R2O | Research to Operations

Research to operations requires an astute and routine identification and evaluation of the stakeholders. The most efficient way to do this is holding conferences, in person, that pull unique participants from the breadth of researchers, practitioners, and leaders within, and beyond, the community. This means engaging colleagues beyond the geographic and disciplinary reaches of current R2O activities. There are usually many international partners and adjacent sectors that can provide a fresh perspective on how to optimize R2O activities based on their own trials. Taken to heart, these perspectives can challenge the status quo through reframing R2O discussions. After all, R2O is about collaboration . It is about the people involved more than the process that institutes and prescribes it. It is not as easy as calling a meeting and buying some coffee and muffins though. Planning a conference and establishing an agenda that focuses on R2O necessitates placing a notable emphasis on who is in...

An enterprise or organization could become throttled by its own success when research is routinely transitioning to operations, new ideas are arising from both research and operational workforce segments, and improvements within existing projects are continuing. Leaders with fixed budgets and workforces with little unallocated time will complain that they cannot do everything or they cannot continue everything. This is a particular challenge for enterprises with substantial government participation because market conditions do not necessary guide the path ahead. Should we put time, money, and effort into this , or that ? Where is the greatest benefit? What will improve our services the most? When should we wind down a project? Beginning R2O projects For new R2O projects, it is important to decide whether an idea or concept has the potential to evolve an enterprise or organization strategically or resolve an existing challenge tactically. R2O projects that are strategic in nature will...

The ideas that initiate a research to operations transition cycle need not always originate as part of the research process. Some suitable concepts for research development can and, with the right governance structure in place, do come from operations. This constitutes operations-driven R2O. Operations can serve as a strong driver for R2O in cases where practitioners proffer an idea because the potential application and need is understood. Therefore, early adoption of byproducts or techniques resulting from operations-inspired research is easier. Arguably, well-founded ideas—those formulated with a preliminary “how” to accompany the “why”—for R2O projects that originate in operations have the potential to be more successful and more impactful than those that come from the normal progression of research projects because they escape an improvement sequence. However, the challenge is that operations may not have a sufficient knowledgebase to fully appreciate how certain observations and ...

In the weather enterprise, there are numerous service organizations. The services that these organizations provide vary, but generally involve analyzing, interpreting, and, in many cases, forecasting meteorological and environmental parameters. Service organizations not only exist in the private sector, but in the public sector as well. The National Weather Service and National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service are large service organizations in the federal government. Service is in their name. Service organizations in scientific fields, like meteorology, can struggle to find an internal identity because, when it comes to core service improvement, there is a tension between focusing on development to better services (e.g., physical science research-based enhancements) and improvements to the delivery of those services (i.e., the nature of the communication). While rarely is a service organization in a science-related enterprise completely devoid of science, bud...

DRIP (data rich, information poor) has been used for decades to describe the ineffective or absent use of data that an organization or enterprise collects daily to inform important decisions involving certain conditions that could impact the mission of that entity. Breaking the curse of DRIP involves collecting, storing, organizing, and accessing data so that it can be converted into information. That information must subsequently be archived, analyzed, and ultimately used to create a DAIR (data and information rich) environment. Gleaning information from data is challenging, especially if the data is collected for a purpose other than converting it to information, or the information sought requires combining multiple data sources. Correcting for DRIP postures requires both technical and scientific acumen. In science, data is collected in search of information. In many cases, research is conducted to provide information from data. The R2O cycle seeks to transition the new research info...