of some formal OR societies in these countries. These links led to us holding our annual conference in Swaziland in 1996.

Publications

Between conferences members are kept up to date on developments within ORSSA and the greater OR world through a newsletter which is sent out three times a year. ORSSA also produces a journal called ORiON. The journal publishes papers on any OR topic but prefers case studies - both success stories and failures. Papers related to development issues are especially welcome. Last year ORSSA finally attained a web presence and members and visitors can check for the latest news on conferences and other matters there. The address is http://www.orssa.org.za/~orssa.

Awards and achievements

Each year a committee considers publications by members over the last two years for the Tom Rozwadowski medal. This is only awarded if the best paper is considered to make an outstanding contribution to Operations Research. There is also a prize for the best student project each year. Both these awards are made at the annual conference.

ORSSA was very proud of the fact that the Franz Edelman Prize, one of the most sought-after awards of the American OR Society, was won in 1996 by a team drawn from the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) and the South African branch of Deloitte and Touche Management Consultants. The team was led by Major-General Marius Oelschig from the SANDF, and Gys Wessels from Deloitte and Touche. (It is worth mentioning that Gys obtained his PhD from the Colorado School of Mines, under the formidable Gene Woolsey). Their entry was titled "Guns or butter: decision support for determining the size and shape of the SANDF".

Some members of ORSSA have attained prominent positions in the international OR community. Theo Stewart (University of Cape Town), who has been president of ORSSA more than once, is very active in Multicriteria Decision Analysis. He has served on the executive of the International Society on MCDM, and is presently chairman of the European Special Interest Group in MCDA (ESIGMA). He was chairman of the Programme

Committee for IFORS 1996 and organized the 13th International Conference on MCDM in Cape Town in 1997. Paul Fatti (Wits University), another past president, specializes in OR and statistics applied to the banking sector. He was awarded the Goodeve Medal of the British OR Society in 1984. (He has also been president of the Mountain Club of South Africa, and has represented the MCSA in various international bodies like the UIA. This has led to jokes about his interest in methods of steepest ascent!).

Structure of ORSSA

ORSSA was founded in 1969, and is still going strong after thirty years, as the only active OR society on the African continent. It has about 350 members, organized in five chapters. These chapters are defined on a regional basis. The Western Cape Chapter comprises the area surrounding Cape Town through to Stellenbosch. This is the second largest metropolitan area in South Africa and includes three universities: Cape Town, Western Cape, and Stellenbosch. As its name suggests the Johannesburg Chapter is located in Johannesburg, the business capital of South Africa and the heart of the mining industry. It is usually the most active of the chapters closely followed by nearby Pretoria, the executive capital of our country. The activities of the Natal Chapter are based in Pietermaritzburg, a provincial capital but meetings are sometimes held in Durban, the industrial hub of Natal. The Vaal Triangle Chapter has not been very active in recent years. The chapter depends mainly on a group from the university and technkon located in this area.

Most chapters try to organise two or three meetings per year. Some manage more others none in some years. Until 1997 the executive committee of ORSSA was elected mainly from members in Pretoria or Johannesburg. It was not practical and too expensive to involve others from outside this region. With email and websites the decision to change this pattern was made and I was elected as vice-president in that year. In 1998 I took over as president with Philip Fourie from Stellenbosch being elected as vice-president last year. Philip, who helped provide some of the information in this article, will take over as president later this year when my term expires. The decentralisation of the executive has led to some problems but we are gradually learning how to manage things in this way without incurring flight costs.

Development

ORSSA has committed itself to actively supporting the Government's plans for development. These were originally set out in the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), which envisaged far-reaching changes in the social, political and economic framework of South African society. At its annual conference in 1995 - shortly after the momentous elections of 1994 - a one-day session on "The RDP - a Challenge and an Opportunity" preceded the conference, while the program also included a session on topics related to the RDP. At the Swaziland meeting in 1996 it was decided to include an RDP initiative on the list of tasks of the Executive. The first item on the agenda was to organise a meeting with senior civil servants and politicians at which the possible contributions of ORSSA to the objectives of the RDP would be discussed. Due to circumstances beyond ORSSA's control this has had to be postponed several times, but will hopefully now take place in September 1999.

As a direct result of ORSSA's initiative, a joint research programme between four of the tertiary institutions in the Western Cape is taking shape. This will deal with development issues at local (municipal) level, specifically the application of MCDA to the many decisions that must be taken regarding the allocation of resources for community development and the alleviation of poverty. Also a survey of OR education in South Africa is being planned, with an eye to possible changes in curricula to reflect the greater awareness of development issues.

Conclusion

ORSSA welcomes visits and contacts with both groups and individuals. The contact details for all members of our executive including the editor of our journal can be found on our web page. Please contact us if you are planning a visit to South Africa. We are always happy to show people a few tourist spots in exchange for a seminar or two!

Prof. John HEARNE

University of Natal,
School of Mathematics,
P/Bag X01 Scottsville,
ZA - 3209 Pietermaritzburg (South Africa)

Tel: +27 331 260 5626
Fax: +27 331 260 5648
hearne@math.unp.ac.za

This article has been published in the AIROnews n°2/99, and is part of an AIRO initiative taken after the meeting of national ORS Presidents during the EURO Conference in Barcelona, July 1997.