Beril Toktay
According to Georgia Tech Associate Professor Beril Toktay, her interest in sustainable manufacturing is a product of "serendipity." When her Massachusetts Institute of Technology Ph.D. advisor invited her to do research on Kodak's remanufacturing of single-use cameras, she found not only the basis for her thesis, but one of the focus areas of her long-term academic research.
Her thesis research investigated the "loop" of the cameras' life from procurement to post-use return by customers to remanufacturing, forecasting product returns to determine how many new components Kodak should procure. After spending several years at INSEAD researching closed-loop supply chains in Europe, Toktay joined Georgia Tech's College of Management in August 2005. "The goal of my research in closed-loop supply chains is to give manufacturers the tools and frameworks to more effectively integrate end-of-life solutions in their operations," explains Toktay, whose research encourages remanufacturing by helping manufacturers understand the benefits of using components in used products to make new products.
She is also helping incorporate sustainability into the College of Management's curriculum through her new class, Business and the Environment, which requires students to complete a sustainability project with a company. To help students better understand businesses' and Tech's own campus sustainability efforts, she invites several experts to be guest lecturers, including former Director of the Institute for Sustainable Technology and Development Dr. Carol Carmichael, who encouraged Toktay and two other professors to write a successful $300,000 National Science Foundation grant proposal to explore sustainable manufacturing.
"Tech is one of the best places I could have come because of the support for sustainability here," says Toktay, who plans to continue focusing on sustainable manufacturing research in closed-loop supply chains. "I get a lot of support."