Paul H. Zipkin

The winner of the 2007 INFORMS Expository Writing Award is Paul H. Zipkin for his influential and exemplary writing on a variety of operations management topics over a span of three decades.

Paul Zipkin’s early work on multi-echelon inventory theory breathed new life into that important subject, not only because of its technical content, but also because of its clear and compelling presentation. His recent work includes studies of customer-order information (with R. Hariharan, Management Science 1995) and of competitive and cooperative inventory policies (with G. P. Cachon, Management Science 1999). The problems studied are elegantly motivated, and the resulting models appear surprisingly simple, thanks to the fine quality of writing.

Zipkin’s book Foundations of Inventory Management (2000) has become both the leading graduate text and an invaluable reference work on modern inventory theory. The author adds intuition by establishing connections between the many models considered. Comments about the practicality of the assumptions, and numerous simple and clear examples, enhance the usefulness of the results.

In addition to his technical contributions, Zipkin’s popular articles on mass customization and JIT manufacturing have brought research-based insights to a broader business audience. The articles are informative and accessible, but also rigorously intellectual, exposing to careful analysis business practices that have often been promoted through mere sloganeering.

The Committee members (Sigrún Andradóttir, Nicholas G. Hall, and J. Michael Harrison) are proud to designate Paul H. Zipkin as the recipient of the 2007 INFORMS Expository Writing Award.