Ford Whitman Harris

Ford Whitman Harris
BornAugust 8, 1877
DiedOctober 27, 1962

Ford Whitman Harris (August 8, 1877 – October 27, 1962) was an American production engineer who derived the square-root formula for ordering inventory now known as the economic order quantity, which has appeared in countless academic articles and texts over the past 100 years.[1]

Born in 1877 and having grown up in Portland, after finishing high school he worked for four years as an engineering apprentice and draftsman for Belknap Motor Company and Maine Electric Company. In 1900 he moved to Pittsburgh, where he became a draftsman and engineer for Heyl and Patterson. From 1904 to 1912 Harris worked for Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company. Ford W. Harris married Eugenia Mellon.[2]

Harris was also a self-taught attorney, and was the first president of the Los Angeles Intellectual Property Law Association (1934-35).[3]

See also

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Published works

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  • "How many parts to make at once", Factory, The Magazine of Management, Volume 10, Number 2, February 1913
  • "How much stock to keep at hand", Factory, The Magazine of Management 1913
  • "Patents from a Patent Attorney's viewpoint", Machinery 1914
  • "What quantity to make at once", The Library of Factory Management 1915
  • "Inventions, patents, and the engineer", Electr. Eng. 1943

References

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  1. ^ Donald Erlenkotter, Ford Whitman Harris's economical lot size model, International Journal of Production Economics 2014
  2. ^ Donald Erlenkotter, Ford Whitman Harris and the Economic Order Quantity Model, Operations Research 1990
  3. ^ Los Angeles Intellectual Property Law Association, Past Presidents, accessed 24 August 2023