Edward Anderson's Research

    		 I am an assistant professor in the University of Texas's Graduate School of Business in the Managment Department. My primary expertise is the use of System Dynamics in the field of operations management. I received my doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management in the Operations Management and System Dynamics Groups. I have also worked with the MIT Organizational Learning Center.

      My research examines the effects of operational decisions upon the technological capabilities of firms' supply chains. These capabilities usually reside in the tacit knowledge of their employees. (This is the reason behind including Ben Franklin's quote in the header.) Companies have a wide range of choices in their staffing and purchasing decsions. For example, the make/buy decision may have serious long-term consequences for a firm's capabilities and those of its supply-base partners. Ultimately, the strength of these capabilities will determine the viability of the firm and its relative strength in the supply chain. To explore these ideas, I have been building mathematical models of firms and their core competencies using a control theory and dynamic programming approach.

      Recently I have been focusing on "platform" industries, like the iPhone or Adobe Acrobat in which network externalities exist not only between customers or between suppliers, but also between customers AND suppliers.  The videogaming industry is a notorious case, which I have studied. However, the advent of 3rd-party renewable power suppliers (such as wind and solar) are threatening to turn the electric power industry into a platform industry as well with multifarious implications for the viability of their current business model.  I am currently supported in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation to study these issues more deeply.

      My research at MIT was supported by the Sloan Foundation, the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship Program, and a number of manufacturing companies through their sponsorship of The International Motor Vehicle Program, The Leaders for Manufacturing Program, and The Industrial Performance Center. My thesis committee advisors were Charles Fine , Steve Graves, and John Sterman.

      Before starting the doctoral program, I worked as a product designer and manufacturing planner for Ford Motor Company's Electronics Division from which I hold several patents. Prior to that, I completed my Bachelor's Degree majoring in History and Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. I also completed a year of studies in the MBA program at the University of Michigan.


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      This page was last updated on January 12, 1998.
      Email: edanderson@mail.utexas.edu