Production and Operations Management Society (POMS) conferred its highest recognition on Dr. Kathryn E Stecke, Ashbel Smith Professor of Operations Management in the Naveen Jindal School of Management, at its 28th annual conference in Seattle in May.
Stecke was named a POMS Fellow, a lifetime honor that recognizes members who have made outstanding intellectual contributions to the profession and society through their research and training. POMS Fellows are selected annually through a nomination and selection process undertaken by previously named fellows.
The sole honoree this year, “Kathy received the POMS Fellow award because of her research and service contributions to the production and operations management profession,” said Dr. Sushil Gupta, executive director of POMS, who teaches in the College of Business Administration at Florida International University in Miami. “She is regarded as a POM thought leader around the world.”
Stecke, who said she is honored to have been nominated and selected for the award, has been a member of POMS since its first meeting in 1989. Since that time, she has run several of the annual POMS conferences and served on a number of the organization’s boards and committees, including its board of directors.
“While there were more than 10 excellent nominees, your record stood out,” Dr. Kalyan Singhal, chairman of the awards committee and founder and editor-in-chief of Production and Operations Management journal, wrote in his letter notifying Stecke of her selection.
Stecke is an internationally recognized flexible manufacturing and supply chain scholar. She speaks around the world about issues related to supply chain management, operations and marketing interface, flexible manufacturing systems, and seru, a Japanese organizational and production system that focuses on electronics product assembly. She also has published numerous papers in journals on multiple aspects of these topics.
Singhal established POMS in 1989 in collaboration with about 300 professors and executives. Representing the interests of production and operations professionals around the world, the society held its first meeting in October 1990 in Washington, D.C.
The focus of POMS is “to extend and integrate knowledge that contributes to the improved understanding and practice of production and operations management; to disseminate information on POM to managers, scientists, educators, students, public and private organizations, national and local governments, and the general public; and to promote the improvement of POM and its teaching in public and private manufacturing and service organizations throughout the world.”
The theme of the 2017 conference was “Global Operations: Emerging Horizons, Social Good, and Technology,” and it featured industry executives and academics speaking on various POM topics
Stecke came to JSOM in 2002 and two years later received the school’s Outstanding Graduate Teacher award.
Prior to joining UT Dallas, she received an MS in Applied Mathematics and an MS and PhD in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University and taught for 21 years at The University of Michigan Business School. She has served as an adjunct professor at the University of South Australia since 1999.
Active since graduate school in the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), the largest professional society worldwide for professionals in the field, Stecke has chaired international and national meetings for INFORMS and twice served on its board of directors. In 2009, she was elected an INFORMS Fellow.
In 2004, INFORMS selected her research paper, “Formulation and Solution of Nonlinear Integer Production Planning Problems for Flexible Manufacturing Systems,” as one of the 50 most influential papers published in Management Science in the last half century.
In April, Stecke received an Outstanding Industrial Engineer Award from Purdue University’s School of Industrial Engineering, which recognizes alumni who have “demonstrated exemplary accomplishments, leadership and service to community.”
In addition, Purdue recognized her as a Distinguished Woman Scholar in 2014, the first engineer to receive the award.
