Dr. Shahrukh A. Irani
Lean & Flexible, LLC
Phone: (832) 475-4447
Dr. Shahrukh A. Irani, PhD, is the President of Lean and Flexible, LLC, a consulting company that delivers advisory, training and implementation services focused on Lean for high-mix low-volume manufacturing (aka Job Shop Lean).
Dr. Irani splits his time 80:20 between consulting and teaching. He simply loves to teach because it gives him a chance to mentor a future cadre of Industrial Engineering. Currently, he is an Adjunct Faculty in the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Houston where he teaches two project-intensive courses on Lean Manufacturing — INDE6378 focuses on Lean and INDE6377 focuses on Job Shop Lean. During his sixteen years at The Ohio State University (OSU), he received the Outstanding Faculty Award for excellence in teaching from the ISE department’s graduating classes of 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2009. In addition, he received the 2002 Charles E. MacQuigg Outstanding Teaching Award from the College of Engineering.
Dr. Irani is the author of Job Shop Lean: An Industrial Engineering Approach to Implementing Lean in High-Mix Low-Volume Production Systems (Productivity Press, 2020).
Dr. Irani is the Editor of the Handbook of Cellular Manufacturing Systems (John Wiley, 1999).
From 2012-2018, he was the President of the Houston Senior Chapter of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineering. From 2012-2014, he worked as the Director of IE Research at Hoerbiger Corporation of America, Inc. (HCA), Houston, TX. In that position, he gained invaluable industry experience by undertaking projects to demonstrate the viability of Job Shop Lean in HCA’s high-mix low-volume (HMLV) manufacturing facilities.
From 1996-2012, he was an Associate Professor in the Department of Integrated Systems Engineering (ISE) at The Ohio State University (OSU). His research at OSU produced Job Shop Lean, a comprehensive methodology to adapt Lean for high-mix, low-volume (HMLV) small and medium enterprises (SME). In addition, his research team at OSU developed the PFAST (Production Flow Analysis and Simplification Toolkit) software that facilitates the implementation of Job Shop Lean.
From 1990-1196, he was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Minnesota.
During 1999-2001 and 2001-2003, he served as the Director of the Facilities Planning and Design (FAPAD) division of the Institute of Industrial Engineers.
In 1996, he was voted Young Engineer of the Year by the Minnesota Federation of Engineering Societies and the Minneapolis Chapter of the Institute of Industrial Engineers.