Remembering Lawrie Corbett
The news of the passing of our valued and respected colleague Emeritus Professor Lawrie Corbett was met with great sadness amongst staff and students at the end of last year. Lawrie passed away after a prolonged illness on 30 November 2018.
Lawrie first joined Victoria University of Wellington as a lecturer in operations, service and quality management in 1984. He was one of the early directors of the MBA programme and worked to substantially increase student enrolments through his knowledge of the quality process that drove a range of initiatives to monitor and improve the curriculum and teaching. He retained ongoing contact and friendships with several MBA students from those early days. Lawrie was also an assessor for the New Zealand Best Factory Award, Wellington branch committee member for the New Zealand Production and Inventory Control Society, member of the Wellington Quality Improvement Network, and National Evaluator for the New Zealand Business Excellence Foundation.
Lawrie was a well-respected researcher both locally and internationally with a focus on quality management and operations strategy. In 1998, Lawrie was a founding member of Competitive Advantage New Zealand (CANZ), an integrated programme of research devoted to understanding how New Zealand enterprises can develop competitive advantage that is world class. Lawrie’s research with CANZ resulted in discoveries that could be used by New Zealand businesses to become more competitive. He took a lead in publishing his research on manufacturing and operations in international journals at a time when it was not the norm. Through the efforts of Lawrie, and other members of the CANZ team, CANZ developed an international reputation for their work.
Lawrie was also a member of the Global Manufacturing Research Group (GMRG) a multi-national community of researchers dedicated to the study and improvement of manufacturing supply chains world-wide. Lawrie had many international colleagues and friends in GMRG with whom he met annually.
"Lawrie was a friend, inspiration and mentor to many members of the Global Manufacturing Research Group,” says Macon Patton Distinguished Professor Emeritus Clay Whybark from the University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School, the co-founder of the GMRG. “We wish to express our gratitude for all that he did for so many of us, his international colleagues. Our condolences to the family. He will be greatly missed by all of us."
Above all, Lawrie was a well-respected and popular friend and colleague to many at the University–even going so far as to marry a member of the School of Accounting and Commercial Law. He had a great sense of humour and could always be relied upon for an entertaining discussion.
“I will remember Lawrie for his astonishing courage, he remained resolute in living every day as fully as he possibly could” says colleague and friend Emeritus Professor Colin Campbell-Hunt.
“Lawrie leaves behind a great legacy of research in his chosen field of operations management. But his greatest contribution to us all is his towering assertion of the privilege of having another day to live.”