A specialist in manufacturing excellence,
a scholar in production and operations management,
a fan of a better society,
and a novice in most other things.
This is my blog.
Thank you for visiting better-operations.com!
Please comment on and share the posts.
It’s all about better operations.
Torbjørn H. Netland, PhD
Full Professor and Head of Chair of Production and Operations Management (POM)
ETH Zurich, Zürich, Switzerland
Bio
Prof. Dr. Torbjørn Netland is Full Professor and Head of Chair of Production and Operations Management (www.pom.ethz.ch) at ETH Zurich, Switzerland. He is a Member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Advanced Manufacturing and Value Chains, a Fellow of the European Academy for Industrial Management (AIM), and President of the POMS College of Operational Excellence.
His research on achieving and sustaining manufacturing excellence appears in leading scientific journals such as Management Science, Journal of Operations Management, Production and Operations Management, and MIT Sloan Management Review. Torbjørn is the recipient of the 2023 Jack Meredith Best Paper Award of the Journal of Operations Management, two Shingo Research Awards, and numerous teaching awards. His co-edited book, The Routledge Companion to Lean Management (2017) was awarded the Shingo Research Award. He co-authored the 800-page textbook “Introduction to Manufacturing: An Industrial Engineering and Management Perspective” (Routledge, 2022).
He has previously worked as Associate Professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and Senior Researcher at SINTEF Technology & Society, Trondheim, Norway. He has been a Visiting Researcher at the Centre for International Manufacturing at the University of Cambridge, UK, and the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University, Washington D.C.
Torbjørn is also co-founder of EthonAI (www.ethon.ai)—the Manufacturing Analytics System company.
Being a dedicated research communicator, he blogs at www.better-operations.com, tweets as @tnetland, and teaches on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/c/POMETHZurich. He is a repeatedly invited keynote speaker at international conferences and business events.
For a professional resume and contact details, visit his public profile on LinkedIn.
Why this blog?
August 2011. The world needs more Operations Management. Society at large can profit greatly from utilizing our existing knowledge on how to make operations more effective, efficient, fun, and humane. Are you totally happy with the service of your last car overhaul at the garage? – the waiting times at your hospital? – the freshness of the fruit and veggies bought in your local supermarket? – the delivery times of your furniture supplier? – the handling of your building permit application at the local authorities? – the reliability of your public transportation provider? – the speed of the relief logistics during the last natural disaster somewhere in the world? Me neither. We need better operations.
This blog is also partly my response to the previous Norwegian Prime Minister Stoltenberg’s call for more openness and more democracy after the 22-7-11 Utøya massacre. What does Operations Management have to do with the most shocking incident on Norwegian soil since WW2? Nothing. So what does this Operations Management blog have to do with more openness and democracy? Everything! This is my contribution to a more informed debate, contrasting the many who—with all rights—express strong opinions in areas they know little about. Most of my blog posts take an explicit basis in the scientific literature on production and logistics. Statements and facts are sought referred.
But no rule without exceptions; some posts reflect my personal viewpoints on issues more important than Operations Management. Enjoy, and remember to leave your likes and comments.