The Manufacturing and Service Operations Management Society (MSOM) has elected Professor L. Beril Toktay as a Distinguished Fellow of the organization. "Election as an MSOM Fellow should be considered a rare distinction," according to the society's web site.
Toktay, a professor of operations management and Brady Family Chair at the Georgia Tech Scheller College of Business, joins only 38 others with the title, including professors from University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University.
She received this distinction for her pioneering contributions to sustainable operations and supply chain management. Starting with her 2000 Management Science publication “Inventory Management of Remanufacturable Products,” which is one of the first sustainable supply chain management papers published in this journal, her high-impact body of work helped establish sustainable operations and supply chain management as a bona fide area of scholarly research in operations management.
Toktay formally received the award during the INFORMS MSOM Conference held last month at University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School. MSOM bestows distinguished fellow awards annually for achievement in research and scholarship in operations management.
“I’m humbled and honored to join the ranks of MSOM Distinguished Fellows, many of whom have been role models and sources of inspiration for me in my career,” said Toktay.
MSOM promotes the enhancement and dissemination of industrial knowledge and efficiency in manufacturing and service enterprise operations. The organization’s members include researchers, educators, consultants, practitioners, and students with backgrounds in the applied sciences.
Toktay’s research focuses on creating a sustainability advantage through business model innovation, primarily focusing on operations and supply chain practices. Her most recent focus areas include enterprise strategies for the circular economy, business models for collaborative consumption, and the design of extended producer responsibility approaches for electronic waste and pharmaceutical overage.
Passionate about getting students involved in this field, Toktay has mentored many doctoral students and supervised numerous MBA and undergraduate student projects.
She is the founding director of the Ray C. Anderson Center for Sustainable Business, whose vision is to empower the leaders of tomorrow to create sustainable businesses and communities.
Toktay was the co-architect of the Georgia Tech-wide Quality Enhancement Plan, Serve-Learn-Sustain, focused on creating sustainable communities and serves as its executive co-director. The goal of this campus-wide initiative is to prepare Georgia Tech students to help build healthier, more sustainable communities where people and nature thrive.
Toktay also serves as ADVANCE Professor, promoting the advancement of women in academia. And just last year, she received the Ernest Scheller Jr. Award for Service Excellence for her contributions to Scheller College.