manufacturing and operations

OlsenToday, when you walk into a car dealer and order a new automobile, you pay the same price and get the same wait for delivery as every other customer. But in the future, as Tava Olsen sees it, instead you’ll select your price and delivery date from a dynamic menu of lead-times and prices, where you can pay more for quick delivery or get a better price for waiting. While such options benefit the customer, they also pay bottom-line benefits for the retailer and manufacturer, says Olsen, associate professor of operations and manufacturing at Washington University’s Olin School of Business. To help companies reap those benefits, she’s engaged in groundbreaking theoretical research funded by a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to tell them just how to do it.

KouvelisDetermining the right mix of products to offer in the marketplace has long been considered the purview of a firm’s marketing team. Research conducted by Panos Kouvelis, Ph.D., a professor of operations and manufacturing at the Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis, reveals that operational implications of product line decisions are not to be overlooked. Kouvelis shows that integrating marketing strategies with manufacturing and supply chain efficiencies serves to maximize profitability. His model for product line selection accounts for both diverse customer preferences and manufacturing costs that vary with product line composition.