Isenberg School's Operations Management Program Excels as Advocate for Productivity and Quality

Faculty Spotlight: Professor Iqbal Agha

Professor Iqbal Agha
(Faculty Profile)

Iqbal Agha couldn't agree more. "Many solutions to operations challenges emerge only after mathematical treatment," observes Agha, who teaches operations management, mathematical modeling of business processes, and supply chain management to MBA and PhD students. "I'm an advocate of mathematical models that simultaneously address multiple performance measures. The added value from those tools is that they reveal intrinsic, complex managerial tradeoffs and the outcomes of decision alternatives."

In the classroom, Agha frequently challenges his students by engaging them directly and Socratically as a group in the problem-solving process. "I can create decision scenarios that seem intuitively sensible at first glance, but that might not hold up in quantitative models," he continues. "If you thought, for example, that outsourcing labor in a specific production planning scenario might prove more productive than paying your own workers overtime, you might learn otherwise after working through a mathematical model that incorporates additional variables like inventory and the availability of work space. In October, with the Red Sox about to embark on the World Series, I asked my students to consider the implications for production and distribution managers at Frito-Lay. A longer World Series, I advised, would mean increased demand for snack food. But how do you plan for that in terms of supply chains, production, inventory, distribution, and other variables over as few as four or as many as seven games? In exercises like this, my aim is not simply to impart discrete operations management skills, but to emphasize a generalist perspective that enables my students-i.e., future managers-to see the forest from the trees."

Next: Professor Anna Nagurney

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