ANN ARBOR—The University of Michigan's Tauber Institute for Global Operations welcomes Amitabh Sinha as the Ford Motor Company Business Co-Director July 1, 2015. Sinha succeeds Izak Duenyas who will become the Faculty Director of the Executive MBA program. Sinha is an Associate Professor of Technology and Operations at the Ross School of Business.

In this role, Sinha, along with engineering Co-Director Larry Seiford and industry Co-Director Al Woodliff, will provide leadership to the premier multidisciplinary global operations program of the University of Michigan. In its twenty-second year with more than a thousand alumni, the Tauber Institute launched thirty-five team projects sponsored by 23 top global firms for the summer of 2015. 

Sinha arrived at Ross in 2004 after receiving his PhD in Algorithms, Combinatorics and Optimization from the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University. He has taught the core Statistics class in various versions of the MBA program, as well as an elective class in Logistics. He recently developed a new lab-style class on Big Data for the MBA program. He has served as coordinator of the PhD program in Technology and Operations where he managed multiple activities. He is proud that over the past few years graduating Ross students have received faculty appointment offers from the business schools at Cornell University, London School of Economics, University of Maryland, Indiana University, University of North Carolina, and others.

He has supervised Tauber projects since his first summer at Michigan. His first Tauber project developed into a research project with Profs. Amy Cohn and Damian Beil, which was also awarded an NSF grant and published in Transportation Science. Other Tauber projects have also led to published case studies and classroom material, and have also informed his research. He calls himself a believer in the process of student teams applying their training to solve real problems for sponsoring corporations. Sinha said that he is ready to help Tauber continue to provide students with the framework to develop their own leadership skills while giving them the training they need to engage at the highest levels. “I am very excited and delighted about my new role with Tauber. Though I won’t have as much direct contact with specific teams as a project supervisor, I will bring my experience to all the teams in a broader sense,” said Sinha.

Sinha's current research focuses on the operational aspects of ecommerce/omnichannel retail. For instance, one of his ongoing research projects explores the optimization of order fulfillment by online retailers; another examines the design of retail stores and inventory management for omnichannel fulfillment through stores. He is also an advocate of applying modern data science and analytics techniques to business problems. “I want to engage with the growing importance of data science. This is a natural fit with Tauber as we see companies increasingly relying on the mining and analysis of large amounts of data to support their strategic decision-making,” said Sinha.

Sinha has published over a dozen papers in the areas of network design, supply chain management, approximation algorithms, and social networks. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and Proctor and Gamble; in addition he obtained a number of smaller grants for consulting and research.

Sinha is passionate about the significance of data science (or big data) in today’s business world. He actually prefers the term data science over big data which he feels is somewhat of a buzzword with low staying power. “From my perspective, data science is the practice of distilling valuable and insightful information from vast noisy sources of data, and using it to guide action---in business, public policy, sports, research, etc."

“A confluence of factors has made data science an absolutely essential component of business strategy. This includes -- in no particular order -- the availability of vast amounts of data from large interlinked systems, such as point-of-sales, vehicle sensors, weather stations, financial markets, personal cell phones and devices, or smart devices in people's homes. The availability of large, cheap, and highly scalable computer systems, such as the infrastructure provided by Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and IBM play a role as does the easy access to increasingly advanced analytical techniques, such as the machine learning platforms provided by these companies, exemplified by IBM's Watson. The stunning success of companies and organizations that have used data science well, to the detriment of their competitors who have not, include Amazon, Google, UPS, the presidential campaigns of both George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and multiple sports teams like Moneyball and the Oakland A's. A smart data science strategy is essential for the success (and even survival) of any modern organization,” he said.

Students at Tauber stand to benefit from the pent up demand for skilled and trained leaders in the field. “Although there are some incredibly smart people who are able to leverage their knowledge of data science to lead organizations to success, the demand for such people far outstrips the supply. The pervasiveness of data science in the modern business world means that even employees who are not directly working full time in data science themselves must have some ability to engage with data science. This is an exciting opportunity for students and educators alike.”

Sinha acknowledged the Tauber Institute is already a very well-run program that has been recognized with an international award and he wants to help keep it running at the highest standard. “My own interest in data science and the emerging importance of this in business offers an opportunity to enhance the student programming in this direction,” he said.

His long term goals are to “to keep the Tauber Institute at the forefront of global operations, in utilizing theory, impacting practice, and disseminating knowledge," he said. "Engage with a broad set of companies, thinking more broadly about operations: for instance, the pervasive digitization of our lives is creating new "digital supply chains", which offers both an opportunity and a challenge to us."

Check out his thoughts on all things eCommerce on his blog, Ecommerce Thoughts from Ann Arbor at ecommerceaa.blogspot.com and follow him on Twitter at Amitabh_um  @Amitabh_um.

About Tauber Institute for Global Operations

The Tauber Institute for Global Operations is a joint venture between the University of Michigan’s Stephen M. Ross School of Business and the College of Engineering, and numerous industry partners to facilitate cross-disciplinary education in global operations management. In addition to a broad array of core and elective courses, the innovative LeadershipAdvantage^SM Program provides students with the tools to ascend to major operations leadership roles. Well-designed and managed team projects form the cornerstone of the Tauber Institute experience and allow students to apply their knowledge to real world settings. The Tauber Institute is an inaugural recipient of the UPS George D. Smith Prize for effective and innovative preparation of students to be good practitioners of operations research, management science, or analytics. http://www.tauber.umich.edu

Contact:
Theresa Ceccarelli 734-647-0308 [email protected]