Kumar Rajaram

Professor

Phone: (310) 825-4154

kumar.rajaram@anderson.ucla.edu

Gold Hall, Room B-410

Biography

Professor Rajaram's current research interests include improving operations in the health care industry, non-profit sector and in process manufacturing sectors including food processing, pharmaceuticals and petrochemical industry. He has focused on developing analytical models of complicated systems with a strong emphasis on practical implementation. His research has been published in journals such as Operations Research, Management Science, Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, Marketing Science and the European Journal of Operational Research.

Professor Rajaram has developed a new operational technique called "Robust Process Control" to increase the productivity of large-scale industrial processes. By focusing on the design and control of these processes in operational environments, this technique has resulted in four-fold increases in productivity in several types of industrial processes. These methods have been implemented at several process companies worldwide. He has also developed techniques to better balance supply with demand for products with short life cycles and highly unpredictable demand. This work has been applied at several large fashion retailers in Europe and North America and has resulted in substantial improvements to profitability at these sites.

Teaching
At the UCLA Anderson School, Professor Rajaram teaches the MBA core course on operations and technology management, various Executive Education courses and doctoral level courses on operations management and models for operations design, planning and control.

Education

Ph.D. Operations Management, 1998, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
M.A. Managerial Science and Applied Economics, 1997, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
M.S. Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, 1993, University of Massachusetts at Amherst
M.Sc. Mathematics, with Honors 1991, Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, India
B.E. Electrical and Electronics Engineering, with Honors 1991, Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, India

Interests

operations management in the process industry, process improvement in health care, process improvement in non-profits, retail operations management, theme park operations, operations management in the motion picture industry

Recognition

Niedorf "Decade" Teaching Award, UCLA Anderson School, 2005

Eric and “E” Juline Faculty Excellence in Research Award, UCLA Anderson School, 2003

Citibank Teaching Award, UCLA Anderson School, 2000

George Robbins Assistant Professor Teaching Award, 1999

Franz Edelman Laureate, Institute for Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS), 1998

  • F.Caro,K.Rajaram,J.Wollenweber. Process Location and Product Distribution with Uncertain Yields. Operations Research., 60(5): 1050-1063. September-October 2012.. [ Link ]
  • K.Rajaram and C.Corbett.. Achieving Environmental and Productivity Improvements Through Model Based Process Redesign. Operations Research, 50(5): 751-763,2003. [ Link ]
  • K.Rajaram and R.Ahmadi. Flow Management To Optimize Retail Profits At Theme Parks. Operations Research, 51(2): 175-184, 2003.. [ Link ]
  • K.Rajaram and U.Karmarkar. Product Cycling With Uncertain Yields: Analysis And Application To The Process Industry.. Operations Research, 50(4): 680-691, 2002.. [ Link ]
  • U.Karmarkar and K.Rajaram. Grade Selection and Blending to Optimize Cost and Quality. Operations Research, 49(2): 271-280. 2001..
  • M.Fisher and K.Rajaram. AcAccurate Retail Testing Of Fashion Merchandise: Methodology And Application.. Marketing Science, 19(3): 266-278. 2000.. [ Link ]
  • K.Rajaram et. al. Robust Process Control At Cerestar's Refineries. Interfaces Specail Issue: Edelmann Award Papers, 29(1): 30-48, 1999.. [ Link ]
  • . Complete List of Publications. [ Link ]
  • C. Barz, K. Rajaram. (April 2013). Elective Patient Admission and Scheduling under Multiple Resource Constraints. [ Download ] [ Show Abstract ]
    We consider a patient admission problem to a hospital with multiple resource constraints (e.g. OR and beds) and a stochastic evolution of patient care requirements across multiple resources. There is a small but significant proportion of emergency patients who arrive randomly and have to be accepted at the hospital. However, the hospital needs to decide whether to accept, postpone or even reject the admission from a random stream of non-emergency elective patients. We formulate the control process as a Markov Decision Process to maximize expected contribution net of overbooking costs. We develop bounds using approximate dynamic programming and use this to construct heuristics. We test our methods on data from the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center.

Representative Publications

K. Rajaram, R. Jaikumar, F. Behlau, C. Heynen, F. van Esch, R. Kaiser, A. Kuttner, I. Van Dewege. (1999). Robust Process Control At Cerestar's Refineries. Interfaces. Special Issue: Edelman Award Papers. 29(1): 30-48

M.L. Fisher, K. Rajaram. (2000). Accurate Retail Testing Of Fashion Merchandise: Methodology And Application. Marketing Science. 19(3): 266-278

K. Rajaram, U.S. Karmarkar. (2002). Product Cycling With Uncertain Yields: Analysis And Application To The Process Industry. Operations Research. 50(4): 680-691 

K. Rajaram, R. Ahmadi. (2003). Flow Management To Optimize Retail Profits At Theme Parks. Operations Research. 51(2): 175-184

K. Rajaram, C.J. Corbett. (2003). Achieving Environmental and Productivity Improvements Through Model Based Process Redesign. Operations Research. 50(5): 751-763

F. Caro, K.Rajaram and J. Wollenweber. (2011). Process Location and Product Distribution with Uncertain Yields. Operations Research. 60(5): 1050-1063. September-October 2012.


Link To Professor Rajaram's Research