XPult - Hand Held Catapult
Developer Karl T. Ulrich

Dr. Ulrich is Associate Professor of Operations and Information Management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He also holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics. Professor Ulrich's research activities are focused on product design and development. His current projects study the management of product variety, with particular emphasis on the relationships among product architecture, market strategy, and production process design. Professor Ulrich's past and present research partners include Boeing, Hewlett-Packard, Polaroid, United Technologies, and Eastman-Kodak.

His work has been published in, among other journals, Management Science, Research Policy, and ASME Journal of Mechanical Design. He is the author, with Steven Eppinger, of Product Design and Development (McGraw-Hill, 3rd Edition, 2004), a widely used graduate-level textbook.

He teaches a required MBA course in operations management as well as an interdisciplinary elective on product development. He was named as one of the most popular business school professors in Business Week's annual survey, and is the winner of many teaching awards, including the Miller-Sherrerd Award and the Excellence in Teaching Award at The Wharton School.

Professor Ulrich has worked as an engineer or project manager in developing over 30 new products or processes, including surgical instruments, tools, computer peripherals, and food processing equipment. As a result of this development work, he has been granted 14 patents. Ulrich is currently on leave from Wharton and is serving as CEO of Nova Cruz Products, LLC--a designer and manufacturer of high-performance personal transportation products. Professor Ulrich holds bachelors, masters, and doctoral degrees in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Karl T. Ulrich
Professor and Chair
Operations and Information Management Department
The Wharton School
University of Pennsylvania
547 Jon M. Huntsman Hall
3730 Walnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104 USA
Tel: 1 215 898 6727.
email: ulrich@wharton.upenn.edu