Researcher

Ralph Giffin has over thirty-five years of professional experience in executive leadership and management.  He is currently a Senior Research Scientist within the Systems Engineering Research Center (SERC) at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. He previously served as the university’s vice provost and was concurrently a Distinguished Service Professor within the School of Systems and Enterprises. 

Prior to joining Stevens in 2006, Professor Giffin held a number of executive management positions at the Lockheed Martin Corporation.  His last position there was Vice President for Operations at Lockheed Martin Simulations, Training & Support in Orlando, Florida.  He also served as the senior Lockheed Martin procurement executive responsible for the global source selection of all maintenance and support equipment for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Program. He successfully led a number of company initiatives including the expansion of lean manufacturing and six-sigma into the Lockheed Martin manufacturing and supplier base, the successful implementation of an Enterprise company IT system, and focused growth of a wholly-owned manufacturing business based in La Mesa, Mexico, where he served as that company’s Sole Administrator.

He previously was responsible for Lockheed Martin’s Underwater Business Unit’s functional supportability organization with division-wide charter including supportability engineering and logistics planning. Predominate focus was on open systems, COTS-based programs including the Virginia Class Submarine Program (C3I system integrator) and the Navy’s Fixed Distributed System.  The organization also supported a broad base of space, air, surface, and underwater programs.  He successfully led an organizational re-engineering, enabling the transition from logistics engineering and support of traditional fully developed Mil-Spec products to supportability engineering and support of COTS-based weapons systems. 

Prior to Lockheed Martin, he spent over ten years at the IBM Corporation. Over this period he held a progression of management assignments with increasing responsibilities concluding as the Director of Operations for IBM Federal Systems Division in Manassas, VA. 

Professor Giffin has authored and co-authored a number of publications addressing COTS supportability and issues related to the support of COTS intensive weapons systems.

He served six years in the United States Naval Submarine Service. He is a Graduate of Harvard Business School’s M&D Presidents Class program, and holds a B.S. from George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia and a Masters in Engineering (Hon.) from Stevens Institute of Technology.