Management Team
Dr. Ali Kiran, Chairman
Dr. Kiran, an internationally recognized authority in industrial engineering, forecasting, scheduling and systems simulation, brings more than 20 years of entrepreneurial and consulting experience to Kiran Analytics.
In 2005 he received the coveted Ernst & Young "Entrepreneur of the Year"' award in San Diego for his leadership of Exametric Software, which he formed as a spinout company of the KIRAN Group in 2001.
Prior to his successful track record as an entrepreneur, Dr. Kiran taught industrial engineering at the University of Southern California (USC). He co-authored the Mixed Model Scheduler Advanced Planning and Scheduling System and headed the scheduling research for IMAR (an USC-UCLA consortium). Dr. Kiran holds an M.S. degree in mechanical engineering, and a Ph.D. in industrial engineering. He is a member of APICS, IIE, SME, and INFORMS.
Jim DeLapa, President
DeLapa was a founding investor and board member of Exametric Software, which was a spinout company created by Kiran. Exametric created labor forecasting and scheduling solutions used today by more than 15,000 retail bank branches throughout the world.
In 2004 he was named Exametric's COO helping to lead the company through a period of rampant growth, culminating with the acquisition of the company in 2006 by Witness Systems.
DeLapa then returned to the KIRAN Group as its president in 2006.
Dr. Abhyuday Desai, Chief Scientist
Dr. Desai leads the R&D team at KIRAN Analytics. His primary focus is on developing advanced mathematical and statistical models to solve resource and performance management problems in the retail industry. While with KIRAN, Dr. Desai has contributed significantly to the design and development of capacity planning systems.
Of particular note is his groundbreaking, patent-pending work in the field of full-time/part-time staffing of bank branches.Dr. Desai holds a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from the Texas Tech University. He has published scholarly papers in scheduling and inventory control. His interests are in optimization, stochastic modeling, simulation, statistics, and lean manufacturing.
Rohit Mulgund, Director, Client Services
Rohit Mulgund oversees business process reengineering, data modeling, and analysis efforts to support various business initiatives for major retail clients. His areas of expertise include recruiting process design, deployment of large scale field studies, and data analytics. Since joining the KIRAN Group, he has extensively worked for major clients such as Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Westpac, and Strayer University on on-going analysis of business models, practices and process flows in order to identify improvement opportunities that are aligned with the strategic objectives.
He is a certified Six Sigma Green Belt and prior to joining KIRAN, he has worked with companies including GE Power Systems. Rohit holds a B.S. in Industrial Engineering and a M.S in Industrial Engineering from Western Michigan University.
Celal Kaplan, Principal Consultant
Dr. Kaplan is a Principal Consultant of the KIRAN Group and is a nationally recognized authority in best practices and Six Sigma in banking, systems simulation analysis, and scheduling.
Since joining KIRAN, he has worked with numerous companies including Wells Fargo Bank, Bank of America, Avery Dennison, Baxter, Black and Decker, Columbia Sportswear, Compaq, Cymer, Dell, Disneyland, GTE Directories, Hughes, IBM, NASSCO, Packard Bell - NEC, Steelcase, and Universal Studios. Before joining KIRAN, Dr. Kaplan worked as an internal consultant for a Fortune 500 Company specializing in lean manufacturing applications.
Dr. Kaplan has published scholarly papers in international and national professional journals and presented at industry conferences. He received his Ph.D. in industrial and systems engineering with a minor in business administration from the University of Southern California.
Heather Bellardo, Principal Consultant
Heather Bellardo has been a Senior Consultant at KIRAN since September 2000. While at KIRAN, Heather has been a major contributor to the company thru her roles in many different consulting projects. Her experience is broad and includes many different areas including: building complex simulations, development of production scheduling tools, managing data collection studies with intricate analysis, transaction and resource forecasting, development of budget estimation tools to run what-if scenarios. Heather's other achievements include successful projects with Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Westpac, HSBC and Riviana to name just a few. During her time at KIRAN, Heather contributed to the success and development of Exametric software thru several custom client software implementations.
Prior to joining KIRAN, Heather gained technical and project experience while earning her bachelor's degree in Industrial Engineering from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.