Suzanne de Treville

Suzanne de Treville is Emeritus Professor of Operations Management at the University of Lausanne. Professor de Treville has played a pioneering role in the application of quantitative-finance methods to valuing supply chain responsiveness. She created OpLab to facilitate the implementation of these research insights and tools for managers and policy makers. She is currently Coeditor in Chief for the Journal of Operations Management.

Expertise

Professor de Treville is using tools from quantitative finance to value the options that are created by supply-chain resilience or responsiveness. Such tools allow decision-makers to incorporate resilience and responsiveness in supply-chain decision-making. The cost-differential frontier she has created answers the question of how much a company should be willing to pay to design a supply chain to make it possible to postpone a decision. To support firms worldwide and demonstrate that the real options created by postponement may be surprisingly valuable, an app has been developed with the US Department of Commerce. Further decision tools support managers in creating portfolios that combine products that are more and less time sensitive, and competitive games that allow decision-makers to gain skill at making these investment decisions in a realistic and safe environment.

Expertise Fields

• Portfolio Management and Asset Classes
  • Options and Other Derivatives
• Frontier Topics
  • Operations Research and Decision Theory
  • Sustainable Finance

Trainings

• Doctor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School, 1987
• Master of Science in Industrial Administration. Carnegie-Mellon University 1977
• Bachelor of Arts (honors) in English and Mathematics. Carnegie-Mellon University 1975

Work experience

• Director of OpLab
  
• Visiting Professor, MIT Sloan School of Management, spring 2014
  
• Director of Operations Management Department (2009-2011)
  
• Dean of the Faculty of Business and Economics (2006-2009)
  
• Visiting professorships (1987-2001): MIT, the Wharton School, the American Graduate School of International Management
• Visiting professor: Helsinki School of Economics and Business Administration. Vice Dean of the International MBA Program 1987-1988