Shahram Taj

Dr. Shahram Taj joined Florida Polytechnic University in August 2016 as a professor of logistics and supply chain management. He served as the academic program coordinator of science and technology management and the academic program coordinator of graduate programs in 2017. Since January 2018, he has served as the chair of the department of data science and business analytics.

Taj is an accomplished academician, executive consultant with an expertise in business model innovation, lean and sustainable operations, strategic management, production systems design, systems optimization/simulation, and supply chain management.

Taj has extensive tenure in academia. He was professor and chair of the Department of Management and Marketing at Lawrence Technological University in Michigan from 2013 to 2016. He served as The Cameron Endowed Chair of Management and Marketing at the University of St. Thomas in Houston from 2008 to 2013. Taj previously taught for more than 20 years at the University of Detroit Mercy and earned the institution’s President’s Award for Faculty Excellence. He also taught in the Global Entrepreneurial MBA Program at Fu Jen Catholic University in Taiwan from 2004 to 2006 and was a visiting professor at Peking University in China teaching in the Beijing International MBA Program in 2004. Taj also taught at Baruch College, The City University of New York from 1984 to 1987.

Taj has developed several graduate programs such as the master’s degree in product development in collaboration with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Ford, Xerox, and the National Science Foundation. He also developed graduate degree programs in software engineering, EMBA, and supply chain/transportation efficiency systems (funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation).

Taj has conducted more than 100 projects at Ford, Visteon, New Venture Gear (formerly joint venture of GM and DaimlerChrysler), GM-Holden, Baker Hughes, and Schlumberger in the United States, Germany, Australia, and Japan. The projects have covered productivity improvements, implementing lean manufacturing, and optimizing process design. In 1999, he earned the Franz Edelman Finalist Award for Achievement in Operations Research/Management Science for projects that resulted in $15.5 million capital savings and a profit increase of more than $2 billion for Ford Motor Company. From 1998 to 2000, Taj worked as an executive consultant for New Venture Gear Company to design a lean automotive manufacturing plant in Leipzig, Germany, to supply powertrain to Porsche Cayenne and Volkswagen Touareg that resulted in savings of $21 million (This plant has been designated by Porsche as the supplier of the year.). From 2009 to 2010, Taj served as an executive technical advisor to executives in the new worldwide Supply Chain and Manufacturing Division at Baker Hughes in Houston.

Taj also collaborated with the Production System Design Laboratory at MIT conducting research in the design and the implementation of “lean production systems” in the automotive industry in the U.S. and Europe.

Taj has served as thesis advisor/reader of more than 100 graduate students at the University of Detroit Mercy, including a doctoral thesis committee at MIT. He served as the track chair of the “Lean Manufacturing, Manufacturing Information Management, Supply Chain, and Product Development” for the SAE International in Ireland, Spain, and France. He has published 68 refereed articles in journals and proceedings of many international conferences. Recently, he published several articles on the adaptation of lean production in China, and most recently in areas of sustainability and business model innovation.