Our Supply Chain Analytics and Optimization Experts Make the Complex Simple
Harnessing 300 Years of Supply Chain Planning Experience
Arkieva has devoted itself to bringing advanced techniques and the latest technology to our customer’s solutions so that they retain a competitive edge. Our implementation teams are supported by analytics experts, each of whom has spent years adapting the latest techniques to practical and workable industry solutions. Combined, these experts represent over 300 years of supply chain optimization experience.
We believe:
Simplistic solutions that sound rational at a first look could be a distraction from the real work that needs to be done.
Solutions need to be simple, but simplistic solutions leave you at a competitive disadvantage.
Advanced solutions are only useful if the clients can understand and use them.
Our Analytics Experts
Robert Tenga, PhD
Dr. Tenga has more than 43 years of experience in all aspects of analytics especially in complex optimizations involving matching assets with demand, simulation, and forecasting, especially the application of optimization methods for next-generation demand estimation.
He and Dr. Fox were the first two Arkieva hires when the firm was started in 1993. He has done optimization models for most Arkieva clients, including but not limited to, INEOS, Momentive, Hexion, Anadigics, Grande Cheese, Sunsweet, Dell, Philips, Advanced Drainage Systems, and SPI.
He is the gold standard for Industrial Strength Optimization (ISO) expertise easily handling such complexities as decomposing optimization of the entire challenge into a set of tightly coupled optimization models, models with restrictive requirements (for example can only make 3 types of cookies in a given time bucket for the first 6 weeks) early in the time horizon, full date effectivity, variable size time buckets, frozen zones, filling tanks, capturing the cost and setup time for production changeovers, borrowing time between time buckets, shelf life, target cheese ages, and many more. Easy being defined as successful and the user can understand the results.
Before joining Arkieva Dr. Tenga was a senior analytics professional at Dupont. Bob received his Ph.D. from Cornell University and B.S in mathematics from MIT.
Robert Fox, PhD
Dr. Fox has more than 43 years of experience in all aspects of analytics especially in rule-based methods for supply planning (DRP), heuristics for scheduling, multi-echelon inventory management, demand management, and statistics. He and Dr. Tenga were the first two Arkieva hires when the firm was started in 1993.
He has supported applications for many Arkieva clients, including SunSweet, Perfetti Van Melle, Driscoll, Tempur-Sealy, INEOS, Corning, IBM, Momentive, Infineum, and Hexion. He is the gold standard for Industrial Strength rules-based methods for demand replenishment (matching assets with demand) having written and successfully implemented numerous variations of this critical technology for handling large complex demand-supply networks with speed and intelligence.
Additionally, his original work on demand management established the standard all other DM applications must meet. Before joining Arkieva, Dr. Fox’s research dealt with non-gaussian stochastic methods, the forerunner of machine learning. Bob received his Ph.D. from Cornell and B.S in Mathematics from the University of Connecticut.
Alfred Degbotse, PhD
Dr. Degbotse has more than 25 years’ experience in optimization, statistical methods, and machine learning – a combination not often seen. He currently leads the advance forecasting team at Arkieva which mixes and matches the best methods from statistics, machine learning, and optimization.
Prior to coming to Arkieva he worked for IBM for 20 years as a senior analytics professional. He was a critical member of IBM’s Central Planning Engine (CPE) that reset the state of the art for the use of optimization for master planning that was used by IBM divisions and IBM customers. Additionally, he led several data analytics projects from estimating demand to machine reliability.
Since joining Arkieva has worked with many customers including Lush, ADS, Samsonite, Escalade Sports, Hexion, and Lavazza. He holds 20 patents, is active in INFORMS especially the Edelman competition for best analytics application, and has authored several refereed articles – for example “Method for Isolating and Exploiting Opportunities in the Supply Chain Process”.
Alfred received his Ph.D. in Industrial and Systems Engineering from, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, his M.S in statistics from West Virginia University, and B.S. in Mathematics from the University of Science & Technology Kumasi, Ghana.
William Maxwell (Max), PhD
Dr. Maxwell is currently the Andrew Schultz Jr. Professor Emeritus of Engineering Operations Research and Information Engineering (ORIE) Cornell University. He has been an active member of the Arkieva team for the last 20 years driving the best in class work on scheduling the connected enterprise (called rapid response in 2020).
It has been his vision for years on the need to have all the elements (capacity, production, shipments, orders, forecasts, etc.) in the organization connected in a data structure resident in memory to enable firms to respond quickly and intelligently. This vision has been the underpinning of the Arkieva architecture since inception and its current instantiation is found in ORBIT.
As an undergraduate, Max was leading the study of simulation after taking the first computing class offered at Cornell in 1956. By 1957 he realized that computers could be used to enhance production planning. Max received his Ph.D. in 1961 and immediately joined the Cornell ORIE faculty. The first course he taught was a masters-level simulation class that he designed. With Conway, he became interested in the use of simulation to understand scheduling.
In 1962, they developed a method of modeling queuing systems using discrete probability distributions, making it easier to develop computer simulations of such systems. Maxwell spent a year as a consultant with the RAND Corporation in 1965 and developed fan structures of scheduling, wherein work sequences either “fan-out” (the output of a job is input to many participants) or “fan-in” (the output of multiple jobs is aggregated by a single participant). His work from this period contributed to the book he, Conway, and Louis W. Miller of RAND published two years later, The Theory of Scheduling (1967).
For the next 31 years Max continued to lead the way in the use of computational methods to support production planning and scheduling. Upon retiring in 1998 to become Professor Emeritus at Cornell’s School of Operation Research and Information Engineering. He joined his former students: Harpal, Bob Fox, and Bob Tenga at Arkieva. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering and is a Fellow of the Institute of Operations Research and the Management Sciences.
Ken Fordyce, PhD
Dr. Fordyce has more than 43 years (37 with IBM) of experience in analytics without borders, much, but not all of it in all aspects of managing demand-supply networks.
During his time with IBM he was fortunate to be part of teams that altered the landscape of best practices for interactive computing, computational statistics, dispatch scheduling, and central planning receiving an award from IBM, AAAI, POMS, and INFORMS.
He writes and often speaks about the “ongoing challenge,” both to practitioners and academics. His favorite paper is “Technology That Upsets the Social Order – A Paradigm Shift in Assigning Lots to Tools In A Wafer Fabricator – The Transition From Rules To Optimization”.
Vicki Folmar Mekler, PhD
Dr. Mekler has over 25 years of experience in business process design, data analysis, and decision support applications involving optimization in the supply chain management and energy industries. Her technical expertise is mixed-integer programming (MIP). Former clients include Ben & Jerry’s, Seagate, Owens Corning, Shaw Carpets, and BOC Gases (now Linde). This last application was unique in that in addition to production and distribution planning, it integrated energy management into the supply chain management model.
Prior to joining Arkieva, Dr. Mekler spent some time developing optimization models in the energy sector. She built a new module to represent carbon capture & sequestration in the widely used U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Modeling System (NEMS). She also worked for the market monitor of electricity grid operator PJM, where she was responsible for several energy market models used to set electricity prices in the Mid-Atlantic region. Here, she developed enhancements and improved the robustness of these models, as well as developed new ones for interface pricing and generator dispatch.
Dr. Mekler is a strong proponent of sustainability and circularity and is an expert in sustainable supply chain applications. She is dedicated to stemming the tides of traditional linear supply chain and energy management and embracing the paradigms of triple bottom line, circular economy, and zero waste.
Dr. Mekler received a B.A. in Mathematics from the University of Delaware and earned her Ph.D. in Operations Research from The Pennsylvania State University.
Farah Marasigan, PhD
Dr. Marasigan has more than 25 years of experience building a full range of decision support applications involving optimization for firms such as Linde, Hexion, Momentive, Akzo Nobel, Corning Glass, Wedgwood, Nova Chemicals, BP Chemicals, Refinery, and others covering chemicals, industrial gases, and consumer products. The applications cover areas such as minimizing costs to produce gases, balancing end to end supply chains for chemical firms, tank optimization, glass lot sizing, scheduling consultants, and many others. Her work on minimizing the cost to produce gases is now the industry standard.
Dr. Marasigan is the director of optimization at Arkieva and is responsible for ensuring Arkieva is using the latest optimization technology and the education and training of all implementation consultants in optimization. Some of her current research areas are: using machine learning to identify the variables that will “most likely” be in the optimal solution and use those to either define an initial solution or a directive for the branch and bound search, and embedding an optimization model inside a simulation model.
Prior to joining Arkieva, Farah was a consultant at Talus Solutions, Inc., which later became an integral part of Manugistics. Farah received an M.S. in Mathematics from the University of South Carolina as well as a B.S. in Applied Mathematics from the University of the Philippines. She completed her doctoral work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she earned a Ph.D. in Operations Research.