Background
Samir Shah contributed articles on
quantitative methods to
IRMI.com.
Mr. Shah is a Managing Consultant in Tillinghast-Towers Perrin’s Washington
DC office with 15 years of consulting experience, serving a wide range of clients
in risk management, actuarial services, organizational design, process improvement
and optimizing operations. He specializes in the application of Operations Research
methods such as computer simulation, optimization and decisions and risk analysis
to modeling business dynamics and decision making.
Mr. Shah works across multiple lines-of-business at Towers Perrin in developing
intellectual capital and working with clients to develop unique and customized
applications of engineering sciences to management decision making. He is a
leading member of the firm’s Enterprise Risk Management efforts and is a coauthor
of a monograph on the topic. Mr. Shah is also a member of the Strategy & Organization
practice where he is active in providing client services in business literacy,
strategic decision making, workforce planning and organizational design.
On a recent project for a major oil company, Mr. Shah was a leading member
of a team working on integrating interest rate risk, exchange rate risk, commodity
price risk and hazard risk to develop integrated risk management strategies.
For a global pharmaceutical company, he developed a business simulation model
to help managers develop action plans to increase cash flow. For a global retailer,
Mr. Shah developed a new method for determining the optimum level and allocation
of investment in labor (e.g., employee pay, benefits, training and work environment
programs) to maximize retention. He has also developed a technique using computer
simulation modeling to link decisions regarding workforce planning to a firm’s
ability to meet its business plan. The model can be used to analyze and optimize
these decisions based on financial and operational performance. He works often
with call centers to optimize the performance of operations and to train and
transition modeling capability to operations managers. For several call centers,
Mr. Shah has developed virtual call centers by creating a computer simulation
model that operations managers can use to make decisions on staffing, scheduling,
organization, process design and technology investments.
Some of Mr. Shah’s recent clients include Alcoa, American Express, Baxter,
Chevron, The Gap, GTE, McDonalds, Mellon Bank and Texaco. Mr. Shah holds BS
and MS degrees in Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences from Northwestern
University and is currently in the doctoral program. He is a Fellow of the Society
of Actuaries and an active member of the following professional organizations:
International Association of Financial Engineers, Institute for Operations Research
and Management Science and American Academy of Actuaries.