What is ORSSA?
The Operations Research Society of South Africa (ORSSA) is the national, professional body tasked with furthering the interests of those engaged in, or interested in, Operations Research (OR) activities. ORSSA is continually involved in matters which concern operations researchers, such as:
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organising conferences at which papers on OR-related topics are delivered,
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drawing up guidelines for OR education,
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presenting short courses on specialist topics in OR,
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marketing OR at secondary school level,
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providing information to the public on the nature of OR, and
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providing information to students at tertiary level on career opportunities in OR.
At a national level the Society is managed by an Executive Committee (EC), which is elected annually at an Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Society.
Events
Seminars, workshops and panel discussions are arranged by by the Society on a regular basis. Case studies, theoretical work, new technology, etc. are typi-cally presented and dis-cussed at these get-together's. OR is, of course, the main subject at these events, but topics in specific related areas of interest, such as statistics, decision support systems, expert systems, the manage-ment sciences and industri-al engineering, are also covered.
Publications
ORiON is the official scholarly journal of ORSSA and has been published biannually since 1985. The journal enjoys accreditation by the national Department of Education and hence qualifies for government subsidies to authors employed by academic institu-tions. The Society also publishes a blog featuring snippets of OR-related news, general OR articles and advertisements, notices of forthcoming activities and re-ports on recent conferences
Conferences
A national conference is orga-nised by the Society at different venues annually to serve as a forum for communication about OR. An international expert or a prominent local operations re-searcher is usually invited as the keynote speaker. This is the pre-mier annual meeting of the Soci-ety, and apart from a rich and varied programme of presen-tations by both practitioners and academics, the conference usu-ally also boasts a very enjoyable social component.
Awards
The Society awards a number of prizes and awards annually to recognise outstanding achieve- ments in the field of Operations Research. These include the Tom Rozwadowski, Gerhard Gelden-huys and Theodor Stewart Me-dals, as well as a number of recognition awards for service to the Society and excellence in Operations Research practice.