LET'S BE OPEN - MINDED

First of all, I would like to congratulate our Swiss friends for their activity and their dynamism in the field of O.R. They significantly contributed to the evolution of this field and were strongly involved in the development of EURO.

Forty years ago, O.R. was a new field of research, essentially devoted to the solving of rather local and well-defined production and logistics problems. It was the period where each big company created its own O.R. department, each university its O.R. programs and each country its national society of O.R. Different "cultures" were developed and are still existing today. A recent debate in the EURO conference in Budapest was a good illustration of these differences of perspectives, going from the necessity of being as pragmatic as possible to the idea that only strong mathematical models can guarantee the quality of the research.

My opinion is that these differences should be considered as a richness and not as a difficulty. Management and decision problems are more and more complex; moreover, due to the development of new technologies, new problems (and new jobs) appear which have strong connections with O.R. (large database management, distributed cooperative systems,…). My feeling is that everybody should "open his mind" to these new situations, respect the diversity of methodologies and contribute to a more transdisciplinary approach of the problems.

In order to promote this necessary evolution, EURO has decided to put particular efforts in the development of a real European space of research in O.R., by facilitating direct communication between the researchers, the national societies and the thematic working groups. This important project will be presented at the next EURO conference, in Rotterdam.

I am sure that, as usual, our Swiss friends will contribute to this project and actively support the EURO policy.

Happy birthday to SVOR/ASRO !

Philippe Vincke, EURO President
PVincke@smg.ulb.ac.be