Peter J. Kolesar
BA, City University of New York, Queens College, 1959;
BS, Columbia, 1959; PhD, 1964
Joined Columbia Business School in 1976
Biography
Peter Kolesar is Professor Emeritus, member of the Columbia Water Center and Special Lecturer for Decision, Risk, and Operations at Columbia Business School. Kolesar studies quality management and statistical quality control as well as applications of operations research and statistics to the management of production and service systems. His research includes modeling of service systems with random cyclic customer demand patterns, accelerating the implementation of total quality management systems and optimizing credit–screening procedures. He was awarded the 1975 Lanchester Prize — the highest award in operations research — for work on the deployment of police and fire departments and for contributions to the design of the New York City Fire Department’s Computerized Control System. His algorithm for relocating fire engines in severe emergencies was used to great effect during the 9/11 World Trade Center crisis. His recent award-winning research laid the foundation for the water release rules for New York City’s Delaware River dams, which provide half of the City’s drinking water. Professor Kolesar was twice an examiner for the Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award, and is an associate editor for Interfaces and the Quality Management Journal. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, of the Institute of Operations Research and Management Science and a Distinguished Fellow of the Operations Management Society. Professor Kolesar was a senior researcher at the RAND corporation and on the faculties of the Imperial College, London and of the Université de Montréal. He is also a consultant to numerous firms and government agencies. His nature phonographs has been exhibited widely.
Research
Journal articles
Juran's lectures to Japanese executives in 1954: A perspective and some contemporary lessons In The Quality Management Journal (2008)
Coauthor(s): Peter Kolesar
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Coping with time-varying demand when setting staffing requirements for a service system In Production and Operations Management (2007)
Coauthor(s): Linda Green, Peter Kolesar, Ward Whitt
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Improving emergency responsiveness with management science In Management Science (2004)
Coauthor(s): Linda Green, Peter Kolesar
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An improved heuristic for staffing telephone call centers with limited operating hours In Production and Operations Management (2003)
Coauthor(s): Linda Green, Peter Kolesar, João Soares
Improving the SIPP approach for staffing service systems that have cyclic demands In Operations Research (2001)
Coauthor(s): Linda Green, Peter Kolesar, João Soares
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A note on approximating peak congestion in Mt/G/∞ queues with sinusoidal arrivals In Management Science (1998)
Coauthor(s): Linda Green, Peter Kolesar
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Insights on service system design from a normal approximation to Erlang's delay formula In Production and Operations Management (1998)
Coauthor(s): Peter Kolesar, Linda Green
Creating Customer Value through Industrialized Intimacy In <a href="http://www.strategy-business.com/">strategy + business</a> (1998)
Coauthor(s): Peter Kolesar, Garrett van Ryzin, Wayne Cutler
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A note on the convexity of service-level measures of the (r, q) system In Management Science (1998)
Coauthor(s): Linda Green, Peter Kolesar, Hongtao Zhang
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The lagged PSA for estimating peak congestion in multiserver Markovian queues with periodic arrival rates In Management Science (1997)
Coauthor(s): Linda Green, Peter Kolesar
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Partial quality management: An essay In Production and Operations Management (1995)
Coauthor(s): Peter Kolesar
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On the accuracy of the simple peak hour approximation for Markovian queues In Management Science (1995)
Coauthor(s): Linda Green, Peter Kolesar
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The relevance of research on statistical process control to the total quality movement In Journal of Engineering and Technology Management (1993)
Coauthor(s): Peter Kolesar
Vision, Values, Milestones: Paul O'Neill Starts Total Quality at Alcoa In California Management Review (1993)
Coauthor(s): Peter Kolesar
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The pointwise stationary approximation for queues with nonstationary arrivals In Management Science (1991)
Coauthor(s): Linda Green, Peter Kolesar
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Some effects of nonstationarity on multiserver Markovian queueing systems In Operations Research (1991)
Coauthor(s): Linda Green, Peter Kolesar, Antony Svoronos
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Testing the validity of a queueing model of police patrol In Management Science (1989)
Coauthor(s): Linda Green, Peter Kolesar
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On the validity and utility of queueing models of human service systems In Annals of Operations Research (1987)
Coauthor(s): Linda Green, Peter Kolesar
A robust credit screening model using categorical data In Management Science (1985)
Coauthor(s): Peter Kolesar, Janet Showers
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The feasibility of one-officer patrol in New York City In Management Science (1984)
Coauthor(s): Linda Green, Peter Kolesar
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Using simulation to develop and validate analytic models: Some case studies In Operations Research (1978)
Coauthor(s): Edward Ignall, Peter Kolesar, Warren Walker
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Improving the deployment of New York City fire companies In Interfaces (1975)
Coauthor(s): Edward Ignall, Peter Kolesar, Arthur Swersey, Warren Walker, Edward Blum, Grace Carter, Homer Bishop
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A queueing-linear programming approach to scheduling police patrol cars In Operations Research (1975)
Coauthor(s): Peter Kolesar, Kenneth Rider, Thomas Crabill, Warren Walker
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Determining the relation between fire engine travel times and travel distances in New York City In Operations Research (1975)
Coauthor(s): Peter Kolesar, Warren Walker, John Hausner
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Comments on a blood-bank inventory model of Pegels and Jelmert In Operations Research (1973)
Coauthor(s): John Jennings, Peter Kolesar
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A remark on the computation of optimum media schedules In Operational Research Quarterly (1968)
Coauthor(s): Peter Kolesar
A branch and bound algorithm for the knapsack problem In Management Science (1967)
Coauthor(s): Peter Kolesar
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Linear programming and the reliability of multicomponent systems In Naval Research Logistics Quarterly (1967)
Coauthor(s): Peter Kolesar
Breaking the Deadlock: Improving Water Release Policies on the Delaware River through Operations Research”, with J. Serio, Interfaces, January, 2011
" A Simple Model of Optimal Clearance of Improvised Explosive Devices ", with D. Stimpson, K. Leister and F. Woodaman, Annals of Operations Research, Spring 2012
An Environmental Perspective on the Water Management Policies of the Upper Delaware River Basin, with A Ravindranath and Naresh Devineni, Water Policy Journal, Jan 2016 1-21
Chapters
Scientific quality management and management science In Handbooks in Operations Research and Management Science (1993)
Coauthor(s): Peter Kolesar
Other
Finalists for the 2010 Franz Edelman Award Announced In Edelman Gala Program Book (2010)
Coauthor(s): Peter Kolesar
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Last updated June 26, 2020