Marshall Fisher is the UPS Professor of Operations and Information
Management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
and co-director of the Fishman-Davidson Center for Service and
Operations Management.
In 1965 he earned an SB in electrical engineering from MIT and
joined the Boston Manufacturing and Distribution Sales office of
IBM where he worked until returning to MIT for an MBA and a PhD
in operations research.
After teaching assignments at the University of Chicago and Cornell
University, Dr. Fisher joined the faculty of the Wharton School
in 1975. His pioneering research in logistics and supply
chain coordination in the 29 years he has been at the Wharton School
has been implemented by many companies and recognized by numerous
awards.
In the late 1970’s, Dr. Fisher began to address the problems
faced by private truck fleet operators as they endeavored to deliver
their products with increased efficiency and a high level of service. This
research led to both theoretical breakthroughs and successful implementations
at several companies. In 1981, he co-founded Distribution
Analysis, Research and Technology, Inc., a consulting company that
provided optimization software and strategy consulting, based on
this research, to major clients such as Frito Lay, Exxon and Anheuser
Busch. He served as chairman of the board of directors of
this company until its merger with Manugistics Inc. in 1990.
In 1990, Dr. Fisher turned his attention to supply chain coordination,
focusing particularly on environments with rapid introduction of
new products and a high degree of demand uncertainty. With
various co-workers he developed Accurate Response, an integrated
framework linking operational changes and planning approaches to
improve a firm’s ability to match supply with the demand
for new products. Accurate Response was initially implemented
at Sport Obermeyer, a leading fashion skiwear firm which
credits the approach with doubling profits and significantly improving
customer service.
He is currently engaged in a multi-year study funded by the Sloan
Foundation to investigate how retailers can exploit information
technology and flexible manufacturing to improve the merchandising
of fashion products.
In 1994, Dr. Fisher was elected a member of the National Academy
of Engineering in recognition of his contributions to the use of
mathematical analysis to improve supply chain performance in companies.
He also served as president of the Institute of Management Science
during 1988-89 and as departmental editor of Management Science
from 1979 to 1983. He is a recipient of the 1977 Lanchester
prize for the best paper in operations research in that year, the
1983 Edelman Prize from the Institute of Management Science for
development of a large-scale logistics planning model for a major
industrial gas firm, the E. Grosvenor Plowman Award from the Council
of Logistics Management for contributions to logistics, the 1995,
1996, 1997, 1998 and 1999 Wharton School MBA Core Curriculum
Cluster Award for teaching excellence and the inaugural Fellows
Award of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management
Sciences.
In 2005, his paper "The Lagrangian Relaxation Method for
Solving Integer Programming Problems" published in Management
Science in 1981 was voted by the membership of the Institute for
Operations Research and Management Science as one of the ten most
influential papers published in Management Science during its 50
year history.
He has been a consultant to many Fortune 500 companies, including
Ahold, Air Products and Chemicals, BMG, Campbell Soup, Dupont,
Exxon, Frito Lay, General Motors, IBM, Matel, Nokia, Scott Paper
and Spiegel, Inc., to name a few.
Dr. Fisher is a founder and Chairman of 4R Systems, Inc., a company
that provides supply chain planning software to retailers of short
lifecycle products.
