Donald Hicks

Donald A. Hicks is an American businessman, author, and expert in supply chain management. He is the president and CEO of LLamasoft, Inc., a supply chain design Software company. Hicks is the lead supply chain consultant for the World Bank, analyzing supply methods to reach the most poverty stricken parts of Kenya, a study to be published later in 2014.

Early life and education

Donald graduated from United States Military Academy in 1990, and from Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan in 1996. He left the army in 1993 and began working on computer simulation and modeling algorithms for manufacturing and logistics applications.

Career

Hicks founded Decision Sciences Inc. in 1995, and LLamasoft, Inc. in 1998. His hand-coded application was marketed as an add-on modeling tool for software used for supply chain network optimization, a discipline used by medium and large companies to reduce costs and improve supply chains.

In his paper, Hicks described that supply chain vendors and supply chain IDeaS are divided into two groups, one being IT group, and the other logistic group. According to Hicks, members of the first group believe that information is the key feature in chain supply management, with focus on collaborative planning and information sharing. On the other hand, members of logistic group are focused on applying numerical analysis to large sets of data in order to solve large planning problems ond organizations issues.

Public health initiatives

Hicks began a public health advisory service inside of LLamasoft. In 2009, the advisory service was selected by John Snow, Inc., a non-profit organization that handles the logistics of aid and medicine distribution for United States Agency for International Development. Hicks worked with the governments in Lesotho, Kenya, Dominican Republic, and El Salvador. His public health team has also worked in Ethiopia, Cote d’Ivoire, Nigeria, Tanzania, Panama, and Guatemala. He was a guest speaker Georgia Tech’s March 2011 Conference on Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain. The company’s current public health partners include the World Bank, World Health Organization (WHO), US Agency for International Development (USAID), Clinton Foundation, Supply Chain Management Systems, John Snow Inc, Georgia Institute of Technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Awards

In 2011, Hicks and LLamasoft won the title of "Best Product or Service" at the Innovate Michigan Business Plan Competition, the largest single business plan competition in the world.

Hicks was also included in the Supply & Demand Chain Executive's "Pros to Know" Award Winners list in 2013 and was named an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award finalist in 2011.

See also

• Supply chain management