Dr. Melissa Bowers joined the faculty in 1989. Her teaching and research interests include production planning and scheduling, vehicle routing, and parallel processing.

Dr. Melissa Bowers is an Associate Professor of the Management Science Program. She received her Ph.D. in Management Science from Clemson University in August 1989. Her research interests include production planning and scheduling, production/operations management, supply chain optimization, and vehicle routing . Dr. Bowers has served as a production planning and scheduling consultant for the Defense Logistics Agency as well as companies such as Milliken, ALCOA, Phillips Petroleum, Oxford Industries, and Tanner Companies. She has research articles published and forthcoming in Decision Sciences , European Journal of Operational Research , Interfaces, Production and Inventory Management Journal, and a number of other professional journals.

She is a member of The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), and the Decision Sciences Institute. In addition, Dr. Bowers serves as a journal referee for the Journal of Operations Management , European Journal of Operational Research and the Institute of Industrial Engineers.

Selected Publications:

• M.R. Bowers, K. Groom, and R. Morris, "A Practical Application of a Multi-project Scheduling Heuristic," Production and Inventory Management Journal, forthcoming.
• M.R. Bowers, C. E. Noon, and B. Thomas, "A Parallel Implementation of the TSSP+1 Decomposition for the Capacity-constrained Vehicle Routing Problem," Computers and OR, Vol. 23, No. 7, 1996.
• M.R. Bowers and A. Agarwal, "Lower In-process Inventories and Better On-time Performance at Tanner Companies, Inc.," Interfaces, Vol. 25, No.4, 1995.
• M.R. Bowers, L.A. Kaplan, and T. L. Hooker, " A Two-Phase Model for Planning the Production of Aluminum Ingot," European Journal of Operational Research, Vol. 81, 1995.
• M.R. Bowers, K. Groom, and W.M. Ng, "Cluster Analysis to Minimize Sequence Dependent Changeover Times," Mathematical and Computer Modeling, Vol. 21, No. 11, 1995.
• M.R. Bowers and R. Cathey, "C-Tech, Inc.: The Development of a Management Information System," forthcoming in Journal of Applied Case Research.
• M.R. Bowers and A. Agarwal, "Hierarchical Production Planning: Scheduling in the Apparel Industry," International Journal of Clothing Science and Technology, Vol. 5 No. 3/4, 1993.
• M.R. Bowers and J.P. Jarvis, "A Hierarchical Production Planning and Scheduling Model," Decision Sciences, Vol. 23 No. 1, 1992.

<Back to Faculty>