Benny Tjahjono

Dr Tjahjono holds a first degree in Electrical Engineering, an MSc and a PhD both in Manufacturing Systems Engineering. He won a scholarship scheme sponsored by the British Government''s Foreign and Commonwealth Office/ BUNZL/ Cranfield University, for undertaking the Manufacturing MSc course at Cranfield University, and was also awarded the best student upon completion of that course. He subsequently received a scholarship from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office with the support of the Department of Trade and Industry, British Universities and the industry sectors, to pursue his PhD in Manufacturing Systems Engineering, also at Cranfield University.

His overarching research focus embraces the area of Operations and Supply Chain Management, which incorporates production and service systems. He has a particular interest in the contemporary applications of Simulation Modelling (Discrete-event Simulation, System Dynamics and Agent-based Simulation) to many emerging research areas related to manufacturing systems, such as "servitization" of manufacturing, Product-Service Systems and sustainable manufacturing. His background in electronics enables him to devise an innovative method to integrate asset condition-based monitoring to support the operational planning/execution of the Through-life Engineering Service contracts using the symbiotic simulation techniques.

Current activities

Dr Tjahjono has a strong track record in research and income generation through winning competitive grants from the EPSRC, EU, InnovateUK, overseas funding agencies and the private sectors. As the Cranfield’s Principal Investigator, he is part of a consortium of seven European universities recently being awarded the Horizon2020 MSCA Innovative Training Network grant from the European Union worth €3,995,643, aiming to formulate the service-oriented business for the European Circular Economy.  In this project he leads two Research Fellows who work on the following projects:

- Maximising the ‘retained values’ of servitised products

- Reverse Logistics in Circular Economy

Some of his past research funded projects include:

• Principal Investigator of the EPSRC (EP/K504221/1): LINE-TRACK: technology to improve overall yield during the manufacturing process

• Principal Investigator of the EPSRC project (EP/E037631/1): An Evolutionary Approach to Rapid Development of Simulation Models

• Co-investigator of the EPSRC project (EP/I033246/1): EPSRC Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in Through-life Engineering Services

• Principal Investigator of the European Union’s (PIRSES-GA-2013-612263): NETEP – Network of Energy Planning project funded by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

• Principal Investigator of various industry projects and commercial contracts

Dr Tjahjono has successfully completed the supervision of over 90 PhD and MSc students and has published over 70 research papers in refereed academic journals, conference proceedings and in practitioners'' journals. He serves as Associate Editor of the Journal of Simulation and is a member of several journal editorial boards. He has been General & Programme Chairs of the biennial UK''s OR Society Simulation Workshops, the Programme Chair of the ICMR2013 and has served as a track coordinator for 2 prestigious Winter Simulation Conferences in the US.

As the Director of the Manufacturing Masters programme, he was responsible for managing 6 MSc courses. He actively promotes the notion of "Learning in Partnership with Industry" and has developed strong strategic partnerships with more than 10 universities in Europe under the Erasmus Lifelong Learning programme. He initiated a number of collaboration agreements with universities in the South East Asia regions including Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore and also coordinates the overseas student recruitment campaign.

He has an extensive teaching experience in both engineering and business schools. At Cranfield School of Management (SoM), he lectures in the Executive Development Programme in Supply Chain Management, in addition to the regular and executive class teaching of the MSc in Logistics & Supply Chain Management. He is currently leading 3 MSc modules, namely Operations and Inventory Management; Information, Sales & Operations Planning; and Management Science. 

Books

• Ferreira LP, Ares Gómez E, Peláez Lourido GC & Tjahjono B (2013) Modeling a complex production line using virtual cells. In: Electrical engineering and intelligent systems. Ao S-I, Gelman L (ed.), New York, NY.: Springer, p. 361-373.
• Ferreira L., Ares E., Peláez G., Resano A., Luis C. & Tjahjono B. (2012) Simulation of a closed-loops assembly line.
• Goh KM, Tjahjono B & Wei D (2010) Iterative knowledge based embedded systems development framework. In: Reconfigurable embedded control systems: applications for flexibility and agility. Khalgui M, Hanisch HM (ed.), Hershey, PA: IGI Global Publishing, p. 542-566.