OM Forum–Some Lessons on Operations Management Model Implementation Drawn from the RAND Fire Project

This article examines the contributions and historical context of the fire project that was undertaken in the early 1970s by the New York City–RAND Institute on behalf of the New York City Fire Department. We identify a number of technical and nontechnical factors that contributed to the high impact of this operations modeling effort. We hypothesize that these factors, though derived from the experiences in a particular public sector engagement, are applicable to other large‐scale operations modeling efforts. This invited contribution is based on the author's inaugural Manufacturing and Service Operations Management (MSOM) Distinguished Fellows address that was given at the June 2011 MSOM conference at the University of Michigan.