Jay Forrester, Pioneer in supply chain management
2011 IW Manufacturing Hall of Fame Inductee
The modern notion of a "supply chain" can be traced back to "the pioneering research conducted by Jay Forrester and his colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology," IndustryWeek contributing editor David Blanchard asserts in the second edition of his book "Supply Chain Management Best Practices."
"A half-century ago, Forrester began studying supply pipelines and channel interrelationships between suppliers and customers, and he identified a phenomenon that later came to be known as the ‘bullwhip effect,'" Blanchard explains in his book. "Forrester noticed that inventories in a company's pipeline (i.e. supply chain) tend to fluctuate the further they are from the ultimate end user.
"...Supply chain management as a discipline basically evolved out of Forrester's quest to understand and ultimately control these increases in demand fluctuations."
However, Forrester's groundbreaking work in the field of supply chain management is just one node in a fascinating research and academic career that spans six decades and continues today.
During World War II, Forrester and MIT colleague Gordon Brown -- Forrester's mentor -- developed servomechanisms for controlling military radar antennas and gun mounts.
After the war, the U.S. Navy commissioned them to design an aircraft flight simulator using analog computer technology. Instead, Forrester and Brown designed the Whirlwind digital computer for experimental development of military combat information systems -- which evolved into computers for NORAD's air-defense system and helped launch the modern computer revolution.
Ultimately, though, Forrester sees his legacy as the creator of "system dynamics," a methodology that used computer simulation to analyze problems in complex social, managerial, economic or ecological systems.
Introduced in Forrester's book "Industrial Dynamics" in 1961, the methodology was born from his analysis of supply chain management practices at a General Electric plant in Kentucky.
Decades later, system dynamics is being applied in economics, public policy, environmental studies, defense, theory-building in social science and other areas.
Forrester, now 93, devotes much of his time and energy to promoting system dynamics as a core curriculum for K-12 schools.
"I think that system dynamics and what we're doing in K-12 will far overshadow what we did in computers," Forrester says.
