Pitt Business: Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business & College of Business Administration

Press Release

May 16, 2007

University of Pittsburgh Professor Wins Sloan Industry Studies Best Book Award

PITTSBURGH-Frits K. Pil, professor of business administration and research scientist in the Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh, won the 2006-07 Sloan Industry Studies Best Book Award competition.

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation award committee said Pil's book, "The Second Century: Reconnecting Customer and Value Chain Through Build-to-Order: Moving Beyond Mass and Lean Production in the Auto Industry" (The MIT Press, 2004), meets all the criteria for an excellent industry studies book and proposes solutions that can be understood and adopted by managers in a wide array of manufacturing industries around the world.

The award-winning book was coauthored by Matthias Holweg, director of the Centre for Competitiveness and Innovation and University Senior Lecturer in operations management at the University of Cambridge. The authors share the prize with Jeffrey Liker, author of "The Toyota Way" (McGraw-Hill, 2003).

Pil, along with Pitt colleague Carrie R. Leana, professor of business administration and public and international affairs, was also the recipient of this year's Sloan Industry Studies Best Paper Prize for their research on the Pittsburgh Public Schools.