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I am an assistant professor in the University of Texas's McComb's School of Business in the Management Department. My primary expertise is the use of system dynamics in the field of operations management. I received my doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management in the Operations Management and System Dynamics Groups. I have also worked with the MIT Organizational Learning Center. |
My research develops three interrelated research tracks on designing supply chains to effectively manage the dynamics of difficult-to-acquire knowledge and resources in the supply chain. The three tracks include the dynamics of staffing with learning effects under non-stationary demand, the dynamics of service supply chains, and the dynamics of outsourcing products and services.
In
particular, my co-authors and I are extending the knowledge gained from the work
of resource economics and organizational science into operations management
models suitable for the design of individual supply chains.
Resource economists and organizational scientists argue that many firm
assets, such as experienced employees and organizational knowledge, cannot be
obtained immediately and without cost. On
the other hand, behavioral decision theorists have shown that human intuition in
these environments is quite poor. Hence,
there is a need for quantitative models to develop managerial insight into the
dynamic behavior of these resources as their attributes, such as capacity and
productivity, change over time. Modeling
traditions suitable for these problems are relatively rare in the canon of
conventional operations management techniques.
This is particularly true when individual resources may mutually
interact—as they often do in the real world.
To compensate for this, I have employed the modeling methodology of
system dynamics. However, I have
extended my analyses of the resulting dynamic models beyond computer simulation
to encompass advanced controls engineering and signal analysis techniques, thus
capturing the benefits of both simulation and formal analysis.
My research topics fall broadly into three themes:
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The
first theme explores how firms should manage highly skilled employees such as
engineers, information management professionals, and skilled trades.
This is a complex question because of the need to balance the costs and
time needed to train employees against the need to meet customer demand as
quickly as possible. If a firm
values its employees’ knowledge and expertise, then the following questions
arise: When should a firm downsize?
When should it hire? Is it
worthwhile to use temporary employees or invest in knowledge databases?
Can these decisions be improved by treating employee experience as an
option on satisfying future demand?
The second theme builds on the first. How does a service supply chain, which generally relies on skilled employees, coordinate its hiring and backlog management policies to maximize both productivity and customer service? As is well known, services are the primary sector of the economy and are growing increasingly as many companies outsource such services as product design and information management. My discussions with numerous service firms in the banking and insurance industries indicate that they rarely coordinate their supply chain policies, and when they do, the coordinating policy is at most a very simple heuristic based on human intuition. From the system dynamics literature, it is well known that human intuition is a poor guide to managing multiple firms with complex mutually-interacting dynamics. This presents a tremendous challenge in an era of online service market exchanges that are daily creating new supply chains to deliver bundles of complementary services. Yet it is also a tremendous opportunity to improve customer satisfaction, because the information processing backbone behind these exchanges can employ sophisticated coordination algorithms based on better data that may far outperform current practice.
I term the third theme the “humpty dumpty” problem. Improved information technology has contributed to the new virtually-integrated firm, composed of an interlinked network of small specialized firms. How does this chain integrate all of its disaggregated knowledge bases to produce a coherent product or service that satisfies customer expectations? And as a key leverage point to that question, how does one put boundaries on the pieces to be outsourced in the first place? Do we need a new class of professional integrators to act as the glue to put humpty dumpty back together again? What sort of policies should they use to avoid potential outsourcing traps? What sort of market factors such as the pace of technological change should impact these decisions? And finally, if outsourcing is used, will there be more employees in the new virtual firm than in its vertically integrated progenitor?
The questions underlying all my research relate to the efficient management of hard-to-acquire resources, in particular skilled employees and their tacit knowledge. How do you acquire them, how do you maintain them, how do you coordinate them across a supply chain, and how do you augment them with information systems?
My primary colleagues in this research are Douglas Morrice of the University of Texas McCombs School of Business and Geoffrey Parker of Tulane University's Freeman School of Business. I am also pursuing projects with David Ford of Texas A&M University and Rogelio Oliva of the Harvard School of Business.
My research at MIT was supported by the Sloan Foundation, the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship Program, and a number of manufacturing companies through their sponsorship of The International Motor Vehicle Program, The Leaders for Manufacturing Program, and The Industrial Performance Center. My thesis committee advisors were Charles Fine, Steve Graves, and John Sterman.
Before starting the doctoral program, I worked as a product designer and manufacturing planner for Ford Motor Company's Electronics Division from which I hold several patents. Prior to that, I completed my Bachelor's Degree majoring in History and Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. I also completed a year of studies in the MBA program at the University of Michigan.
This page was last updated on May 31, 2004
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Email: edward.anderson@mccombs.utexas.edu