Mrs Susan Browne
Associate Lecturer (Education)

Summary

I joined the Department of Mathematics in September 1994 to teach statistics and operational research to undergraduate (UG) courses for students studying Engineering, Materials Technology, Biology and Computer Science degrees. By 2000 I was teaching statistics for level one and two UG degree programmes in the Department of Mathematics, supervision of final year UG projects, and I was a member of the sandwich placement visiting team for a few years. Since retirement in 2014 I have continued to work part time within the Department of Mathematics to support the delivery of modules in statistics and study skills.

Prior to becoming a lecturer in 1990 at another university, to teach Quantitative Business Analysis (QBA) on BA Business Studies, Accounting and Economics degrees. I worked in Operational Research for 15 years.

Qualifications

• BSc Mathematics and Statistics from Royal Holloway
• MSc Operational Research from University of Hertfordshire

Responsibility

Commercial Working Experience

Between 1981 to 1990, I worked for a retail manufacturing company within the Operational Research department as an internal Management Consultant. Assignments involved working to tight deadlines, travelling to most manufacturing and distribution locations, working with outside consultants and senior management. It involved the application of OR techniques and "common sense" to solve business problems, report writing and giving presentations to senior management and members of the Board. Projects ranged from;     

  -    analysing the relationship between past sales volume and sales promotions.

  -   investigating the economics of alternative shift arrangements in the factories using linear programming.

  -   recommending finished stock holding levels, and investigating the impact of annual hours.

  -   analysing the daily workload of the salesforce using Multiple Regression.

  -   advising management of the effects of changing credit periods and methods of identifying potential bad debts.

From 1975 to 1981 I worked for North Thames Gas one of (then) twelve regions within British Gas. I was initially employed as an OR Assistant and was sponsored to study for a part time MSc at Hatfield Polytechnic. I was promoted to OR Officer (Project Leader) in 1978 after obtaining my MSc, and became responsible for supervising both graduates and sandwich students on my project team. Projects included;

  -   building a simulation model using Simscript of the customer service radio fitter workforce (the basis of my MSc dissertation).

  -   developing a queuing theory model for determining manning levels at the customer service telephone banks. I presented a paper on this work to "British Gas Young OR Workers Conference" at Lancaster University in 1977.

  -    Vehicle replacement policies, repair policies and standby fleet size.

 -     designing and supporting an engineering system (in Fortran) to control the supply of gas to commercial / industrial customers during peak demand periods.