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Home > About Erdman Center> Organization > Academic Advisory Board
Academic Advisory Board
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Rajan Suri, Director, Manufacturing Systems Engineering (MSE) Program |
Raj Veeramani, Professor of Industrial and Systems 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.
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Mark P. Finster, Associate Professor |
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.
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Anne S. Miner, Professor |
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.
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James G. Morris |
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.
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Rajan Suri, Director, Manufacturing Systems Engineering (MSE) Program |
Rajan Suri is
Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received his Bachelors
degree from Cambridge University (England) in 1974, and his M.S.
and Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1978.
Dr. Suri 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.
He is internationally regarded as an expert on the analysis of
manufacturing systems, specializing in Lead Time Reduction, and
is author of the book Quick Response Manufacturing: A
Companywide Approach to Reducing Lead Times (540 pages,
Productivity Press 1998). Dr. Suri is also author of over 100
technical publications, and has chaired several international
conferences on manufacturing systems. He has been instrumental
in extending the theories of queuing networks and perturbation
analysis for manufacturing applications, and served as
Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Manufacturing Systems for five
years. He is currently Associate Editor of the International
Journal of Flexible Manufacturing Systems, and Area Editor of
the Journal of Discrete Event Dynamic Systems.
Professor Suri 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 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. Suri combines his academic credentials with considerable
practical experience. He has consulted for leading firms
including 3M, Alcoa, AT&T, Danfoss, Ford, Hewlett Packard,
Hitachi, IBM, Ingersoll, John Deere, Pratt & Whitney, Rockwell
Automation, Siemens and TREK Bicycle. Consulting assignments in
Europe and the Far East, along with projects for the World Bank,
have given him a substantial international perspective on
manufacturing competitiveness.
In 1981 Dr. Suri received the Eckman Award from the American
Automatic Control Council for outstanding contributions in his
field. He was one of the team of people from his University who
received the 1988 LEAD Award (for Leadership and Excellence in
Application and Development) from the Society of Manufacturing
Engineers. In 1988 he also received a Research Award from Ford
Motor Company “in recognition of outstanding contributions made
to the field of Perturbation Analysis of Discrete Event
Systems.” He is coauthor of a paper that won the 1990
Outstanding Simulation Publication Award from The Institute of
Management Sciences. In 1994 he was co-recipient of the IEEE
Control Systems Technology Award “for the creation, development,
implementation and management of the manufacturing automation
planning software, ManuPlan and its derivative MPX, during the
period 1986-1993.” In 1999, Suri was made a Fellow of the
Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME), and in 2006 he
received SME’s Albert M. Sargent Progress Award for the creation
and implementation of the Quick Response Manufacturing
philosophy.
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Raj Veeramani, Professor |
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.