msom-tables-figures - SKILL.md Agent Skill

name: msom-tables-figures description: Use when building the exhibits for a Manufacturing & Service Operations Management (M&SOM) manuscript — numerical-study tables, policy and sensitivity plots for analytical work, regression and identification tables for empirical work — in INFORMS house style and inside the official template that enforces the 32-page cap.

Tables & Figures (msom-tables-figures)

When to trigger

Numerical-study or regression tables are cluttered or not self-explanatory
Policy structure / comparative statics need a figure a reviewer can read at a glance
You are fitting exhibits into the official M&SOM template and the page budget is tight
Notation in exhibits does not match the text

Page budget reality: exhibits count against the cap

M&SOM enforces a hard 32-page maximum for a new submission that includes everything — references, tables, graphs/figures, and appendices — measured when typeset on the official LaTeX/Word style files (one column, 11-pt font, 1-inch margins). Unlike narrative word-limit journals, this cap is mechanically enforced on the template, so every table and figure trades directly against text. Build in the template from the start; move bulky proofs, extra numerical experiments, and supporting tables to the online supplement (≤ 16 pages).

Analytical exhibits

Policy / structure figures: plot the optimal policy form (thresholds, base-stock levels, switching curves) so the structural result is visible, not just stated.
Sensitivity tables/plots: show how the optimal decision and its value move with primitives (demand variability, lead time, cost ratios); report the gap to benchmarks/heuristics.
Numerical-study tables: state parameter ranges, instance counts, and what each column means; make magnitudes (% improvement, cost of an assumption) the headline.

Empirical exhibits

Summary statistics at the operational unit of analysis.
Main results tables with clustered SEs noted, the operational magnitude interpretable, and specifications laid out left-to-right from baseline to robustness.
Identification figures: event-study/parallel-trends plots, first-stage diagnostics, or RDD density plots.

House style

Use INFORMS author-year citations in captions and notes; keep every exhibit self-contained (a reader should not need the text to parse it); match notation, units, and labels exactly to the manuscript. Number tables and figures as the portal/template requires.

Execution bridge (StatsPAI / Stata MCP)

Generate exhibits from the fitted result, not by retyping numbers (the usual source of body-vs-appendix drift). Full map: execution-with-mcp. M&SOM mixes analytical and empirical OM; the chain below serves the empirical-OM lane, while analytical / queueing / optimization work is outside it.

Tables: etable (multi-model columns) or did_summary_to_latex straight from the result_id.
Figures: plot_from_result / enhanced_event_study_plot / event_study_table — axis units and the SE/clustering note baked in.
Every note names the estimator + clustering and states the effect size in interpretable units.

See a full fitted-result → exhibit chain in the JF execution walkthrough.

Checklist

Exhibits drafted inside the official LaTeX/Word template; page budget tracked
Bulky proofs/extra experiments moved to the ≤16-page online supplement
Analytical: policy-structure and sensitivity exhibits make the insight visible
Empirical: results tables show clustered SEs and operational magnitudes
Each exhibit self-contained; notation/units match the text
INFORMS author-year style in notes/captions

Anti-patterns

A wall of numerical results with no benchmark column or headline magnitude.
Stating a threshold/base-stock result in prose but never plotting it.
Letting exhibits push the manuscript over 32 typeset pages.
Significance stars with no operational interpretation.

What each exhibit must earn (referee read)

At M&SOM an exhibit that does not advance the operations insight wastes page budget against the 32-page typeset cap. A policy-structure figure earns its page only when the threshold/base-stock/switching curve is visible, not merely stated in prose; a sensitivity exhibit must show which primitive moves the optimal decision and by how much; a numerical-study table needs a benchmark column that makes the % gap the headline; an empirical results table needs an interpretable operational magnitude with clustered SEs, not just stars; and an identification figure should make the design credible rather than duplicate a number already in a table. The default repair for over-budget exhibits is the online supplement — full proofs, extra experiments, and notation tables live there. (Confirm the current page and supplement limits against the journal's author guidelines.)

Worked micro-example (illustrative)

Vignette: a base-stock model for a spare-parts network deciding stocking levels across echelons. Two exhibits carry the paper. Figure 1 plots the optimal base-stock level against lead-time variability, making visible that the level rises convexly — the structural insight a reader grasps at a glance. Table 2 pairs the proposed policy against a fixed safety-stock benchmark, headlining a 17% average holding-cost reduction at equal fill rate (illustrative). Figure plus benchmark-anchored table do more for the contribution than pages of extra parameter sweeps, which belong in the supplement.

Referee-pushback patterns and the venue fix

"You state a threshold/base-stock result but never plot it." → Add the policy-structure figure; M&SOM reviewers expect to see the structure, not only read it.
"The numerical table has no benchmark, so I can't judge the gain." → Add the benchmark/heuristic column and make the % improvement the headline number.
"Exhibits push the paper over the page cap." → Move supporting tables and proofs to the supplement; do not shrink fonts or margins against the fixed template.

Output format

【Template / page budget】on official style file; pages used ...
【Analytical exhibits】policy structure / sensitivity ...
【Empirical exhibits】results / identification ...
【Self-containment & style】INFORMS author-year; notation matched ...
【Supplement】moved to ≤16-page online supplement ...
【Next step】msom-writing-style