Innovative Practices in Service Systems Award

This award recognizes projects that improve the performance of service systems using Industrial and Systems Engineering tools and techniques in an innovative way. We welcome submissions of service systems improvement projects from individuals, teams and organizations working in industry, academia, non-profit organizations, or government agencies from across the world. Examples of past award recipients can be found on the IISE website.


2024 Winners

Shenle Pan

"Online Cognitive Digital Twins for Last Mile Delivery Services in Smart Cities"

2023 Winners

1st Place:
Pengyi Shi, Nicole Adams, Griffin Carter, Xiaquan Gao, Jason Huber, Nan Kong 
"Breaking the Cycle of Reincarceration: Community Corrections Placement with an MDP Approach"

2nd Place:
Peiling Wu-Smith, Peter Fenyes, Kelly Kamm, Philip Keenan, Don Kiggins, Philip Konkel, Andy Norton, Jonathan Owen, Bill Rosen, Kurt Schmitter, Kathryn Schumacher, Sharon Sheremet, Laura Yochim
"Vehicle Content Optimization at General Motors"

3rd Place:
Lavanya Marla, Akhil Gupta, Arinbjorn Kolbeinsson, Naman Shukla, Kartik Yellepeddi
"Deepair Improves Airline Ancillary Revenues with Personalized Pricing"

2022 Winners

1st Place:
Jakob Heins, Steffen Heider, Jan Schoenfelder, Axel Heller and Jens Brunner
University of Augsburg/Bavarian State Ministry
"A Scalable Forecasting Framework to Predict COVID-19 Hospital Bed Occupancy"

2nd Place:
Turgay Ayer, Can Zhang, Chelsea (Chip) White, Zeynep Ozkaynak, Kevin Lee and Mary Deck
Georgia Institute of Technology/American Red Cross
"American Red Cross Uses Analytics-based Methods to Improve Blood - Collection Operations"

3rd Place:
Robert Inman, Michael Harbaugh and Jonathan Owen
General Motors
"Increasing Automotive Dealership Service Retention"

2021 Winners

1st Place:
Saravanan Venkatachalam, Wayne State University
Suresh Acharya, University of Maryland
Kenji Oba, ANA Airways
"Prescriptive Analytics for Swapping Aircraft Assignments at All Nippon Airways"

2nd Place:
Caroline Kent, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Toronto
Josh Smertz, The Poirier Group
"Innovative Value Stream Improvement to close BIG Performance Gaps with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Toronto"

3rd Place:
Amit Upadhyay, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur
"Improving Operations and Pricing of Container Trains in Indian Railways"

2020 Winners

David Reid
Chick-fil-A
"From Lean Modules to Lean Mindset"

Aly Megahed and Mark Smith
IBM Corporation
"Analytics for IBM’s IT Services Tendering Processes"

Kathryn Zavaleta
Mayo Clinic
"Service Innovation, Opioid Stewardship & the Value of Systems Engineering"

Xiaolei Xie
Tsinghua University
"Continuous Improvement on Ophthalmology Outpatient Department Service"

2019 Winners

1st place:
Mohammad Shahabsafa, Anshul Sharma and Tamas Terlaky
Optamo LLC
"Optimized Population Management in Correctional Systems: Inmate Assignment, Program Scheduling and Transportation"

2nd place:
Charles Davis and Eric Swenson
Penn State Health
"Value Improvement in Total Hip and Knee Arthroplasty - Improving Outcomes and Decreasing Costs"

3rd place:
Barbara Venegas Quintrileo
Penn State's SEE 360 Initiative
"ROARS - Real Time Optimization for Adaptive Removal of Snow"

SHARE