Dr. Gerhard Plenert has 25+ years of professional experience in IT quality and productivity consulting and in working on manufacturing planning and scheduling methods. He has 13 years of academic experience and has over 150 published articles and nine books: EManager: Value Chain Management in an eCommerce World--2001 Finite Capacity Scheduling (an APICS / Oliver White Series Book)--2000 International Management and Production: Survival Techniques for Corporate America International Operations Management (an MBA textbook)--2004 Making Innovation Happen: Concept Management through Integration Operations Management (A United Nations Training Manual for Developing Country factories)--2005 The Plant Operations Deskbook (an APICS series book) Reinventing Lean; Introducing Lean Management into the Supply Chain--2007 World Class Manager Dr. Plenert has extensive industry experience, including: Private sector Kraft Foods, Smart and Final, Davis Lay, Ritz-Carlton, Hewlett-Packard, Seagate, Motorola, PPI, Clark Equipment, NCR Corporation, and AT&T Consulting companies--Infosys, Mainstream, AMS, IBM, SCI, SAS Corporate "guru" on supply chain management for AMS and Infosys Government sector California--DCSS, DHS Federal--DSS, US Air Force, Air Guard International--United Nations Texas--OAG New York--City of New York warehousing system Dr. Plenert has extensive academic experience: Ph.D. in mineral economics at the Colorado School of Mines, which is their operations and business management degree (under Gene Woolsey) Eleven years as a full-time faculty member (BYU and CSUC) Currently teaching SCM at the University of San Diego Teaching operations, manufacturing, and supply chain management as far away as Malaysia and England Dr. Plenert has: Worked in senior management Generated up to triple the office productivity with the same staffing Worked as an industry consultant implementing SCM, ERP, and eBusiness systems and designing a next-generation enterprise model Literally "written the book" on leading-edge supply chain management concepts like Finite Capacity Scheduling (FCS), Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS), and World Class Management Taken a 14+% defect rate down to 2% Brought setup times from 20 minutes to as low as 6 minutes Reduced facility-wide inventories by 40% Dr. Plenert's ideas and publications have been endorsed by people like Steven Covey and companies like Motorola, AT&T, Black & Decker, and FedEx.