Philip Brabazon

I graduated in Mechanical Engineering and became a manufacturing development engineer in a multi-national company. I moved into the area of operations risk management, focusing on high hazard sectors where I developed quantitative and qualitative risk assessment methods to assist companies and regulators deal with considerable changes, including downsizing, outsourcing, privatisation and new regulations resulting from major accidents (Piper Alpha, Ladbroke Grove, Sea Empress). I gave expert testimony to the Ladbroke Grove Rail Inquiry (Part 2) which considered the future organisation and management of the British rail sector.

In Mass Customization the research is studying the fundamental challenges of the strategy and developing quantitative and qualitative operational templates. The research is innovative and award winning. Operations models have been developed and analysed as stochastic processes using Markov chains and simulation, and has uncovered fundamental relationships and counter-intuitive behaviour. A particular area of focus is the order fulfilment process and how performance is dependent on: levels of product variety, customer behaviour, and flexibility of the supply, production and delivery resources.

I am active in researching project management and the operations strategy of Mass Customization.

I have published in journals including Production and Operations Management, Journal of the Operational Research Society, International Journal of Management Science (Omega) and International Journal of Production Economics.