University of Michigan-Flint

Gregory DeYong is an Assistant Professor of Operations Management at the University of Michigan-Flint. Dr. DeYong's research focuses on inventory management and purchasing issues, with a particular emphasis on purchasing from alternative sources or using expedited shipping to meet unexpected demand. Prior to earning a Ph.D. from Indiana University, Dr. DeYong worked at several manufacturing firms for over fifteen years, holding positions in finance, purchasing, and as a factory manager. Dr. DeYong has worked as a consultant in both the consumer product and construction product industries, focusing on the analysis of large data sets and maintenance of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. Dr. DeYong is also active in both academic and practitioner groups, including the Decision Sciences Institute, INFORMS, and APICS. As an instructor, Dr. DeYong has taught both operations management and service operations management courses and has extensive experience in instructing students in the application of business technology. In particular, Dr. DeYong's classes emphasize the application of business tools such as Microsoft Excel to solve real-world problems.

C. Peeth Kartha is David M. French Professor of Quantitative Methods. He joined UM-Flint in September, 1979. He holds a Doctorate in Statistics with a minor in Industrial Engineering from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. His teaching interests are in the area of Statistics, Management Science, Production and Operations Management and Quality Management. His research interests are in the area of Box-Jenkins Time Series, Design of Experiments, Quality Engineering and Total Quality Management. He is also an industrial consultant and has developed and presented several workshops in Statistical Process Control, Taguchi Methods and Quality Engineering. He has served as a member of the Board of Examiners for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award for two years. He also served as a Senior Examiner for the Michigan Quality Leadership Award administered through the Michigan Quality Council for four years.

Elena A. Khapalova, Ph.D., is a tenure track Assistant Professor of Operations Management at the School of Management, University of Michigan-Flint since September 2010. She earned her Ph.D. in Business Administration with a concentration in Operations Management (2009), as well as her MBA with a concentration in MIS (2004), from Washington State University. She has taught undergraduate courses in Business Statistics and Operations Management both at the University of Michigan-Flint and at Washington State University. Her research interests include change-point analysis, quality control, simulation and queuing theory. She is a member of the American Statistical Association (ASA) and the Decision Sciences Institute (DSI) and has published in the Journal of Statistical Planning and Inference and the Annals of Applied Statistics.

Vahid Lotfi serves as Associate Provost and Dean of Graduate Programs at the University of Michigan-Flint (UM-Flint). He is also serving as the School of Management Acting Dean. He has served as the associate provost since 2001 and oversees the Office of Graduate Programs, Information Technology Services, Office of Research, Office of Extended Learning, the International Center, and the International Global Studies program. Prior to his current appointment, he served as the Executive Director of Information Technology Services and founding Interim Director of Online Learning Program at UM-Flint from 1996 to 2001. Dr. Lotfi holds the rank of Professor of Management Science in the School of Management at UM-Flint. Before joining the University of Michigan-Flint in 1990, he served as assistant professor of Management Science in the School of Management at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo. Dr. Lotfi has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Operations Research, from SUNY at Buffalo. He has published numerous research articles and has co-authored five books in the areas of management science and operations management. He has presented in many national and international conferences. Dr. Lotfi is also a certified Consultant-Evaluator for the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools.

Fred E. (Ted) Williams is Professor of Operations Management and Management Science. After earning a Ph.D. in Management Science at Purdue University, Ted served for fifteen years on the faculty of Georgia Institute of Technology. At Georgia Tech, he taught management science and operations management and served for six years as faculty coordinator of the College of Management graduate programs. Subsequently he has served as professor and dean of the business schools at Tennessee Technological University, Bowling Green State University, and Berry College before joining the University of Michigan-Flint as professor and dean of the School of Management in 1998. Dr. Williams returned to the faculty in January 2004. He teaches operations management, management science, and information technology strategy and management. His publications have appeared in Management Science, The Review of Economic Studies, Decision Sciences, Interfaces, and INFORMS Transactions on Education.

Srinivas Chakravarthy, Ph.D. (Operations Research), is a Lecturer of Operations Management, and teaches one course on Quality Management per year for the School. He is a prolific professor at Kettering University with 10 peer reviewed publications since 2007, as well as 6 conference presentations, 1 workshop presentation and 5 invited research seminar presentations. His publications appeared in Applied Mathematical Modeling, Applied Mathematics and Computation, and European Journal of Operations Research, among others.