Kenichi Nakashima

Kenichi Nakashima is Professor at Waseda University’s School of Social Sciences, Tokyo, specialising in production management, supply-chain control, quality management and environmentally conscious manufacturing. He previously served as Professor and Senior Advisor to the President at Kanagawa University and as Visiting Assistant Professor at MIT’s Laboratory for Manufacturing & Productivity. He is Vice-President of the Japan Industrial Management Association, a board member of the International Foundation for Production Research, and serves on the Deming Prize Selection Committee.

Education:

• Ph.D. in Engineering

Research interests span social-systems engineering, supply-chain management, JIT/kanban systems, remanufacturing, closed-loop logistics, Industry 4.0 applications with IoT, and environmental management systems. His recent work integrates data-driven optimisation with sustainable manufacturing and digital-transformation strategies.

Across 43 Scopus-listed papers (h-index 12, 518 citations) his publications analyse stochastic production control, multi-kanban policies, warranty/maintenance of sensor-embedded products, pricing of IoT-based services, and risk mitigation in global supply networks. He has co-authored multiple books including Introduction to Manufacturing Management and Responsible Manufacturing.

Selected honours:

• Japan Industrial Management Association Encouragement Award 1996

He currently leads a Grant-in-Aid project on environmentally conscious SCM for a super-smart society (2020-2024) and has completed SIP and JSPS projects on supply-chain resilience, remanufacturing market diffusion, and green factory models. He teaches Production Systems, Global Supply-Chain Management, TQM and Informatics at both undergraduate and graduate levels.