D. Clay Whybark, an icon of Operations Management, passed away at 86

Clay, unlike many colleagues in this field, knew what problems he was writing about: as an engineer he worked for Boeing and Douglas Aircraft before getting his MBA from Cornell and his PhD from Stanford.

He has worked in higher education for more than half a century: he started in 1962 at Stanford and retired, or more accurately, he took a leave of absence from the Macon Patton Distinguished Professorship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to work even more as Senior Advisor to the Institute for Defense and Business and in various professional organizations. In between, in the USA he taught at Harvard University, Purdue University, and Indiana University.  Internationally, he worked at the Shanghai Institute of Mechanical Engineering (China), at IMD (Switzerland), at the universities of Victoria and Canterbury (New Zealand), at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and, for shorter periods, in many other executive programs all over the world.

In 1990, he presented in the case writing workshop at the predecessor of Corvinus University. Between 2002 and 2004, he was member Corvinus University’s International Advisory Board. In 2010, in recognition of his lifelong academic achievements Corvinus University of Budapest awarded Doctor Honoris Causa title to Professor D. Clay Whybark.

Clay, a warm-hearted person with a fantastic sense of humor, had been instrumental in creating and shaping many of the professional organizations in the field of operations management but first and foremost he was the Founder and intellectual leader of the Global Manufacturing Research Group.

Clay served as President of the Decision Sciences Institute (1979-1981) and the President of the International Society of Inventory Research (2002-2004).

Clay touched the lives of many at Corvinus, his guidance and example will stay with us.

Read more about Clay and how to honor him here.