Mark Spearman

Mark Spearman, Operations Science Institute Board of Advisors board member

Emeritus Advisor

Operations Science in Academia, Industry, Project Production Management, and Engineering and Construction

Mark has worked in manufacturing logistics for more than 35 years as both a researcher at Northwestern University, Georgia Tech, and Texas A&M and as a practitioner at companies such as IBM, Monsanto, Medtronics, Chevron, and many others.

While at Northwestern and Georgia Tech, working with Wally Hopp and others, Mark began to lay out the basic principles that govern manufacturing logistics. They called this Factory Physics and now, Operations Science.  Together with Wally Hopp, Mark wrote the award-winning textbook Factory Physics, the foundation for operations science.

Mark was an associate professor of industrial engineering at Northwestern University, a full professor of industrial engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and department head of industrial engineering at Texas A&M University.

He founded Factory Physics Inc. in 2001 and over the next 17 years applied and refined the concepts of operations science through application in industry. In 2018, Factory Physics Inc. was acquired by Strategic Project Solutions (SPS). Mark serves as Director of Technical Solutions for SPS and is on the Technical Committee of the Project Production Institute.

Mark holds a Ph.D. in industrial engineering, is a senior member of IISE and a full member of INFORMS.