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place for everything Tava Lennon Olsen, Ph.D., developed an early passion for mathematics and efficiency By Robert Batterson
As a child growing up in Auckland, New Zealand, she says she learned on frequent family holidays and outings in her beautiful country that there was a lot of value in detailed planning. Now, Olsen has taken her passion for efficiency to a new level with her cutting-edge research in manufacturing operations modeling theory and her award-winning teaching style. Olsen joined the Olin School in 2000 and is part of the school's increasingly recognized faculty in supply chain and operations and manufacturing management. She is quickly making her mark. "She is a first-rate scholar and a role model for our younger faculty, most especially our women faculty members," says Olin School Dean Stuart I. Greenbaum, Ph.D. With her fetching British-like New Zealand accent, a bewitching smile and dry sense of humor to match, you wouldn't guess on first meeting that behind her calm academic demeanor lies a passionate affection for keeping things "queued." Olsen's research examines vendor-managed inventory, decision modeling, and multiclass queuing and polling models in manufacturing systems with "setups." An example is an automobile manufacturing plant where computer terminals along the production line monitor and communicate "made to order" instructions. Her work has been published in a variety of high-quality journals, including Management Science, Operations Research, IIE Transactions and Manufacturing and Service Operations Management. She is an associate editor of Management Science. She likes the fact that her research is directly applicable to the real world. "The problems are real and complex," she says. "Take the auto industry -- a lot of their systems use these setup operations. For instance, making a plastic bumper: You make it, you paint it, but how do you schedule these systems when you have a special order and short lead times? How do you manage them most effectively? There really hasn't been an overarching theory on how to manage made-to-order (manufacturing) systems." Father knows best Born in Aarhus, Denmark, where her father -- also an academic -- was doing postdoctoral work in mathematics, Olsen moved with her family at the age of 2 to their home in New Zealand. Her father was a professor of mathematics and computer science at the University of Auckland. Olsen's mother, who taught high school and tutored, was inspired by Tava's academic aspirations. Her mother later finished a doctorate and became a professor of computer science at Auckland, too.
"He made good decisions," Olsen says. "He was very good at planning things, and yet he had a very relaxed attitude toward life. He was always very busy, but he made time to take us on lots of family camping trips and holidays. "He taught me that you can always find a way to make things happen. You can always find time to fit things in and make things work." Olsen skipped two grades in elementary and secondary school and was an early whiz at mathematics … but, she says, not all the time. "I wasn't very good at algebra," Olsen says. "Kids would copy my work and get things wrong!" By the time she went to college, she thought she might want to study medicine, but her strong interest in mathematics was always there. "Pure math was not my interest, though," she says. "I wanted to do something more applied." After graduating with honors from the University of Auckland with a degree in mathematics, Olsen came to the United States and Stanford University, where she earned a master's degree in statistics and a doctorate in operations research. At Stanford, she also taught in the operations research department. It was there that she met her husband, Tim, who also earned a doctorate in operations research. In 1994, Olsen accepted a position in the industrial and operations engineering department at the University of Michigan, where she served as assistant professor for six years. Back in the U.S. Following a brief return home to New Zealand as a visiting lecturer at the University of Auckland, Olsen came back to the United States and joined the Olin School faculty. Panos Kouvelis, Ph.D., the Emerson Electric Company Professor of Operations and Manufacturing Management at the Olin School, says that the business school is lucky she did. "Tava is a productive researcher, with main contributions in our better understanding of the impact of operational uncertainty on the performance of production and service systems," Kouvelis says. "Her work applies, in an effective way, theoretical models, from queuing theory -- models about the behavior of waiting-line systems -- to challenging operational issues, and generates useful insights for operations managers." Olsen also loves to teach. At the Olin School, she introduced a new course on decision modeling to the curriculum that is as popular as it is important.
Olsen says the best part about teaching at the Olin School is "when you really feel like you've made a difference in someone's life." The sense of camaraderie at the Olin School also greatly appeals to her. "I really like my colleagues," she says. "All the women faculty at Olin are very close -- we go to lunch together and stop by each other's offices to talk. Olin is small enough that you can stay in touch on what's going on. "There's an intimate feel here. There isn't a lot of bureaucracy -- your voice counts." Olsen is conducting research into how manufacturing firms trade off service quality and pricing structure, so different modes of quality and price can be offered to the public. She is excited because she says this kind of research just wasn't feasible 10 years ago. "Due to the advances in computer technology, it is now possible to model these types of systems," she says. But she is quick to point out, however, that she is not particularly well-organized. "Somehow, I just seem to get it all done," she says. At home, husband Tim keeps things on track. "I like things to be efficient," she says. "Even at home, there is a place for everything and everything is in its place -- only Tim takes care of it!" |
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