About the Authors

Jeffrey S. Smith is the Joe W. Forehand Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Auburn University, a Technical Fellow at Simio LLC, and a founding partner of Conflexion, LLC. Prior to his position at Auburn, he was an Associate Professor of Industrial Engineering at Texas A&M University. In addition to his academic positions, Dr, Smith has held professional engineering positions with Electronic Data Systems (EDS) and Philip Morris USA. Dr. Smith has a BS in Industrial Engineering from Auburn University and MS and PhD degrees in Industrial Engineering from The Pennsylvania State University. His primary research interests are in manufacturing systems design and analysis, and discrete-event simulation.

Dr. Smith has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Manufacturing Systems and Simulation, and his research work has been funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), NASA, the National Science Foundation (NSF), Sandia National Laboratories, SEMATECH, the USDA, and the FHWA. His industrial partners on sponsored research include Alcoa, BRP, DaimlerChrysler, Siemens VDO, Continental, Rockwell Software, Systems Modeling Corporation, JC Penney, Fairchild Semiconductor, IBM, Nacom Industries, UPS, and the United States Tennis Association (USTA). Dr. Smith has served as PI or Co-PI on over $10 million of sponsored research and won the annual Senior Research Award of the College of Engineering at Auburn University in 2004. In addition, he has been selected as the Outstanding Faculty Member in the Industrial and Systems Engineering Department at Auburn four times. He has served on several national conference committees, was the General Chair for the 2004 Winter Simulation Conference, and was on the Winter Simulation Conference Board of Directors from 2010 through 2020. Dr. Smith is a Fellow of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE) and senior member of INFORMS.

David T. Sturrock co-founded and is now a Technical Fellow for Simio LLC. Until recently he was Vice-president of Products, responsible for development, support, training, and services for Simio LLC. In that role he managed new product development, taught frequent commercial courses, and managed a variety of consulting projects. He currently teaches simulation classes as a Field Faculty member at the University of Pittsburgh. With over 40 years of experience, he has applied simulation techniques in the areas of manufacturing, transportation systems, scheduling, high-speed processing, plant layout, business processes, call centers, capacity analysis, process design, health care, plant commissioning, and real-time control. He received his bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering from The Pennsylvania State University with concentrations in manufacturing and automation and received the 2020 Outstanding Engineering Alumni Award.

David began his career at Inland Steel Company as a plant industrial engineer. During a time of industry consolidation, he built an innovative simulation/scheduling group to improve company-wide effectiveness and efficiency. This effort was so successful that it was expanded to also assist the steelmaker’s suppliers and customers. He subsequently joined Systems Modeling as a development lead for SIMAN and Arena products, then joined Rockwell Automation as the Product Manager for Rockwell’s entire suite of simulation and emulation products. He is an ardent promoter of simulation, having had speaking engagements in over 40 countries across six continents. David is an active member of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE), APICS/ASCM, INFORMS, and other professional groups. He is also a co-author of four simulation textbooks, and volunteers with Junior Achievement (JA), BPeace, ShelterBox, and local organizations