/ History /
Like many high tech success stories, this one starts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – and in a garage (or actually over it).
While at MIT in the early 1990s, Mitchell Burman, James Schor, and their advisor Stan Gershwin began discussing the prospect of applying a broad set of analytical techniques that had been overlooked by practitioners for solving critical performance issues facing organizations. They referred to the application of these techniques as Operations Engineering.
At MIT, the trio successfully applied operations engineering principles to challenges at a number of companies, including Hewlett-Packard, Johnson & Johnson, and Boeing. Based on this experience, they launched Analytics Operations Engineering in 1994 from above a garage in Brookline, Massachusetts. In addition to Fortune 500 companies, their results gained the attention of leading private equity firms such as Bain Capital, Berkshire Partners, and Advent. These firms recognized Analytics’ ability to achieve significant bottom-line impact in their portfolio companies faster and more economically than other consultants.
Analytics quickly outgrew its garage incubator, first moving to offices in Cambridge and then to Boston’s financial district. Other milestones of success followed. In 2002, Inc. Magazine named Analytics to the publication’s list of fastest growing companies. Today’s clients vary in terms of size and tenure and represent a wide cross section of industries – from high-tech and medical device startups to multi-billion dollar manufacturing, distribution, transportation, and financial services firms.