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SPS LLC
Team
Smart Production Systems LLC was co-founded in 2018 by Semyon M. Meerkov, Pooya Alavian, and Liang Zhang in order to transfer their research on Smart Production Systems into an industrial practice for AI-enabled productivity improvement.
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Along with serving as SPS LLC officers, their credentials are:
President
Semyon M. Meerkov received his PhD in System Science from the Institute of Control Sciences, Moscow, Russia, in 1966. Since 1984, he has been with the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he is currently a Professor Emeritus. He is a Life Fellow of IEEE and a Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
CEO
Pooya Alavian received his Doctor of Engineering degree in Manufacturing from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 2018. He was a data scientist and ML Ops manager at Ford Motor Company from 2018 to 2021. He is currently an Al/ML cloud solution architect at Microsoft.
CTO
![52082693970_a8d308efd5_o[75]_edited.jpg](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/323973_2246170807cf4cfbb76949f7a2bdd7b7~mv2.jpg/v1/crop/x_111,y_42,w_530,h_672/fill/w_150,h_190,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_avif,quality_auto/52082693970_a8d308efd5_o%5B75%5D_edited.jpg)
Liang Zhang received his PhD in Electrical Engineering-Systems from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 2009. He is currently a Professor in the College of Engineering a t the University of Connecticut (UConn) and the Director of the UConn Industrial Training and Assessment Center.
Board of Advisors
DR. DAVID E. COLE
President of Center for Automotive Research, retired
LAWRENCE J. ACHRAM
Vice President and
Chief Engineer of Chrysler, retired
The late Gary Cowger, former VP of General Motors, was also a member of this Board from 2018 until his untimely demise in 2023.
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