Appa Iyer Sivakumar is Associate Professor at the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and a fellow of the Singapore–Massachusetts Institute of Technology Alliance (SMA). He was also associated with Gintic Institute of Manufacturing Technology, Singapore. His research interests include operations research, manufacturing systems, logistics, supply chain, simulation, scheduling, and research methodology. He has several years of industrial and research experience in the UK. He held various management positions, including technical manager and project manager, for nine years at Lucas Systems and Engineering and Lucas Automotive, UK. During this period he was responsible for manufacturing re-engineering projects and was involved in the introduction of IT systems. He received a BE degree and a Ph.D. in manufacturing systems engineering from the University of Bradford, UK. He has presented several papers at international conferences and his articles have appeared in various journals. He has also trained and supervised a number of Ph.D. students. He was the technical chair and co-editor of the proceedings of the 3rd and 4th International Conferences on Computer Integrated Manufacturing, Singapore.