The heart of an inventory model is the modeling of the supply and demand functions, according to Professor J. George Shanthikumar at the inaugural Distinguished Lecture for the new Institute of Advance Study (IAS) at City University of Hong Kong (CityU) on15 March.

Professor Shanthikumar is the Richard E. Dauch Chair Professor of Manufacturing and Operations Management, a University Distinguished Professor of Management and Co-Academic Director of the MS program in Global Supply Chain Management at the Krannert School of Management, Purdue University.

“The goal of this lecture is to provide a unified approach to analyse general random supply and demand functions,” explained Professor Shanthikumar, who has published over 300 papers on model uncertainty and learning, production systems modeling and analysis, queueing theory, reliability, scheduling, semiconductor yield management, simulation, stochastic processes, and supply chain management.

To demonstrate the applicability of his theoretical developments, Professor Shanthikumar analysed several known and new examples of supply and demand functions.

“We will also try to show how one can empirically estimate and verify the stochastic properties of the supply and demand functions,” he added.

The talk was introduced by Professor David D. Yao, Director and Senior Fellow of IAS, and Member of US National Academy of Engineering.

“IAS aims to gather some of the best minds in science and engineering to pursue curiosity-driven ideas and studies, and to conduct unfettered research based on free and deep thinking,” he said.