Instructor Bios

Mark Spearman brings over forty years of experience optimizing production and service operations for over 80 companies including Baxter Healthcare, Delta Airlines, Intel, ABB and many others. He is the founder of Factory Physics, Inc. and co-author of two award-winning books, “Factory Physics” and “Factory Physics for Managers.”  He is also a member of the Technical Committee of the Project Production Institute and Director of Technical Solutions for Strategic Project Solutions.

Prior to that, Spearman was a tenured professor of industrial engineering and management sciences at Northwestern University, professor of industrial and systems engineering at Georgia Tech, and Department Head of industrial engineering and systems engineering at Texas A&M University. His work has over 10,000 citations on Google Scholar.

James Choo is Chief Technical Officer of Factory Physics, Inc., the Chief Technical Officer of Strategic Project Solutions, Inc. and a member of the Technical Committee for the Project Production Institute (PPI). He has been leading research and development of production management and its underlying framework of Operations Science knowledge, processes, and systems since 2001.

He has over twenty-five years of experience in research, development and implementation of solutions for optimizing the delivery of complex and critical capital projects. He has published numerous papers on the subject in various technical journals, which have been presented at global conferences and are regularly cited by other authors. James earned an M.S. in Civil Engineering from Yonsei University, Korea, and a PhD in Construction Engineering & Management from the University of California at Berkeley. He is an instructor at Stanford University and also a Master Factory Physicist.

As Lead Production System Specialist, Chet is responsible for leading Production System Analysis and Optimization including efforts to map, model, simulate, analyze, and optimize permanent and temporary production systems. He is also a Master Factory Physicist.

He has worked directly with numerous organizations including, but not limited to, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Microsoft, Petronas, Tengizchevroil and Tripatra. He works with these corporations to identify and quantify opportunities to improve project performance including schedule compression, cost reduction and use of cash. Chet brings extensive experience in educating and training others in the optimization of production systems using specialized enabling systems. Furthermore, and in addition to his experience in Production System Analysis and Optimization, Chet has also supported the deployment and use of Project Production Control for construction projects such as Fuel Terminals in Indonesia.

Chet holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Engineering from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona and a Master of Science in Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Southern California.