From July 28th to 30th, Professor TANG Loon Ching, Fellow of Singapore National Academy of Science and former Director of the Department of Industrial Systems Engineering and Management at the National University of Singapore, visited School of Management, Shandong University. During his visit, Tang delivered an academic report titled "Resilience as a Systems Performance Measure". Professor Yu Guodong presided over the lecture. Faculty and students from the Department of Project Management and Industrial Engineering, the Department of Information Systems and Supply Chain Management, as well as the Key Program team supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China attended the lecture.
Professor Tang first elaborated on the application of system resilience in fields such as emergency management, supply chain management, and engineering management. He analyzed the role of operational optimization in enhancing system resilience, emphasizing the significant theoretical value and practical implications of system design and planning. To illustrate his points, he used the example of an emergency system designed for the treatment of myocardial infarction patients. Besides, Tang introduced a unified framework for defining and measuring system resilience, which his team developed through years of practical research and scientific exploration. He started by providing a detailed overview of the evolution and core aspects of system resilience, noting that resilience can be characterized through four dimensions: reliability, robustness, recovery, and reconfigurability. Tang proposed a system resilience research method that describes the damage-recovery process of a system using Gamma and Beta functions. Based on the parameters of these functions, he designed resilience measurement indicators for the system. The effectiveness of this method has been validated using data from power and water systems in Singapore and the United States. After the lecture, faculty and students engaged in discussions with Professor Tang Loon Ching on topics such as the relationship between system reliability and robustness, system-related risks, and the causal relationships of resilience.
Tang is currently a professor in the Department of Industrial Systems Engineering and Management at the National University of Singapore and a Fellow of Singapore National Academy of Science. He earned his PhD in Operations Research from Cornell University in 1992 and has published plenty of research papers in the fields of industrial engineering and operations research. Tamg has received several Best Paper Awards, including the 2010 IIE Transactions Best Applied Paper Award and the 2012 RAMS Annual Conference Best Paper Award - R.A. Evans/P.K. McElroy Award. He is also the main author of Six Sigma: Advanced Tools for Black Belts and Master Black Belts, which won the 2007 Masing Book Prize. Beyond his active engagement in cutting-edge academic research, Tang has served as a consultant for numerous organizations over the past 33 years, including the Singapore Ministry of Home Affairs, SP Group, Republic of Singapore Air Force, Seagate, HP, and Philips. He has participated in various projects aimed at enhancing organizational and operational excellence, particularly through improved engineering asset management. Tang is currently a Fellow of ISEAM, a Co-Editor-in-Chief of Quality and Reliability Engineering International, and a member of the editorial review board of the Journal of Quality Technology.
