Department of Systems Engineering & Engineering Management

Houmin Yan is a professor at the Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he directs the Executive Master of Science Program in Logistics and Supply Chain Management and the Laboratory for Supply Chain Management and Enterprise Resource Planning. He was an Associate Director and Science Advisor for Hong Kong R&D Center for Logistics and Supply Chain Management Enabling Technologies. He was a tenured Associate Professor at the School of Management, the University of Texas at Dallas.

His main research areas are stochastic models, simulations, and supply chain management. He has published in journals such as Operations Research, Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, IIE Transactions, Production and Operations Management, Journal of Optimization: Theory and Applications, and IEEE Transactions. He consults a number of companies, including Motorola, Freescale, Hong Kong Electric, Kappa, and Citic Global Logistics, on issues spanning from production planning and scheduling, supply chain management to business process reengineering.

In 2004, his paper (co-authored with Gan and Sethi) "Coordination of Supply Chains with Risk-Averse Agents" (POM, Vol. 13, 2004, 135 -149) received the Wickhan-Skinner Best paper Award from the 2nd World Conference on Production and Operations Management and the Society of Production and Operations Management(POMs). In 2005, his paper (co-authored with Lee and Tan) "Designing An Assembly Process with Stochastic Material Arrivals" (IIE Transactions, Vol. 35, 2003, 803-815) has been awarded the Best Paper Award for "the focus issues on Operations Engineering for 2003-2004 from the Institute of Industrial Engineers(IIE)."

He received his B.S. and M.S. from Tsinghua University and his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. He is a member of INFORMS.

Operations Management

Stochastic Models

Supply Chain Management

Sethi, S.P., Yan, H. and Zhang, H., Supply Chain Decisions with Forecast Updates, Springer, New York, 2005.

Feng, A., G. Gallego, Sethi, S.P., Yan, H., and Zhang, H.Q., "Inventory Models with N-delivery Modes and Demand Information Updates", accepted for publication by Operations Research, 2006.

Gan, X, Sethi, S.P., and Yan, H., "Coordination of Supply Chains with Risk-Averse Agents", Production and Operations Management, 13, 2, 135-149, 2004.

Lee, C.Y., Tan, S.T., Yan, H., "Designing an assembly process with stochastic material arrivals", IIE Transactions, Vol. 35, 803-815, 2003.

Yan, H., Liu, K., and Hsu, A., "Optimal Ordering in a Dual-Supplier System with Demand Forecast Updates", Production and Operations Management, Vol. 12, 30-45, 2003.

Sethi, S., Yan, H., and Zhang, H., "Inventory Models with Fixed Costs, Multiple Delivery Modes and Forecast Updates", Operations Research, Vol. 51, No. 2, 321-328, 2003.

Yan, H., Sriskandarajah, C., Sethi, S.P. and Yue, X., "Supply Chain Redesign to Reduce Safety Stock Levels: Sequencing and Merging Operations", IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management: Technology and Supply Chain Management Special Issue, Vol. 49, No. 3, 243-257, 2002.

Sethi, S.P., Yan, H., Zhang, H., and Zhang, Q., "Optimal and Hierarchical Controls in Dynamic Stochastic Manufacturing Systems: A Review ", Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, Vol. 4, No. 2, 133-170, 2002.

Sethi,S.P., Yan, H., and Zhang, H.Q., "Peeling layers of an onion: a periodic review inventory model with multiple delivery modes and forecast updates", Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, Vol. 108, No. 2, February, 253-281, 2001.

Feng, Y., and Yan, H., "Optimal production control in a discrete manufacturing system with unreliable machines and random demands," IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, Vol. 35, No. 12, Dec. 2280-2296, 2000.

Yan, H., Zhou, X.Y., and Yin,G., "Approximating an optimal production policy in a continuous flow line: recurrence and asymptotic properties", Operations Research, Vol. 47, 535-549, 1999.