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Mitchell Burman



Mitchell Burman began his academic career with a Bachelor's degree in Mathematical Economics from Colgate University. He began his working career with The Australian Planning and Systems Company in (APASCO) Sydney Australia, developing a computer system for Geodemographic Analyses of marketing operations. He continued in Australia to eventually founded Publishers' Clearing House and assisted APASCO in founding Tactician in Andover, MA.

Burman eventually made his way back to the academic world of MIT. His Master's work involved developing a Real Time Factory Scheduling System for Johnson and Johnson. His Ph.D. work included developing a factory architecture evaluation procedure for Hewlett Packard; and extending the manufacturing systems analysis tools of Gershwin and others.

Mitchell Burman has completed a large number of consulting projects for companies including:

  • Intel
  • General Motors
  • IKEA
  • Westpac Bank
  • Woolworth's
  • Hewlett Packard

    Most recently, Burman has started Analytics, Inc., a company which provides consulting services in the areas of factory design and scheduling based on the principles developed by Dr. Gershwin at MIT.

    To see an excerpt from Mitchell Burmans' Ph.D. thesis that describes some very practical work for Hewlett Packard, go HERE .

    Publications and Presentations:

    Burman, M. H. and Gershwin, S. B. "A Real-Time Dynamic Lot-Sizing Heuristic for a Manufacturing System Subject to Random Setup Times," International Journal of Production Research, to appear.

    Burman, M. H. and Gershwin, S. B., "An Algorithm for the Scheduling of Setups and Production to Meet Due Dates," Proceedings of the 1992 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Nice, France, May, 1992, 7 mat pages.

    Burman, M. H. and Gershwin, S. B., "A Closed Loop Control Heuristic for Scheduling a Manufacturing System Subject to Random Setup Times," Operations Research in Production Planning and Control -- Proceedings of a Joint German/US Conference, Hagen, Germany, June 25-26, 1992, Springer-Verlag, pp. 293-306.

    July, 1991, "Setup Changes as Part of a Hierarchical Real-Time Controller for a Manufacturing System," by Violette, J. D., Burman, M. H., and Gershwin, S. B., Joint US/German Conference on New Directions for Operations Research in Manufacturing. Presented by M. H. Burman.

    July, 1992, "An Algorithm for the Scheduling of Setups and Production to Meet Due Dates," by Burman, M. H., and Gershwin, S. B., Joint US/German Conference on New Directions for Operations Research in Manufacturing. Presented by M. H. Burman.

    July, 1993 "A Two-Stage Closed Loop Control Heuristic for Scheduling a Manufacturing System Subject to Random and Significant Setup Times," by M. H. Burman and S. B. Gershwin, IFAC Congress, Sydney, Australia (presented by M. H. Burman). Proceedings Vol. X, pp. 333-337.

    October, 1993, "A Real-Time Dynamic Lot-Sizing Heuristic for a Manufacturing System Subject to Random Setup Times," by M. H. Burman and S. B. Gershwin, POMS (Production and Operations Management Society), Boston.

    April, 1994, "Analysis of Two-Machine Transfer Lines with Finite Unreliable Buffers, " by M. H. Burman and S. B. Gershwin, ORSA/TIMS, Boston.

    October 24, 1994 "A Throughput Approximation for a Multistage Transfer Line with Multiple Unreliable Machines at Each Stage," by M. H. Burman and S. B. Gershwin, ORSA/TIMS Detroit.

    September, 1995, "First Steps Toward an Analytical Manufacturing Toolkit," by Mitchell H. Burman and Stanley B. Gershwin, Third European Control Conference ECC95, Rome, Italy, presented by Burman.

    October, 1995, "Analysis of Long Production Lines," by Mitchell H. Burman and Stanley B. Gershwin, Informs, New Orleans.

    Burman, Mitchell H., "A Real-Time Dispatch Policy for a System Subject to Sequence-Dependent, Random Setup Times," M.S. Thesis, MIT Operations Research Center, January, 1993.

    Burman, Mitchell H., "New Results in Flow Line Analysis", Ph.D. Thesis, MIT Operations Research Center, June, 1995.