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Academic Advisory Board

Urban Wemmerlöv, Executive Director, Erdman Center

Mark P. Finster, Associate Professor of Business

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Anne S. Miner, Professor of Business

James G. Morris, Chair,
Operations & Informations

Ananth Krishnamurthy, Director, Manufacturing Systems Engineering (MSE) Program

Raj Veeramani, Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering

 

Urban Wemmerlöv, Executive Director, Erdman Center
Chair of the Academic Advisory Board
School of Business
Operations and Information Management Department

Kress Family Wisconsin Distinguished Professor of Productivity and Quality
Executive Committee Member, Manufacturing Systems Engineering Program (College of Engineering)
Founding Executive Committee Member, Center for Quick Response Manufacturing (College of Engineering)

Urban Wemmerlöv is the Kress Family Wisconsin Distinguished Professor at the School of Business, University of Wisconsin Madison, where he directs the Erdman Center and its affiliated MBA program in Operations and Technology Management (OTM). His teaching and research interests are in the areas of cellular manufacturing, focused factories, lean principles, change management, and planning and control systems. Many of his over 80 publications focus on the design, implementation, and operation of cells, including his latest book Reorganizing the Factory: Competing through Cellular Manufacturing (with Nancy Hyer; Productivity Press, 2002) which received the 2003 Shingo Prize for Excellence in Manufacturing Research. Recent and ongoing research has been in the areas of health care organization and product design changes.

Professor Wemmerlöv was instrumental in the planning and establishment of the Erdman Center for Operations and Technology Management at the UW School of Business in the fall of 1993. In 1994 he was formally appointed as its first director. Professor Wemmerlöv has also been actively involved with the Center for Quick Response Manufacturing and the faculty/student field research projects carried out through this center.

Professor Wemmerlöv holds a B.S. in Business, an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering, a doctorate in Production Management (all from Lund University, Sweden), and an M.S. in IEOR (from the University of California-Berkeley). He is a certified fellow (CFPIM) of the American Production and Inventory Control Society (APICS) and a fellow of the Decision Sciences Institute (DSI). He has been Associate Editor for the Journal of Operations Management, and Area Editor for Production and Operations Management. Currently, he serves as Associate Editor for the Decision Sciences journal.

Mark Finster
Mark P. Finster, Associate Professor
School of Business
Operations and Information Management Department

Professor Mark Finster’s interests include customer-focused improvement of complex systems, creativity and innovation, strategic breakthrough management and deployment, quality and productivity improvement, new product and service development, system-wide performance management, profit-driven environmental improvement, sustainability, quality function deployment, employee involvement and empowerment, cross-functional management, learning organizations, knowledge management, benchmarking, quality assurance, quality planning, structure and organization for performance management, health care and service management.

Professor Finster received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and has taught at Cornell and Johns Hopkins Universities. He is a five-time National Science Foundation (NSF) Scholar and chaired the NSF session that established a national research agenda in organizational excellence and quality. He is a contributing member in the Center for Quality and Productivity Improvement, the Consortium for Global Electronic Commerce, the Center for Quick-Response Manufacturing, the Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, the Manufacturing Systems Engineering program, and the Leadership Institute. Finster also serves as an associate editor of the American Society for Quality's journal on Quality Management, and on the Board of Directors at Home Savings Bank.

Anne Miner
Anne S. Miner, Professor
School of Business
Management and Human Resources Department

Professor Miner specializes in research on entrepreneurship, the strategic management of technology, organizational and industry-level learning, international university start-ups, and new product development. Professor Miner teaches courses on the management of innovation and technology and entrepreneurship, and has offered graduate seminars in strategy and organizational learning. Additionally, she teaches Technology Strategy in the UW School of Business Executive MBA program and in the UW Masters in Biotechnology Program.

Professor Miner's managerial background includes; executive vice-president for a start-up firm that provided information services to technical firms in California; human resource consulting in firms highly dependent on product development and manufacturing; and Assistant to the President at Stanford University with routine involvement in human resources and research administration issues.

Professor Miner received grants to conduct research on technology entrepreneurship, product development, and university start-ups. Her publications tackle issues including how new organizations deal with surprises, organizational learning from failure, organizational improvisation, management's role in facilitating organizational adaptation, industry-level learning and technological evolution, and product development. Current working papers include a study of how start-ups develop their own routines, and whether new banks learn from their own and other’s failure experiences. Miner was named Scholar of the Year by the Technology and Innovation Management of the Academy of Management in 2004, and has presented papers at schools such as Stanford University, Carnegie Mellon, MIT, INSEAD, Wharton, UCLA, and Minnesota.

Professor Miner has served as Associate Editor of Management Science and of Organization Science, and served on the editorial boards of Administrative Science Quarterly, the American Sociological Review, the Academy of Management Journal, the Academy of Management Review, and Strategic Organization. She has made study trips to Singapore, China, Thailand, France and Finland.

Dr. Miner received her Bachelor's degree from Harvard University, and her M.S. and Ph.D. from Stanford University. She currently serves as: Executive Director of the cross-campus Initiative for Studies in Technology Entrepreneurship, and the G. Steven Burrill Technology Business Plan competition; Director of the Applied Ventures Program within the Weinert Center for Entrepreneurship; Executive Director of the MBA program in Strategic Management for the Life and Engineering Sciences.

Jim Morris
James G. Morris
Department Chairman
Operations and Information Management
Dean's Professor of Operations and Information Management

James G. Morris holds the position of Dean's Professor of Operations and Information Management in the School of Business. He is Chair of the Department of Operations and Information Management, and also directs the School’s Information Systems program. He teaches operations research courses and a course on facilities location models.

Professor Morris’ research focuses on facilities location with special focus on distribution system network design, decision problems under risk, and workforce scheduling. His work has appeared in Annals of Operations Research, Management Science, Mathematical Programming, Naval Research Logistics, Operations Research, and Transportation Science, among other academic journals, and he co-authored the book Facilities Location: Models and Methods. Professor Morris is a member of the advisory boards of the Grainger Center for Supply Chain Management and the UW E-Business Institute.

Ananth Krishnamurthy, Director, Manufacturing Systems Engineering (MSE) Program
Director, Center for Quick Response Manufacturing
College of Engineering
Industrial and Systems Engineering Department

Ananth Krishnamurthy is an Associate Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He earned his Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering and M.S. in Manufacturing Systems Engineering, both from University of Wisconsin-Madison, and an undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay, India. Prior to joining the UW-Madison faculty in January 2008, Krishnamurthy was an Assistant Professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY.

Dr. Krishnamurthy serves as Director of the Center for Quick Response Manufacturing (QRM), a consortium of 50 companies working with the University on understanding and implementing QRM strategies. His research focuses on topics including production inventory systems, assembly operations, product variety and customization, material handling and warehouse systems, lead time reduction and quick response manufacturing. He is the author of many technical publications, and is on the editorial board of the Journal of Flexible Services and Manufacturing and Journal of Applied Mathematical Modeling.

Dr Krishnamurthy is also Director of the Manufacturing Systems Engineering Program. This is an interdisciplinary, practice-oriented M.S. degree program housed within the College of Engineering, with strong ties to the Wisconsin School of Business. The program includes courses in manufacturing processes and control, product design and process planning, industrial engineering and systems, and management of technology. Graduates of the program are highly qualified to assist manufacturing firms in implementing practices that will make them more competitive.

Dr. Krishnamurthy has also worked with several industries, including Alcoa, Rockwell Automation, Ingersoll, Johnson Controls, John Deere and Trek Bicycle on research and implementation projects focused on improving their manufacturing operations. He has held many executive training events in the US and abroad and was awarded the Engineering Excellence in Education Award for 2007 at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He is a member of INFORMS, IIE, SME, and APICS.

Raj Veermani
Raj Veeramani, Professor
Director, UW E-Business Institute
College of Engineering
Industrial and Systems Engineering Department

Dr. Raj Veeramani is the Robert Ratner Chair Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He also has a joint appointment as Professor of Operations and Information Management in the School of Business. Dr. Veeramani is the Director of the campus-wide UW-Business Institute and UW E-Business Consortium. This UW initiative is the leading e-business related university-industry partnership in Wisconsin that is helping industry gain a competitive advantage through e-business and e-commerce technologies and practices.

Dr. Veeramani's areas of research interest and expertise include e-business strategy, radio frequency identification (RFID) technology and applications, internet-aided supply chain management, and quick response quoting and manufacturing. His work has embodied active collaboration with leading companies in a variety of industries, helping them develop e-business, supply chain and RFID strategies and implementation roadmaps.

Dr. Veeramani has received numerous awards in recognition of his work. He is a recipient of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers' Ralph E. Cross Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award and the Society of Automotive Engineers' Ralph R. Teetor Educational Award. Former Governor Tommy Thompson, in his January 2000 State-of-the-State address, recognized Dr. Veeramani's leadership of the UW E-Business Consortium and the role that it is playing to foster e-business development in Wisconsin. In 2002, former Governor Scott McCallum recognized this effort as a model for building Idea Networks in his list of priority recommendations in the Build Wisconsin strategic plan. In 2003, Governor Jim Doyle, recognized the UW E-Business Institute for its continued efforts to build and maintain collaborative partnerships with industry in ways that are helping to enhance Wisconsin's economy.

Dr. Veeramani received his PhD and MS degrees in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University and his BS degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. He joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1992.