Keynote Address
To Pull Or Not to Pull—What is the Question?
Mark L. Spearman, President and Chief Executive Officer
Factory Physics, Inc.
Abstract: The terms “lean” and “pull” have become cornerstones for improving manufacturing supply chains. Unfortunately, there is little agreement and much confusion as to what these terms actually mean. This talk represents an effort to clear the air and put things on a more quantitative footing.
As Dr. Johnson put it, “That, Sir, is the good of counting. It brings every thing to a certainty, which before floated in the mind indefinitely.”
Bio: Mark L. Spearman is President and Chief Executive Officer of Factory Physics, Inc., a firm that provides complete productivity solutions for manufacturing and the supply chain. In his former life as an academic, he was Head of the Department of Industrial Engineering at Texas A&M University , Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech and Associate Professor of Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences at Northwestern University . He holds a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering.
After more than 20 years and over three million dollars in research funding, he has focused on ways to improve the manufacturing supply chain. He and his coauthor, Wallace J. Hopp, of Northwestern University , wrote the book, Factory Physics: The Foundations of Manufacturing Management that was named the IIE Book of the Year (1998). He has helped more than one hundred companies apply the principles of Factory Physics® to improve their manufacturing supply chains by improving on-time delivery, reducing inventories, increasing productivity, reducing cycle times, and by developing integrated approaches that are both simple and effective.
He has served as President of the Manufacturing and Services Operations Management Society, as Secretary of the Production and Operations Management Society, and as associate editor of numerous journals, and as an ABET evaluator for the Institute of Industrial Engineers .
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