John Milne, the Neil ’64 and Karen Bonke Associated Professor of Engineering Management at the David D. Reh School of Business at Clarkson University, has been elected a Fellow of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). INFORMS is the leading society for professionals in operations research and analytics worldwide and has over 12,500 members. Milne is one of 12 fellows elected by INFORMS this year. This recognition “… is reserved for distinguished individuals who have demonstrated outstanding and exceptional accomplishments and experiences in operations research and the management sciences.” In particular, Milne was honored “for [his] exceptional practice of operations research, extensive service to INFORMS, and outstanding research in planning, scheduling, and supply chain management.”
During his 26-year career at IBM and 8 years at Clarkson, Milne has developed and applied operations research methods to complex decision problems in supply chain management. At IBM, he co-developed a suite of integrated software that optimizes decisions associated with semiconductor fabrication complexities such as tens of thousands of part types, alternative production locations, alternative bills of materials, product substitutions, and lot sizes. He also co-developed methods to optimize data storage industry decisions in the presence of rework, disk downgrade, assembly-dependent substitutions, and demand perishability. The resulting software has been used for enterprise and site planning at two IBM divisions and two semiconductor companies. In 2014, Milne co-authored a paper on scheduling reactors at Eastman Chemical Company. His research on airplane boarding has been covered by BBC World Update, NBC’s Today Show, the Los Angeles Times, and other news outlets.
Milne has 18 referred journal publications and over 40 U.S. patents. Three of his journal articles are associated with awards: the Franz Edelman Finalist Award for Achievement in Operations Research and the Management Sciences (2000), the Daniel H. Wagner Prize for Excellence in Operations Research Practice (2005), and the INFORMS President’s Pick (June 2015). A fourth journal article, with then Clarkson student Alexander Kelly, on airplane boarding has been downloaded over 30,000 times.
Milne has been a council member of the INFORMS Section on Practice since 2003, serving as Secretary, Vice-chair, and Chair for two years each. In 2008-2009, he served on the INFORMS Board of Directors as Vice President, Practice Activities. He has been a member of the Edelman Award committee since 2002, serving as Chair (2 years), Coach (5 years), Judge (9 years), Verifier (10 years), and for the past 7 years as Editor of the special issue of the journal Interfaces (soon to be renamed the INFORMS Journal on Applied Analytics) that focuses on the Edelman Award finalist papers. Milne’s involvement with the Edelman competition has provided him a front row view of the world’s best applied work in operations research and analytics, thereby influencing his research and teaching.