Meet the Ford Executive

I am delighted that we will be hosting Mr. Kevin Koswick of Ford in our next "Meet the Executive" event at the Isenberg School of Management. Mr. Koswick will be speaking on Friday, April 15, 2011 at 11AM in ISOM Room 128.

This series is organized by the award-winning UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter.

Mr. Koswick is the Executive Director of North American Fleet, Lease and Remarketing Operations. In this role, Koswick oversees the largest commercial and government operation in the industry, as well the remarketing of all Ford Vehicles in North America. In addition, he has brand responsibilities for all Ford Commercial Vans, Chassis Cabs, Police Vehicles, Taxis, Limousines, Livery and Recreational Vehicles.

Beginning his career with Ford Division in 1985 as a Sales Representative for the Philadelphia Region, Koswick has held several managerial roles in Ford Division, Marketing Sales and Service including Regional Market Representation Manager for the Northeast, National Contest & Incentive Coordinator, General Zone Manager for the Cincinnati Region, and Regional Marketing Manager for the Southwest Region --where he developed and implemented plans contributing to Ford’s truck leadership.

In 1996, he became Regional Operations Manager for the New York Region, and in 1998 became Regional Sales Manager for Washington D.C. Region. Kevin was appointed Ford Division Manager of Commercial Trucks in 2001, a position he held prior to his appointment to the Executive level in the Ford Motor Company.

Mr. Koswick has held several executive positions with Ford dating back to December 2002, including General Sales Manager of Ford Division, General Sales Manager of Ford and Lincoln-Mercury, and Chairman of the Ford Motor Company Dealer Policy Board.

He was born in Washington DC, and raised in the New England. Koswick graduated in 1983 with a bachelor's degree in marketing and business administration from Western New England College in Springfield, Mass. He completed his MBA in 1985 at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Leadership in Transportation Honored by the Institute of Transportation Engineers

I love transportation and yesterday evening I took part in a very special banquet at UMass Amherst celebrating transportation!

The banquet was the culmination of a full day of transportation-related events organized by the nationally-recognized UMass Amherst Institute for Transportation Engineers (ITE) Student Chapter and included not only research presentations but even a Jeopardy-like competition among student teams from New England universities known as the Traffic Bowl (UConn won).

The banquet took place on the tenth floor of our Campus Center (see photos above). I had the distinct honor and privilege of being seated next to Peter H. Appel, the Administrator of the U.S. Department of Transportation Research and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA) in Washington, DC.

His keynote speech was fantastic and at the dinner we were amazed at so many points of commonality between us from having spent time at MIT's Transportation Center to having a broad perspective on transportation and its importance to even having met one of the winners of Survivor, Yul Kwon, who had worked at the FCC, and who was my interviewer last week in NYC for a PBS production!

In his speech, he emphasized the strategic goals for transportation, beginning with safety, and including economic growth, infrastructure maintenance, and environmental sustainability. He talked about breaking down stovepipes and silos among federal transportation organizations from the FAA to the Federal Highway Administration. Mr. Appel emphasized the importance of all modes of transportation and the need to optimize across modes. He spoke of harnessing waterways for transportation, which we had not full done so.

He emphasized the role of optimization and the importance of operations research and maximizing investments in infrastructure and network design subject to limited constraints. He noted how different disciplines must work together to move transportation forward and how transportation will be an area of growing importance for the next coming decades.

His speech was very entertaining and he highlighted how there are "train people" (he had begun his career with Amtrak) as well as "aviation" folks, who, typically, work for the FAA (he had done that, too). I am married to a train person and his collection of model trains graces his office, our basement, etc.! When I asked Mr. Appel what his favorite mode of transportation is, he answered "transportation!"

Banquets at this time of the academic year begin the "award season," during which special recognitions are made. Last evening, students (past and present) were honored for their achievements and yours truly received the Jane F. Garvey Transportation Leadership Award. The award plaque was given to me by Mr. Appel (a double honor, I must say). I have written about Jane F. Garvey on this blog on several occasions and I will display the award in my Isenberg School of Management office so that my students can get inspiration from it. They are the ones who have made my life-long devotion to and fascination with transportation so intellectually enriching and so much fun!

Thanks to the UMass Amherst ITE Chapter for such a great day and evening. I wish you much continuing success with all of your activities! Special thanks to the chapter's amazing Faculty Advisor, Professor Mike Knodler, who was the Master of Ceremonies last night, and to Professor John Collura, the senior statesman of transportation in our Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, who had actually invited Mr. Appel to speak at the banquet at the Transportation Research Board meeting in DC this past January, which many of us attended. It was great to see other transportation faculty at this even, including Professors Song Gao and Daiheng Ni. Even Professor Nathan Gartner of UMass Lowell was there and I teach about some of his contributions in my classes!

Ecological Predator-Prey Networks as Nature's Supply Chains

With the heart-breaking disasters in Japan, and the tremendous human and economic impacts, and, now, with the radiation spreading and various foods from the area surrounding the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant banned for consumption, plus even the water in Tokyo affected, I thought it time to step back and to reflect on nature.

Interestingly, we are increasingly seeing calls for "robustness" and "resiliency" in the context of supply chains since so many from automobile to airline to high tech component ones, including chips, have been adversely affected and seriously disrupted, including the biggest auto manufacturing company in the world, Toyota, because of the triple earthquake-tsunami-nuclear plant disaster that hit Japan, beginning on March 11, 2011, a date that I have sealed in my memory. In addition, journalists are making analogies of supply chains to biological organisms and even the human body and noting how resilient such systems are.

So what are the relationships between biological networks in nature and supply chains? If we can rigorously establish the connections, we should be able to learn how to design more resilient and robust systems, including supply chain networks.

In a recent study, entitled, Dynamics and Equilibria of Ecological Predator-Prey Networks as Nature’s Supply Chains, that I co-authored with the "other" Professor Nagurney, we were able to establish the equivalence between predator-prey ecological networks (think of food chains, for example, as in fisheries, to start) and multitiered supply chains consisting of "agents" who are manufacturers, retailers, or consumers, respectively. What I found fascinating is that in "product" or, shall I say, "corporate" supply chains, one explicitly considers various decision-makers' objective functions, which tend to include the maximization of profits, at least for the manufacturers and the retailers. Moreover, the various decision-makers "compete," whereas in predator-prey ecological networks, competition is clear, but, until now, no-one really quantified prices or value in that context.

In our paper, we established, using a dynamic model of predator prey interactions, that the stationary points or equilibria coincide precisely with those of the equilibria in supply chain networks! The general supply chain model that we used to show this equivalence, which was previously unexplored, was the supply chain network equilibrium model that I developed with Professors June Dong and Ding Zhang and which was published in Transportation Research E in 2002. That model has served as the foundation for numerous extensions; for just a few, click here.

Hence, amazingly, predator-prey interactions have an underlying economics, whereas supply chain networks, in a sense, are ecological predator-prey systems.

The study, Dynamics and Equilibria of Ecological Predator-Prey Networks as Nature’s Supply Chains, expanded on our earlier work that showed the equivalence between bipartite predator-prey networks and classical spatial price equilibrium problems going back to the work of the Nobel Laureate, Paul Samuelson. That paper, "Spatial Price Equilibrium and Food Webs: The Economics of Predator-Prey Networks," I will be presenting at the 2011 IEEE International Conference on Supernetworks and System Management
Shanghai, China, May 29-30, 2011, and it is in press in the Proceedings of that conference.

We became interested in this area of research due to a truly original paper, entitled "NEATS: A Network Economics Approach to Trophic Systems," published in the journal Ecological Modelling, co-authored by a group of researchers based in France: Mullon, Shin, and Cury. The paper applies some of the results in my Network Economics: A Variational Inequality Approach book to formulate and determine equilibria in predator-prey complex webs. One reads regularly about the impact of science on economics but this paper demonstrates how economics and, especially, network economics, can be used to combine both biological constraints that couple biomass balance equations with complementarity principles using Walras' law. The authors investigate the solutions to simple food chains, bilayer networks, complex food webs, and even to cannibalism (the links loop back to the specific nodes in such networks)!

News Highlights from the Supernetwork Center

In today's complex world, it takes a great team to move research and education forward. As the Director of the Virtual Center for Supernetworks, based at the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst, I must say that I could not be prouder of my team than I am.

In the past several days we have received all sorts of wonderful news.

First, Center Associate Dr. Dmytro Matsypura of the University of Sydney in Australia will be recognized for his teaching and mentoring with the Wayne Lonergan Outstanding Teaching Award (Early Career) from the School of Business at the University of Sydney.

Secondly, Center Associates Dr. Jose M. Cruz of the School of Business at the University of Connecticut and Dr. Zugang "Leo" Liu of Penn State Hazleton have had their paper, "Modeling and Analysis of Multiperiod Effects of Social Relationship on Supply Chain Networks," accepted for publication in the European Journal of Operational Research. Also, Dr. Liu's paper, "Risk Reducation and Cost Synergy in Mergers and Acquisitions via Supply Chain Network Integration," co-authored with me, has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Financial Decision Making. The latter paper follows our recent study, "Supply Chain Outsourcing Under Exchange Rate Risk and Competition," which appears in Omega 39 (2011) pp 539-549.

Center Associate Dr. Tina Wakolbinger will begin her new position as a Full Professor of Supply Chain Services and Networks at the Vienna University of Economics and Business on May 15, 2011. Dr. Wakolbinger is the Editor of the WORMS (Women in Operations Research and the Management Sciences) newsletter, which just released its first edition. She will be leaving her faculty position at the Fogelman School of Business and Economics at the University of Memphis, where she has been the past almost three years.

Also, Center Associate Dr. Patrick Qiang of the Graduate School of Professional Studies at Penn State Malvern has been accepted into the Emerging Scholars Program at the upcoming POMS meeting to be held in Reno, Nevada.

All of the above faculty member Center Associates received their PhDs from the Isenberg School of Management with a concentration in Management Science. I had the distinct honor and privilege of serving as their dissertation advisor.

Additional news about our present doctoral student Center Associates can be found in an earlier posting on this blog.

Let's Build a Resilient Network Economy Through an Infrastructure Bank and Analytics

How far does our critical infrastructure have to crumble before we will take concerted, systemic action?

How many disasters do we have to observe and experience, from both near and far, before we move forward?

How many opportunities will we continue to miss in moving our people and goods more efficiently, in cleaning up our air and waterways, and in building the schools and health care resources that our citizens need and deserve?

How long do we wait before the latest research on network resiliency gets put into practice?

How many more people need to lose their jobs before we, as a country, move forward in a significant, constructive, and measurable way?

There is promise on the horizon.

In an editorial, published in today's New York Times, there is bipartisan support, led by Senators John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas, and Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, to establish an infrastructure bank. According to the editorial: The bank would lend money to build big-ticket transportation, water and energy projects that have a clear public benefit. The loans, or loan guarantees, would be designed to attract private capital as well. In fact, at least half a project’s financing would have to come from the private sector. As much as $640 billion could be leveraged this way over the next decade, proponents say.

It is time for the United States of America to lead in creation of an economy through a critical infrastructure that is an example for all the world! And in doing so, let us take advantage of the latest research on network design, risk management, sustainability, through analytics, so that we repair what needs to be repaired; build what needs to be built and where, and create lasting jobs for a brighter and safer future for all!

And remember, let's acknowledge system risk and financial networks, this time around!

The Robustness of Global Supply Chains and the Disasters in Japan

The New York Times has some very timely coverage of the immediate and more speculative impact on global supply chains post the earthquake-tsunami-nuclear set of disasters in Japan. The article, "Stress Test for the Global Supply Chain," begins with a very vivid account of an H.P. VP of Operations, Tony Prophet, being awaken at 3:30AM and then proceeding to triage, as in an emergency room, the potential impacts of this triple disaster on H.P.'s global supply chain. Mr. Prophet oversees all hardware purchasing for H.P.’s $65-billion-a-year global supply chain, which feeds its huge manufacturing engine. Its factories produce two personal computers a second, two printers a second and one data-center computer every 15 seconds.

Japan, as the world's third largest economy, is a key supplier of automobile components (as well as automobiles), high tech products, including integrated chips, and even raw materials such as resins that are used in integrated circuit packaging. Factories that were affected by the triple disaster are shut down in Japan creating cascading failures across the globe with GM even closing one of its manufacturing plants in Louisiana. Not only has manufacturing been disrupted but with so many of the roads impassable, not to mention ports being damaged, the transportation of goods has come to a standstill in parts of Japan. Areas where there is radiation danger with radii of 20 miles to as far as 50 miles have taken on a moon landscape of inactivity since those who have not evacuated have been told to stay indoors.

In 2009, we contributed the chapter, Modeling of Supply Chain Risk Under Disruptions with Performance Measurement and Robustness Analysis, co-authored with Professors Qiang Qiang and June Dong, to the book, Managing Supply Chain Risk and Vulnerability: Tools and Methods for Supply Chain Decision Makers, T. Wu and J. Blackhurst, Editors, Springer, Berlin, Germany (2009) pp 91-111. This study shows how to assess, a priori, a supply chain's vulnerability from a system and robustness perspective.The model formulation captures supply-side risk as well as demand-side risk, along with uncertainty in transportation and other costs. The model also incorporates the individual attitudes towards disruption risks among the manufacturers and the retailers, with the demands for the product associated with the retailers being random. We also proposed a weighted supply chain performance and robustness measure based on our recently derived network performance / efficiency measure and provide supply chain examples along with the robustness analyses. This work extends previous supply chain research by capturing supply-side disruption risks, transportation and other cost risks, and demand-side uncertainty within an integrated modeling and robustness analysis framework.

Of course, it is not only complex corporate supply chains that are now being impacted but humanitarian ones have also been deeply affected since the radiation from the Fukushima nuclear power plant has limited the arrival of necessary supplies to those in need who have not been able to evacuate. Japan has a large elderly population and their suffering is horrific. Humanitarian supply chains are different from corporate ones, since the underlying objectives in managing each of them are clearly distinct. One cannot engage in profit-maximization in the case of humanitarian operations and time is often of the essence. Hence, to assess the performance of humanitarian supply chains, Professor Qiang and I have constructed, A Bi-Criteria Measure to Assess Supply Chain Network Performance for Critical Needs Under Capacity and Demand Disruptions.

As researchers and scholars, we hope that we can assist, in a small but concrete way, through our work.

Photos from the Bement School Alum Service Trip to the Dominican Republic

As promised in my earlier post, above are photos from the Bement School alum trip back to the Dominican Republic to help out in La Suiza, which is a boys' orphanage. This was my daughter's second trip there, having been there originally as a ninth grader, two years ago.

As you can see from the photos above, helping out at the orphanage and visiting the local school which girls also attend was transformative. The mural that the alums painted will be a lasting reminder of this service trip.

Sad to say, though, the founder of La Suiza died a year ago and his daughter, who ran this orphanage suffered a stroke, so the support for this special place, which houses and feeds boys without any other homes, may not be sufficient to keep it going. The cook there is expecting her fifth child any day now which only complicates matters. At least for a week, the children received much love and attention from a very special group. There is talk about trying to start a nonprofit organization to provide the financial support that is sorely needed to make sure that the children there get the basics that they desperately need. The spirit of the children in the midst of poverty speaks of their endurance.