About the Authors

Mary Ann Anderson is an operations consultant and an adjunct professor in operations management at the University of Texas McCombs School of Business. She has served as the faculty advisor for the Supply Chain Management and Engineering route to business majors and teaches numerous courses, ranging from manufacturing and service operations management to project management to supply chain strategy and logistics, as well as being an instructor in the Master of Science in Technology Commercialization program. She received a master’s in engineering, concentrating in operations engineering, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She received her bachelor’s in electrical engineering from Kettering University (formerly the General Motors Institute), with a minor in business administration.

Ms. Anderson is also an active consultant. She specializes in operations management, business process analysis and improvement, supply chain management, and project management. She has developed integrated strategy-marketing-operations computer simulations using the system dynamics computer simulation methodology for multiple firms, and she has published articles in such journals as The Systems Thinker.

Ms. Anderson has served as a manufacturing strategist for a start-up firm, and her consulting clients include such firms as Ford Motor Company, Sony Entertainment, HP, and Shell, as well as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the state of Texas. Prior to her teaching and consulting work, she held a variety of positions as an engineer for the General Motors Corporation.

Dr. Edward G. Anderson, Jr., is an associate professor of operations management at the University of Texas McCombs School of Business and an IC2 Institute Research Fellow. He is the faculty advisor for the BBA in the Science and Technology Management program and codirector for research for the McCombs Health Care Delivery Innovation Initiative. He received his doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his bachelor’s degree, with majors in history and electrical engineering, from Stanford University.

Dr. Anderson’s research interests include outsourced product development (distributed innovation) and project management, knowledge management, supply chain management, and computer simulation. He also has published research in national security, particularly counterinsurgency policy. He has published articles in Management Science, Organization Science, Production and Operations Management, MIT Sloan Management Review, and System Dynamics Review. He is also the coauthor of the bookThe Innovation Butterfly: Managing Emergent Opportunities and Risks During Distributed Innovation, which describes leadership metrics, planning, and organization in the complex adaptive system that is innovation management.

Dr. Anderson won the prestigious Wickham Skinner Early-Career Research Award from the Production and Operations Management Society. He has received research grants from the National Science Foundation (twice), SAP, and Hewlett-Packard. He is the department editor of Production and Operations Management for Industry Studies and Public Policy and president-elect of the System Dynamics Society for 2013. Professor Anderson has consulted with Ford, Shell, Dell, and multiple other corporations and holds six U.S. and E.U. patents from his prior career as a product design engineer at the Ford Motor Company.

Dr. Geoffrey Parker is professor of management science at Tulane University in the A. B. Freeman School of Business and serves as director of the Tulane Energy Institute. He is also a faculty fellow at the MIT Sloan School’s Center for Digital Business. Parker received a bachelor’s in electrical engineering and computer science from Princeton University, a master’s in electrical engineering (technology and policy program) from MIT, and a PhD in management science from MIT. He has spent much of his career studying coordination in supply chains, especially when firms outsource complex work. Dr. Parker has also contributed to the field of network economics and strategy as codeveloper of the theory of “two-sided” markets. Dr. Parker’s work appears in journals such as Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, Energy Economics, Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, Management Science, Production and Operations Management, Strategic Management Journal, and System Dynamics Review.

Dr. Parker has worked on projects with multiple firms, including AT&T, Cellular South, Chrysler, ExxonMobil, Hewlett Packard, IBM, International Postal Corporation, Microsoft, PJM, SAP, Thomson Reuters, and the United States Postal Service. Current research includes studies of distributed innovation, business platform strategy, and the design and performance of energy markets. His research is funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, and multiple corporations. He serves or has served as a National Science Foundation panelist and associate editor at multiple journals and is currently president-elect of the Industry Studies Association. Dr. Parker grew up in Oxford, Ohio, where he worked as an electronics technician and machinist in the Instrumentation Laboratory at Miami University. Before graduate school, he held multiple positions in engineering and finance at General Electric in North Carolina and Wisconsin.

Dedication

To the faculty at the MIT Sloan School of Management, who shared with us their profound knowledge of operations management. Specifically, we’d like to thank Dmitris Bertsimas, Gabriel Bitran, Steve Eppinger, Charlie Fine, Steve Graves, John Sterman, Karl Ulrich, Larry Wein, and Dan Whitney.

Authors’ Acknowledgments

We’d like to acknowledge all the people who’ve influenced our thinking in operations management. In addition to the MIT faculty mentioned above, this includes the professionals we’ve worked for throughout our careers, especially Bill Colwell, who introduced one of the authors to the wonderful world of operations early in his career. We’d also like to thank the many industrial leaders and clients that we’ve had the pleasure to work with. They provided many of the examples that are used in this book.

In addition, we’d like to thank the many students that we’ve taught throughout our years at the University of Texas and Tulane University. They’ve taught us the best ways to communicate the information contained in this book. A special thank-you goes to the spring 2013 Operations Management and Master’s in Science and Technology Commercialization students at the University of Texas, who provided feedback on the chapter contents. Edward Anderson would also like to thank John Butler and the IC2 Institute for all their support during his writing efforts.

Finally, we would like to acknowledge the staff at Wiley, especially Erin Calligan Mooney, Jenny Brown, Chrissy Guthrie, and Todd Lothery for all the hard work and dedication they put into this book.

Publisher’s Acknowledgments

Acquisitions Editor: Erin Calligan Mooney

Senior Project Editor: Christina Guthrie

Project Editor: Jenny Larner Brown

Copy Editor: Todd Lothery

Technical Editors: Byron Finch, PhD; Karl E. Lyon; Gene Thornhill, MBA

Project Coordinator: Katherine Crocker

Cover Image: ©iStockphoto.com/Palto