The Woolsey Papers, Part I

OR/MS is the application of logic and mathematics to a real-world problem, in such a way that the method used does not get in the way of common sense. –Gene Woolsey

The quote is one of many gems from the book The Woolsey Papers, a collection of Gene Woolsey’s articles, edited by Richard L. Hewitt, mostly out of Interfaces from the early 1970’s to the early 2000’s. Woolsey is an OR professor at the Colorado School of Mines who strongly emphasizes the practical side of OR. He is known for having his students go out and work at the locations they’ll be consulting for. Stories in the Woolsey Papers include several examples of this such as driving a fork-lift in a beer warehouse, food/beverage delivery truck driver-salesman, etc. In many of the stories, the solution is more about understanding how people interact with their jobs, than with complicated mathematics. This gets pretty extreme in one of the stories with a tool clerk pointing a .44 at a factory bully to get him to use a check-out form - more action than your typical OR article.

In a way, the book reads a little like a Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman in how entertaining it can sometimes be, and in how the reader gains much more insight into the personality, experiences, and viewpoints of the writer than would be the case from a textbook. Being a collection of articles, there is some repetition, but I mostly liked that; it helped the lessons sink in. It is also short and fairly inexpensive. For all of these reasons and of course for the content (described more below), it could serve as a good companion text for an Operations Research course, particularly a project-based one.

There is great advice on getting practical experience:

If you have no experience, get some. If you don’t know where to start, call your county commissioner or mayor; tell him that you would like to give a free short course on fundamentals of OR/MS to anybody that might want to come. Tell him that you will cover some simple-minded methods that might help someone lay water and sewer lines more cheaply, route school buses better, assign people to jobs more efficiently, cut down materials inventory by finding better reorder points, etc. He will usually want to know why you want to do this. Tell him. Sooner or later someone will let you try.

Now if your tastes in application areas run towards sustainability, this is a great time to find opportunities. Sustainability committees and the like are forming on the local level on up to the federal. Universities, non-profits, and companies are also filled with these kinds of efforts. The decision-making tools (both common sense and mathematical) of the OR practitioner can be a great help to the committee. At the same time, the work provides a great opportunity for the OR practitioner’s education in these areas. It can be done.

Another piece of advice from the book that can be tailored to OR/Sustainability is to seek out knowledge from an application area by finding a professor from that specialty and educating each other, by attending conferences of professional societies in that field, by writing for its journals, etc. Go interdisciplinary. For sustainability there are many fields one could focus on: alternative energy, waste management, recycling, energy efficiency, remanufacturing, green buildings, etc. As for journals, there are undoubtedly many. Here are a few: International Journal of Global Environmental Issues, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Sustainability: The Journal of Record.

Whenever Woolsey consulted for governments, he did so for free. In a more recent piece (July-Aug’07 issue of Interfaces) he wrote:

In short, I worked for free, so I could work for money, with some hope of gain, so I could afford to choose which pro bono project would be the most fun to do next… This is the tip of the iceberg of what we have done for ourselves and for our state and community. What are you doing for yours?

Next time: an application of some of the ideas in the book

More references: reverse logistics, waste flow, CO2 emissions, …

Here are some more references loosely organized by topic (reverse logistics, waste flow, CO2 emissions tax/trading), plus mention of an old special issue (a 2001 OR Spectrum). The plan is to ultimately get the References page organized by topic.

• Reverse logistics
  • Reverse Logistics: Quantitative Models for Closed-Loop Supply Chains
    Dekker, Rommert, Moritz Fleischmann, Karl Inderfurth, Luk N. Van Wassenhove, eds.
    2004. Springer-Verlag, New York. 436 pp. $109.00.
    Notes There is a review of this book in Interfaces, looks like it might be useful.
  • The Impact of Product Recovery on Logistics Network Design
    M Fleischmann, P Beullens, JM Bloemhof-Ruwaard in Production and Operations Management, 2001
    Notes: Looks good, about facility location problem, has a large formulation then runs the model on a real example of copier recovery. Mine its references. 67 citations. Found the Jenkins (see below) in it.
• Waste Flow (classic)
  • Parametric Mixed Integer Programming: An Application to Solid Waste Management
    Larry Jenkins in Management Science Vol. 28, No. 11, Nov., 1982, pp. 1270-1284
    Notes: Referred to in Fleishmann paper above, it’s old (classic?), has some good references of its own within, and does mention alternate streams for some waste (such as using as a “substitute for coal in cement plants and thermal electric generating stations. It is called refuse-derived-fuel (RDF).”). The main slant of the paper, though, is methodological - a method for sensitivity analysis in MILPs. I listed 2 refs from within below, could look through the others as well.
  • An Analysis of Solid Waste Transportation and Disposal Alternatives
    by HARVEY, D. J. AND O’FLAHERTY, T. G. in INFOR, Vol. 11 (1973), pp. 187-200.
    Notes: Referred to in Jenkins paper above, looks interesting but am having trouble finding it (cga lib doesn’t have the journal).
  • Mathematical Analysis of Solid Waste Collection
    by MARKS, D. H. AND LIEBMAN, J. C., Bureau of Solid Waste Management, U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Washington, D.C., 1970.
    Notes: Referred to in Jenkins
• CO2 emissions tax/trading (see this previous post on carbon and RGGI)
  • Profit-maximizing R&D in response to a random carbon tax
    by E Baker, E Shittu in Resource and Energy Economics,, 2006
    Notes: There was a corresponding talk in the INFORMS 2007 program.
  • Analyzing the Long-run Impact of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative on the Maryland Power Sector: Oligopoly Analysis
    by Chen, Yihsu; Burtraw, Dallas; Hobbs, Benjamin F.; Kim, Soora; Palmer, Karen; Paul, Anthony; Gabriel, Steve (UMd.);
    Power Engineering Society General Meeting, 24-28 June 2007 Page(s):1 - 8
    Notes: Abstract available here, also presented at INFORMS 2007. This search yields even more related papers. Co-author Hobbs has a large number of papers that could probably be added to the overall references as well.
• The February 2001 issue of OR Spectrum covered environmental management. See table of contents. Here a few of the paper titles/authors:
  • Environment-oriented project scheduling for the dismantling of buildings
    by Frank Schultmann and Otto Rentz
  • OLAF – A general modeling system to evaluate and optimize the location of an air polluting facility
    by Jörg Fliege
  • Life cycle activity analysis: logistics and environmental policies for bottled water in Portugal Life Cycle Activity Analysis
    by Fausto Freire, Sten Thore and Paulo Ferrao

Ecological Design

Book: Ecological Design by S. Van der Ryn and S. Cowan, 1996

A chief concern of this book is to bring ecological concerns into the world of design. Ecological design as defined by the authors is “any form of design that minimizes environmentally destructive impacts by integrating itself with living processes.” [p18] The first part of the book makes the case for a new kind of design and introduces concepts that appear throughout the rest of the text, such as appealing to nature for design inspiration. In the second part, the authors lay out their five principles of ecological design, which are roughly: 1) solutions in a place can arise from the nature of the place, 2) undertake ecological accounting, 3) design with nature, 4) involve the community, and 5) make nature visible in people’s lives.

The chapter on ecological accounting contains a number of interesting examples such as the tracking of a tomato and its packaging from their origins to the consumer, an accounting of resources and wastes in the San Francisco area, and a number of university resource flow accountings. It also has a product breakdown based on an earlier writing of Cradle to Cradle’s Braungart that is similar to the biological/technological split in that book. In fact, this book discusses many of the same or similar ideas as Cradle to Cradle, although Ecological Design was published about six years earlier. The “design with nature” principle outlined in the subsequent chapter has much in common with the goals of industrial ecology. That chapter also describes a number of interesting examples such as plants whose roots filter heavy metals out of soil or factory runoff. This use of examples to support the well thought out principles of ecological design is a strength of the book. On the down side, the writing is sometimes prone to broad generalizations about the ubiquitous design ills imposed by city planners, engineers, etc. But overall it is an interesting and often inspiring work.

The book is primarily about sustainability and design. As such, the relevance to Operations Research and Sustainability is fairly general. But there are a couple of items with more obvious connections. One was a description of the California Waste Exchange’s “Directory of Industrial Recyclers and Listing of Hazardous Wastes Available for Recycling” (see http://www.westp2net.org/hazwaste/app/appd.html). This directory lists recyclable hazardous wastes, and available surplus materials and recalls the Glassey and Gupta LP analysis of matching various kinds of paper waste with recycled paper production (see References). The other item was this quote: “Classic economic notions of optimization and efficiency are no longer adequate to describe the ecological complexity surrounding us.” (p141) The challenge that the OR practitioner faces in many realms, of applying what can be inherently reductionist techniques to complex problems is particularly acute when the subject matter is the environment.

References Updated Again

There is now a summary of the Efficiency Versus Sustainability in Dynamic Decision Making book on the References page. In addition, several new references have been listed there.

Cradle to Cradle

Book: Cradle to Cradle - Remaking the Way We Make Things by William McDonough & Michael Braungart

The key idea in this book is a design philosophy called eco-effective, in which products, systems, etc. are designed with all of their present and future impacts on human and environmental health in mind. In particular, the idea is for these systems to enrich the Earth and its inhabitants, not deplete and harm them as many current industrial systems do.

While acknowledging the good intentions behind mainstream environmentalism including the popular notion of “reduce, reuse, recycle”, the authors claim this type of approach only slows down the harmful effects of industry, but does not eliminate them. They are critical of much recycling, labeling it “down-cycling” to emphasize that the materials in a good typically go from a higher-end to a lower-end product. For example, plastic bottles are recycled to a lower-grade plastic. In addition, the recycled product may become something the original material was never intended to be. Recycled plastic bottles, some of which release toxins according to the book, can become decks of suburban homes. Another problem with recycling is that it can lock up valuable materials instead of extracting them and returning them to the manufacturer in pure form. As an example of this, the authors describe how when a car is scrapped for its steel, the copper cables in the car are not extracted. This is unfortunate, they point out, because copper is valuable on its own, but weakens the recycled steel in which it is contained.

Following the eco-effective principles, products should be designed to be recycled or up-cycled but not down-cycled. They should consist of biological components (termed “nutrients”) and technological nutrients. Ideally, products should be manufactured in a way that allows these two types of nutrients to be separated. The biological nutrients could be left to biodegrade, while the technological nutrients would flow back to factories to be reused.

The book includes several interesting examples of successful eco-effective design (roof gardens, buildings that function as air ducts, Ford auto factory redesign, etc.), many of which were led by the authors’ company. At times, the book takes on an alarmist tone without providing evidence on some of the claims being made. One example of this is the opening passage about the reader settling into a common chair to read the book while hazardous particles from the chair’s fabric become airborne and make their way to reader’s lungs. In all though, the book is highly thought-provoking and quite interesting.

Though the book is about design, its fundamental philosophy relates to all stages in the life-cycle of a good. As a result, it could impact any models used to develop and recycle products in this way. From an Operations Research perspective, one could aim towards optimal recycling in which down-cycling and the trapping of precious materials are minimized, among other goals. Eco-effective principles are an ideal way to close the supply chain loop. An earlier post here mentioned an upcoming EJOR paper with this feel. It is likely that others of the references on this site include eco-effective ideas as well. I plan to add more about them in the future.

New old find: book

Glaser, B. 2002. Efficiency Versus Sustainability in Dynamic Decision Making: Advances in Intertemporal Compromising

There’s a review in the March-April 2004 issue of the journal Interfaces. From the review, and apparently from the book, it’s hard to know exactly what’s meant by sustainability. Reviewer praised the modeling side of the book, which also covers a lot on multi-objective decision making. Book should be coming via interlibrary loan, so will add more later.

update: book arrived, it doesn’t weigh much but it’s heavy…

2nd update: summary posted in References