Acknowledgments

This book was made possible through our work with the network design application LogicNet Plus XE, which was created by LogicTools and acquired by ILOG before it became part of IBM in 2009. The authors of this book have been associated with this product in some way since 1997.

Throughout this time, we have had the opportunity to work with an extraordinary team of colleagues and customers who have given us invaluable insight into the practice and theory of supply chain network design. This book would not have been possible without this experience.

While we cannot thank everyone we worked with, we would like to take the time to acknowledge some of our colleagues.

First and foremost, thanks to Derek Nelson for all his modeling and design expertise throughout the years. And a special thanks to David and Edith Simchi-Levi for founding and nurturing LogicTools, which ultimately made all of this possible. We learned a lot from both David and Edith.

Our extremely talented modeling team has not only helped to enable our customers, but also given us great insight into network modeling across all industries around the globe. The leaders of this team include Ganesh Ramakrishna, Remzi Ural, Alex Scott, Amit Talati, Guru Pundoor, Sumeet Mahajan, Nikhil Thaker, Ritesh Joshi, Javid Alimohideen, Shalabh Prasad, Ronan O’Donovan, and Dan Vanden Brink. Others on this team who have contributed in past years include Sharan Singanamala, Derrek Smith, Ali Sankur, Orkan Akcan, Louis Bourassa, Shaishav Dharia, Bhanu Gummala, Kristin Gallagher, Aziz Ihsanoglu, Giray Ocalgiray, Marcus Olsen, Ram Palaniappan, Chuin Kuo, Sanjay Sri Balusu, and Steven Lyons.

Besides modeling, developing a commercial-grade software package has also helped to round out our overall understanding of the formulation of problems we approach in this space. Our brilliant development team includes Justin Richmond, Ryan Kersch, Ryan Hennings, Nancy Hamilton, Jun Sakurai, Matt Cummins, Makoto Scott-Hinkle, Aaron Little, Josh Bauer, Trent Donelson, Tony Ikenouye, Chris Jellings, Justin Holman, and Adam Light. And, thanks to the ILOG CPLEX team, who provided us with their expertise in optimization.

Others who have offered us a good deal of support and a strong voice both out to the market and providing meaningful feedback in return over the years include Chip Wilkins, Aimee Emery-Ortiz, Chris Trivisonno, Bill Huthmacher, and Kitte Knight.

We would like to take the time to extend a special thanks to three members of our team who have had a big influence on all of us and will live on in our memories: Alex Brown, Allen Crowley, and Leslie Smith.

Finally, we would like to thank John Caltagirone from Loyola University and Bill Nickle from Nickle Consulting for reviewing the prepublished book. And last but not least Jeanne Glasser Levine, our editor at Pearson, whose expert guidance and patience with us throughout this process is greatly appreciated.

We appreciate and have enjoyed all the meaningful interactions we have had with so many skilled professionals in this field over the past decade.