INFORMS is a quarterly publication of the ORSS and is distributed free to all fully paid up members. The opinions and views in this newsletter are those expressed by the writers and should not be construed to be the official views of the ORSS. The society may be contacted at: Kent Ridge PO Box 1044, Singapore 911102; E-mail: orss@pacific.net.sg
It has been six months since the present committee took office. We have reviewed what we should do regarding the APORS journal and are now exploring the pros and cons of having a publisher take over the running of the journal. We will put the case to the APORS members societies with our recommendation in the early part of next year. There are no rival bids for our hosting of APORS2000 but we will confirm this in the middle of next year.
Our society have become lethargic with very few members bothering to participate in the activities. The standing committee will seek to organise activities that are interesting and useful to members but this will require not only entrepreneurial efforts to boost the financial position of the society but also the active support of members. We welcome members to come forward with ideas on how we can transform the society into a vibrant one where we can all come together to learn, network and promote our profession to the public.
The society had entered the Internet age with all its opportunities to foster closer communication with and amongst members. We will make efforts to move more of our communications on to Internet to lower operating costs and seek ways to serve members better. Please feel free to send the committee members your views so that together we can build a stronger and more vibrant society for our profession.
Theme: Towards the Digital Economy: Maximizing the Potential of the Management Sciences
Dates: 2-3 December 1996
Place: Johor Bahru, Malaysia
Organisers: National Institute of Public Administration (INTAN) and Management Science/Operation Research Society of Malaysia (MSORSM)
Objectives: The main objectives of Asia Pacific Conference on Management Sciences 1996 (APCOMS '96) are:
Scope: At the centre stage of the post-industrial society is a newly emerging economy based on interactive multimedia and the information superhighway. In this so-called digital economy, wealth will be created by applying knowledge and effort, enabled by pervasive communication networks, to agriculture, manufacturing and services. The significant players, rules, success factors and dynamics will be different. In this new playground, the old paradigm of the management sciences based on industrial economy principles would no longer be appropriate. This conference aims to discuss new approaches and ways to adapt and reformulate the vast arrays of principles, theories and algorithms of the management sciences so that they could add value to management practices in the digital economy.
ORSS has in principle agreed to nominate its President, Mr. Sim Cheng Hwee as a speaker for this Conference. ORSS is also trying to send an official delegation to attend this conference.
Members interested to attend this conference please contact Mr. Michael Liew Tel 2205111 for more details.
The above ORSS Technical Talk was given by Dr G. K. Yeo on 29 October 1996 in the Faculty Club. Dr. Yeo, from the Department of Information Systems and Computer Science, is an active and well known member of ORSS. The talk was well attended by members and non-members.
Dr Yeo's talk is based upon her current research project on Visual Modeling. The acronym VMS/SM stands for Visual Modeling System/Structured Modeling. For those who missed the talk, here is a brief write-up.
Visual Modeling is a user-oriented approach for creating and manipulating visual models. It is an interactive process during which the user makes use of pre-defined Visual Units in the modeling system to construct and manipulate models.
The motivation for Visual Modeling is that graphical representation is very useful for modeler and end-user to understand complicated relations and structure of decision models. Hence by allowing the modeler and end-user to perform modeling by manipulating a set of Visual Units according to certain rules, the modeling task is much simplified. The user no longer needs to understand all the un-intuitive command syntax and abstract the model in mind.
The representation of a Visual Model is the composition of a set of Visual Units and the relations between them. The Visual Units represent the model components and may include icons, menu-items, circles, rectangles and text. The relations between the Visual Units define the semantic interdependencies between them.
The VMS/SM model is based on the well known Structured Modeling (SM) concepts. This representation is called Structured and Object-Oriented Model (SOOM), together with two visual modeling approaches called Generic Visual Modeling (GVM) and Specific Visual Modeling (SVM).
In SOOM, all the components of the model are of O-O objects and their relations are all represented by corresponding Visual Units. The components and their relations are represented as an acyclic graph. There are three levels of model abstraction in SOOM:
This is a generic model that is based on the Structured Modeling paradigm and is used for defining the other two models. The components of the meta model are expressed in object classes corresponding to the elements of the elemental structure in Structured Modeling.
This is the schematic representation of the model after it has been specialised to a particular problem/application domain. It inherits from the meta model and is defined according to the requirements of the particular problem/application domain.
This is the Specific Model of the problem/application domain that inherits from the domain model. It will contain all the elements of the problem/application domain and is in a form that can be input to the solver.
Generic Visual Modeling (GVM) is used for formulating and manipulating the problem/ application model. Using the model abstractions in SOOM, GVM is the process of defining the domain model from the meta model.
The visual units used for GVM, which are based on the Structured Modeling paradigm, are general tools that allow the user to do modeling-in-the-large. With these domain independent Visual Units, users can create and manipulate models according to their problem/application domain. This is done through inheritance from the meta objects. The meta objects are represented by icons, and through operating on these icons, the user can define all the components of the domain model.
The three levels of model abstraction in SOOM that form the basis of implementation in VMS/SM are meta model, domain model, and specific model.
Specific Visual Modeling (SVM) is used for defining the model instance from the domain model through instantiating the domain model. The Visual Units used for SVM are derived from GVM. The process of SVM is to define the specific elements of the visual units in the chosen domain model. This includes defining the elements of the PE objects, CE objects, values of the ATTR, mathematical expression of the FUNC and TEST.
For more details about VMS/SM, look up Dr. Yeo's web pages at: http://www.iscs.nus.sg/~yeogk/MM/research/vms_sm.
You can also download a trial version of the VMS/SM software by following the web page.
The ORSS would like to thank Dr. Yeo once again for giving us this talk on Visual Modeling.
ORSS organised a conducted tour of the largest local brewery on 10 September 1996. This educational tour was attended by members and their family, and was a great success. For those members who were unable to be present at the tour, here are some tips... courtesy of Michael Liew.
A glass of bottled beer, properly poured and presented, is neither a science nor an art. There are only a few rules to follow:
The ideal beer temperature is a subject of debate in pubs all around the world, the Yanks and Aussies like their beer nearly frozen, the Brits seem to think room temperature (or sometimes even body temperature) is best, and the rest of the world is somewhere in between. In Germany, where they know their beer, the ideal beer temperature is considered to be 7-9 degrees C. Beer should not be cooled or warmed too quickly, the taste will suffer. Hot water and freezers are taboo! If your beer is cloudy or hazy, the storage temperature was to low. Allow it to stand in a warm place a few minutes before opening and the cloudiness will disappear. When beer is too cold, it will not form a proper head. When beer is too warm, it foams too much at first, losing its sparkle. That's why warm beer tastes stale.
Clean glasses are important. Beer glasses must be fat free. Fat causes a "head crash" and makes the beer taste stale. Normal dish-washing liquid can leave a film which also sabotages the head. If thorough, hot rinsing, drying and re-rinsing with cold water before filling does not solve this problem, there are special beer glass washing tablets available from specialty suppliers.
Beer should be poured properly. Rinse the glass with cold water just before filling. This cools the glass to roughly the temperature of the beer. First the beer is allowed to run down the inside of the angled glass until the foam reaches the lip of the glass. The glass should now be about half full. If there is too much foam, allow the glass to stand for a minute or so till some of the foam has subsided. Continue filling the now vertically held glass in increments until it's full to the engraved line and a nice head of foam has developed.
Most of the points above concerning filling glasses from bottles also applies to filling glasses from kegs, but because of the higher pressure, more carbon dioxide comes into the glass with the beer causing more foam. This means more patience is required, especially with Pils. Not only must the glass be allowed to stand for longer periods till some of the foam has subsided, but often the glass must be carefully overfilled a few times to push some foam out of the glass.
Beer should not be stored longer than six weeks because the taste is negatively affected by long storage. Bottled beer should be stored vertically, in a cool (7-9 degrees C) dark place.
Strong artificial or natural light has a negative affect on the taste of bottled beer. That's why beer is usually in brown bottles.
Back To ORSS Home Page