MAGAZINE / 2016 - Dwight Look College of Engineeringengineering.tamu.edu/media/4206976/isen_mag_2016.pdfMAGAZINE / 2016 LIVING THE DREAM JOB SOARING TO FASTER PRODUCTION P. 22 SYSTEMATICALLY

College of Engineering • Texas A&M University 1

MAGAZINE / 2016

LIVING THE DREAM JOB

SOARING TO FASTER PRODUCTION P. 22

SYSTEMATICALLY CHANGING THE WORLD P. 26

STEERING CLEAR OF DISTRACTED DRIVING P. 36

P. 20

2 Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CONTENTS

16

INDUSTRIAL INNOVATORS

HIGH IMPACT

4 Message from the Department Head

8 Faculty Recognition

6 Revolutionizing Advanced Manufacturing

10 Paying It Forward

14 Nurses, Pilots, Veterans Benefit from New Technologies

21 Living the Dream Job

38 Presidential Service

16 Consulting a Better World

18 Students Honored at Engineering Project Showcase

The department’s faculty members are internationally recognized for their contributions in four major research areas with applications in energy, healthcare, homeland security, big data and informatics, infrastructure and transportation, and systems engineering. They are each committed to the department’s core mission of educating students in engineering fundamentals required to design, develop and implement sophisticated systems in an environment with complex technical and social challenges.

Research within the department has resulted in improved processes in various industries, new companies and increased economic activity. With increasing demands for designing and optimizing systems of people, materials, technologies and facilities, the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Texas A&M University is positioned to become the premier source of talent for engineering socio-technical systems of the future.


DEPARTMENT OVERVIEW

PRODUCTION

WRITINGLorian Hopcus

DEPARTMENT OF INDUSTRIAL & SYSTEMS ENGINEERINGCollege of Engineering at Texas A&M University

ENGINEERING COMMUNICATIONSCollege of Engineering at Texas A&M University

EDITINGLorian HopcusTim Schnettler

DESIGN Wendy Herrick

COVER Photo by Igor Kraguljac

Faculty

Academic Professional Track Faculty 10

Professors 10

Associate Professors 5

Assistant Professors 7

Emeritus Faculty 9

Endowed Faculty Fellows 4

Primary Areas of Study

Advanced Manufacturing

Human and Organizational Systems

Operations Research

System Informatics

25 32

QUALITY SERVICE

NEXT GENERATIONStudents within the department receive a broad education

in manufacturing systems, healthcare engineering, quality management, human ergonomics, operations research, cognitive human factors, system simulation and transportation. Graduates of the department’s undergraduate and graduate programs are recruited by manufacturers, healthcare providers, transportation companies, engineering consulting firms and national laboratories.

Committed to the success of the department and its students, the staff and senior faculty members support researchers and professors inside and outside of the classroom. Our students and faculty members receive top-notch service allowing them to become leaders in industry, research and educational institutions around the world.

S T A R T S H E R EINNOVATIVE RESEARCHS T A R T S H E R E


Human Factors & Cognitive Systems

Operations Research

System Informatics


Human Factors & Cognitive Systems

Operations Research

System Informatics



Message from the Department Head

The past year included many great accomplishments for the

Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Texas A&M

University, and we are pleased to share some of these with you.

We continue to lead the college of engineering’s initiative in

advanced manufacturing, winning major national research awards

and adding two new faculty members — Dr. Zhijian (ZJ) Pei and

Dr. Dinakar Sagapuram. Our human factors emphasis is growing

with new research efforts in healthcare, remote health, aviation and

transportation. In operations research, we have focused efforts in

solar energy, genome sequencing and wind turbine maintenance. The

systems informatics group is pursing compelling societal problems in

manufacturing, healthcare and energy analytics.

Former department head, Dr. César Malavé, was selected to be the dean

and chief operating officer of engineering at Texas A&M University at

Qatar, a position he started on July 1. I will be serving as interim head until a

permanent replacement is selected.

Members of our faculty were selected for a number of prestigious society

awards. Dr. Yu Ding was named an American Society of Mechanical Engineers

(ASME) Fellow and Malavé and Dr. Satish Bukkapatnam were named Institute

of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE) Fellows. Further, IISE bestowed its highest honor, the Frank and Lillian Gilbreth Award, on Dr. G.

Kemble Bennett for a lifetime of outstanding achievement and service to our profession.

Our students have also been recognized with a number of honors and awards as well. Julie Hammett was selected for a graduate fellowship

from the National Science Foundation and Matthew Aguirre was awarded the IISE James Barany Award for Excellence. This is very gratifying for

me because I worked closely with Dr. James Barany while on the faculty at Purdue University. Additionally, two of our Ph.D. students accepted

assistant professorship positions at Arizona State University and Virginia Tech University.

Finally, Jeana Goodson was awarded the highly-coveted Presidential Advising Award for her excellent work with our undergraduate students.

We added new staff advisers, Diego Alvarado and Yesenia Zavala, to help with our growing undergraduate population, which includes about

800 students.

We hope you will find this magazine appealing as you find more details about all of these and other accomplishments in the following pages.

Sincerely,

Mark Lawley, Ph.D., P.E.TEES Research Professor and Interim Head

Department of Industrial and Systems EngineeringDeputy Director, Center for Remote Health Technologies and Systems

S T A R T S H E R EINNOVATIVE RESEARCHS T A R T S H E R E


Researchers in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Texas A&M University are working to make life easier through research that is revolutionizing society.

The long-awaited day of 3-D printed replacement body parts may be just around the corner, along with the day of producing metal more quickly and efficiently, thanks to the work of those in the advanced manufacturing field.

A team of researchers comprised of Dr. Satish Bukkapatnam, Dr. Alaa Elwany, Dr. Dinakar Sagapuram and Dr. Shiren Wang, is working in four core areas: precision and smart manufacturing, additive and hybrid manufacturing, nano and bio manufacturing, and manufacturing enterprise systems.

RevolutionizingAdvanced Manufacturing

“During the past two years, the core members of this group have together secured or brought with them seven federal grants to address the contemporary challenges in advanced manufacturing,” said Bukkapatnam, Rockwell International professor in industrial and systems engineering.

These grants fund the research that takes place in state-of-the-art facilities such as the advanced manufacturing facility, part of the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) Institute of Manufacturing Systems (IMS).

“This facility promotes cutting-edge interdisciplinary research,” said Bukkapatnam, who serves as the director of IMS. “There

HIGH IMPACT


are four colleges working together in here. They are engineering, architecture, veterinary medicine and science, as well as the Texas A&M Health Science Center.”

Working together with 30 other faculty members across the college of engineering, these researchers are changing society.

Securing Our World

With a global rise in competition and security perceptions, the need for smart manufacturing and continuous, round-the-clock monitoring the of quality and integrity of our security measures is necessary for the survival of modern engineering systems. Bukkapatnam’s team has identified these needs in precision and nano-manufacturing processes for making personalized and custom parts, particularly in the medical, transportation and defense sectors.

“Sensor technologies are becoming available to interrogate any aspect of modern engineering systems at every conceivable scale of a product, process or system,” Bukkapatnam said.

These sensors have the capability to capture a variety of information on the product, process or system. This poses a new challenge: connecting the large amounts of sensor data to bring significant improvements to the design and operations of these engineering systems.

“The core of this research is to harness information on the nonlinear stochastic dynamics and the emergent behaviors,” Bukkapatnam said. “This includes chaos, self-organization and long-range dependencies in the form of customized multi-scale representations and formal models, and to track features separated from these models to monitor and control the quality and integrity of complex systems.”

Bukkapatnam and his team have now expanded this research to the world of cyber manufacturing. That is, creating a virtual manufacturing set-up that has the ability to translate the client’s needs into a product or process that can be implemented immediately. They are working collaboratively with support from the National Science Foundation.

Printing for the Future

Focused on modeling, analysis and control of next-generation manufacturing processes with special emphasis on additive manufacturing, known as 3-D printing, Elwany is working to improve the quality of metallic parts produced using 3-D printing.

“The main contribution of my research is to enable the production of 3-D printed parts with high levels of geometric complexity and unique physical and mechanical properties that are simply not possible or extremely expensive to produce using traditional manufacturing methods, such as machining or injection molding,” Elwany said.

Three-dimensional printing will change the way the world knows the manufacturing industry in art, construction, customization, energy use, medicine, product availability, sciences and waste reduction. Elwany is currently working with NASA and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research to test his methods in the space and defense industries. The research today will improve the products produced and make them fully functional by the end user.

Improving Lives

With more that one million people going through surgery to repair the tear in their meniscus every year, Wang is exploring the additive manufacturing of synthetic knee cartilage for meeting biomedical requirements. By using 3-D printing, Wang is looking for solutions to eliminate the risk of pathogen transmission, immune rejection and tissue mismatch for patients facing meniscus transplantation surgery.

“First, the printed material must be compatible with the environment it is placed in around the knee,” Wang said. “Second, the material must allow the knee to function properly. The leg still needs to be able to kick the ball and run.”

In addition to 3-D printing synthetic materials, Wang developed a way to scale up nanoparticles and create structured forests that improve the performance of energy storage. The discovery of these forests made up of tiny particles could revolutionize the current energy storage technology on the market.

“These nanostructured forests are the future batteries,” Wang said. “They will greatly enhance the performance of energy storage, including cell phone and laptop batteries.”

Wang is working with and funded by the National Science Foundation under the faculty early career development program.

Creating New Ideas

The advanced manufacturing team from Texas A&M and TEES was selected by the White House to lead the new Gulf Coast Regional Advanced Manufacturing Center. The new center is a part of the Clean Energy Smart Manufacturing Innovative Institution, which will be comprised of five regional centers located across the country.

Researchers in the Department of Industrial Engineering are making strides in changing the way manufacturing can easily meet the needs of our instantaneous society, while maintaining a quality end product.

“Manufacturing essentially involves creating products that have value,” Bukkapatnam said. “As the nation engages in various manufacturing initiatives, including additive, smart and nano manufacturing, there is a growing opportunity for the industrial community to engage in fundamental investigations combining physical and data science principles to address major future challenges.”


Dr. Alaa Elwany, assistant

professor in the Department

of Industrial and Systems

Engineering at Texas

A&M, is a member of a

multidisciplinary team led

by Dr. Ibrahim Karaman

that was awarded a

$550,000 grant from the

Airforce Office of Scientific

Research’s Defense

University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP).

DURIP supports university research infrastructure

essential for acquiring major equipment necessary in

developing high quality research capabilities that support

research in technical areas of interest to the Department

of Defense. The team included faculty members from

industrial engineering, materials science and engineering

and aerospace engineering.

The grant will be used to develop a state-of-the-art,

multi-material deposition additive manufacturing system

with in situ monitoring and material characterization

capabilities. This will support the team’s cutting edge

research in design and discovery of new materials.

Dr. Li Zeng, assistant professor in the

Department of Industrial and Systems

Engineering at Texas A&M, received the Best

Applications Paper award from the Institute

of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE).

Zeng’s paper, “Bayesian Hierarchical

Modeling for Monitoring Optical Profiles

in Low-Emittance Glass Manufacturing

Processes,” will be featured in IIE

Transactions’ issue focused on design and

manufacturing. Her paper discusses an approach for controlling quality and

reducing variation in the energy-efficient glass manufacturing industry.

Zeng’s work is supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and

studies the special quality measurements in the energy-efficient glass

industry and develops systematic methods to improve the current quality

control system. This work introduces a new application area of industrial

engineering tools and reveals the many research needs and potentials in

energy-efficient glass manufacturing.

“I am very appreciative and honored to be receiving this significant award,”

Zeng said. “When I started the collaboration with a local glass company four

years ago, I had no idea where this project would lead my career.”

Zeng’s research focuses on developing new data-driven methodologies

for process control and quality improvement in complex systems. She has

expertise in statistics and data mining. She has conducted research in

various applications, particularly in complex manufacturing systems and

healthcare delivery systems. The NSF, the Air Force, the University of Texas

System and the American Heart Association support Zeng’s work.

“This award will be a motivation for me to continue exploring new industrial

engineering solutions to emergent real-world problems in the future,” she said.

Zeng was honored at the IISE annual conference in May.

Zeng Receives Best Applications Paper award

Elwany Among Team Receiving Grant

Dr. Yu Ding, Mike and Sugar Barnes professor in the

Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Texas

A&M, has been elected a Fellow of the American Society

of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), the highest level of

membership of ASME.

Ding was nominated by Jianjun Shi, the Carolyn J.

Stewart Chair and Professor of the H. Milton Stewart

School of Industrial and Systems Engineering and the George W. Woodruff School of

Mechanical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Ding studied under Shi

while working on his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan.

“I earned my Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, so being elected as a fellow of ASME

is like hitting a home run,” Ding said. “I deeply appreciate this recognition from fellow

mechanical engineers. I owe my whole career to Professor Shi and I am grateful of him

for always keeping me in mind for these many years since our Michigan time.”

Ding is also a Fellow of the Institute of Industrial & Systems Engineers (IISE) and a senior

member of the Institute of Electric and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). His research focuses

on system informatics and quality and reliability engineering with applications to wind

energy and nano manufacturing.

“Yu is an outstanding scholar and educator and fully deserving of the ASME Fellow

Award,” said Dr. Mark Lawley, interim department head of the Department of Industrial

and Systems Engineering at Texas A&M. “He is also a humble and compassionate person,

and a treasure for our department and university.”

Ding named American Society of Mechanical Engineers Fellow



Dr. Madhav

Erraguntla, professor,

and Dr. Mark Lawley,

interim head of

the Department

of Industrial and

Systems Engineering

at Texas A&M, were

awarded a $1 million

contract from the

Defense Health Program in the U.S. Department of Defense. The researchers

will work collaboratively with Knowledge Based Systems, Inc. (KBSI) to

design and develop a data integration and predictive analysis system (IPAS).

“Healthcare workers want protective equipment and protocols that keep

them safe and citizens want to ride the subway or bus without fear of being

infected,” Lawley said. “This grant will support our ongoing research in

designing the global surveillance and response systems of the 21st century

with the goal of containing infectious outbreaks at their source.”

The IPAS system will enable prediction, analysis and response management

of infectious diseases.

“The method we have developed in phase I is generic, but focuses on

predicting influenza-like illness (ILI) in the U.S. and health and human services

regions,” Erraguntla said. “Phase I also studied the effectiveness of Twitter-

based flu signal data for predicting the disease intensity. The goal of phase II

is to extend the methodology to diseases such as Ebola and the Zika virus.”

Prior knowledge of disease incidents will allow for proactive steps such as

the development of medical interventions, preventive healthcare for disease

hazards and containment of disease paths. The timely prediction of disease

outbreaks will begin the effective coordination and mobilization of medical,

human and pharmaceutical resources.

“These features will benefit many organizations such as the

Center for Disease Control, National Institutes of Health, and

other public health officials who can mobilize resources and

develop plans and contingencies to respond to global and local

disease outbreaks,” Erraguntla said.

Dr. Lewis Ntaimo, associate professor in the

Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering

at Texas A&M University, was a member of the

team that won the INFORMS Computing Society

(ICS) annual award for the best group of related

papers dealing with the operations research/

computer science interface.

Others sharing in the prize were Suvrajeet Sen,

Dinakar Gade, Julia Higle, Simge Küçükyavuz, and

Hanif Sherali. The collaborators were recognized

for their seminal work on stochastic mixed integer programming captured in

five research papers. Ntaimo was lead author for two of those papers.

“This award was really a huge surprise for me since it has been 10 years

now since my first publication along this line of work,” Ntaimo said. “In

fact, the fourth publication listed on the award is based on my Ph.D.

dissertation work. Therefore, it is fulfilling to see that the optimization

community has actually recognized the contributions we have made in

advancing solution methods in stochastic mixed-integer programming.”

The award was presented at this year’s annual conference and brought

together all six collaborators.

“This is a great accomplishment for Dr. Ntaimo because it is peer

recognition,” said Dr. César Malavé, former head of the department.

“Also, there were 10 nominations, and his team was chosen as

number one.”

Dr. Satish Bukkapatnam and Dr.

César Malavé of the Department of

Industrial and Systems Engineering

have been selected to receive the

Fellow Award from the Institute of

Industrial and Systems Engineers

(IISE). Bukkapatnam and Malavé are

professors in the department.

The Fellow Award recognizes

outstanding leaders who have

made significant, nationally recognized contributions to industrial

engineering. This is the highest classification of IISE membership.

Bukkapatnam and Malavé are both leaders in promoting industrial

engineering and continue to enhance the impact of the industry

through promotional activities. They have each served in national and

international groups relating to industrial engineering and work to

enhance the visibility of the industry. These qualities, among others,

qualify Bukkapatnam and Malavé for this honor.

The pair was selected by the Fellows Committee to attend a reception and

awards banquet at the IISE Annual Conference and Expo in May.

Ntaimo Part of Team that Wins INFORMS Computing Society Prize

Erraguntla and Lawley Receive $1 Million Grant from the Department of Defense

Bukkapatnam and Malavé Receive Highest IISE Award


Paying it Forward

HIGH IMPACT

Every semester, seniors in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Texas A&M University enroll in the Capstone Senior Design course. The course’s main objective is to provide students with experience in working on a real-life problem using the general and engineering skills they have gained during their undergraduate education.

At the end of the semester, each team presents its project and poster to other students, faculty members and sponsors. The department presents awards for outstanding work. The first-place team for the spring 2016 semester was comprised of Oluteniola Adeyemi, Hani Arafat, Nathan Sorkin and Sarah Wilson, and was sponsored by the University Writing Center.

“Their services are in very high demand by students,” Arafat said. “Those trying to make an appointment with the Writing Center often found that they had to wait upwards of a week before they could get in.”

The Writing Center’s mission is to help students practice the habits of mature composers of written and oral communication and to provide resources for faculty and teaching assistants for integrating best writing and oral communication pedagogy into courses across the disciplines and in the core curriculum.

After meeting with Dr. Candace Hastings, director of the University Writing Center, and Thadeus Bowerman, a writing consultant at the center, the team realized the need for reduced wait times to better accommodate students seeking help.

“This semester, the University Writing Center started offering half-hour appointments on a trial basis to make more appointments available because at multiple points during the semester students cannot book an appointment for up to two weeks,” Bowerman said. “We met with the industrial engineering team to discuss working the half-hour appointment into our regular schedule on a permanent basis.”

The students spent the rest of the semester designing the best plan for the center and those served by the center.

“Our goal for this project was to try to reduce these long wait times and increase the number of students that the writing center serves each day by integrating short 30-minute appointments in addition to the longer 60-minute appointments currently offered,” Arafat said. “Our key performance indicators were the number of students the writing center serves, and the percentage of time a tutor spends face-to-face with a student.”

The team developed a proposal that was accepted by Bowerman and Hastings, then began working to solve the issue identified by the client.

“We started our project by building a simulation model, and later randomly generated test schedules using visual basic for applications (VBA) programming software,” Adeyemi said. “We later found the optimal schedule based on the total number of students served per day for each tutor.”

The team ran the simulation over and over to achieve the best results.

“Essentially, the process was as follows: When the simulation was run, clients would arrive at the start of their scheduled appointment, spend time with the tutor according to a random distribution dictated by whether they were a short or long appointment,” Wilson said. “They would then exit the system after a maximum of either 25 or 45 minutes, leaving the tutor with some un-utilized time before the next scheduled arrival.”

After testing 130 random schedules, the team ranked them based on the amount of students served per tutor per day and the percentage of a tutor’s time spent face-to-face with a client.

“This new schedule allows for a 30 percent increase in the number of one-on-one consultations available each day,” Wilson said.

Students seeking help from the writing center will be able to schedule a 30-minute appointment, as well as the 60-minute appointments.


“This gives students more flexibility when booking an appointment that doesn’t conflict with their class schedules,” Arafat said.

Bowerman and Hastings are already implementing the new schedule, allowing consultants more options when deciding the beginning and end times of their shifts.

“The industrial and systems engineering team found practical ways to implement our new appointment times, and they calculated different models that factored not only increasing the number of appointments we can offer, but also a statistical analysis of the most optimum schedule to mitigate

tutor burnout,” Bowerman said.

The team members agreed this experience was beneficial to their future careers while improving other students’ experience with the writing center.

“I truly enjoyed working with the writing center,” Wilson said. “I was impressed by the work they do to help the students of Texas A&M, and I am honored that we were able to help them serve even more students.”

The team’s schedule will be fully implemented by August 2016.


Kathryn Tippey, Ph.D. student in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Texas A&M

University, was awarded the Outstanding Student Researcher award from the Partnership for Enhancing

General Aviation Safety and Sustainability (PEGASAS) program.

While accepting this award, Tippey was also announced as the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA)

sole nominee for the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Outstanding Student Researcher award.

“I am excited to have accepted this award and to have been nominated for the Department of

Transportation award,” Tippey said. “It is nice to be recognized for my hard work.”

These honors recognize her work with Dr. Thomas Ferris, assistant professor in the department, and

the FAA.

“This is a project investigating how general aviation pilots receive information via current cockpit

technology,” said Ferris. “Katie played a prominent role in the design of flight simulator scenarios,

installing them at the FAA’s William J. Hughes Technical Center, and the conduction of human

subjects experiments.”

Julie Hammett,

Ph.D. student in

the Department

of Industrial

and Systems

Engineering

at Texas A&M

University, has

been selected

to receive

a 2016 National Science Foundation (NSF)

Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP)

Fellowship.

The NSF GRFP is a prestigious award providing

recipients with three years of financial support.

Of the 17,000 applicants in 2016, Hammett

was one of 2,000 to receive an offer.

With rising patient demand, the supply of

health care providers must be increased or

providers must effectively serve more patients.

Hammett’s research focuses on improving

chronic illness care management with remote

monitoring tools that support medical

decisions and provide patient engaging

interventions.

“The goal of this project is to develop

a remote patient monitoring system that

provides support using smart algorithms and

facilitates timely communication and decision-

making between the chronically ill patient and

the primary care practitioner,” Hammett said.

The research also addresses the problem

of participant engagement leading to high

dropout rates, a fundamental barrier to the

success of remote health systems.

“This technology must be interchangeable

to suit the varied needs and characteristics of

many patients,” Hammett said.

Hammett is studying under Dr. Mark Lawley’s

supervision and will graduate in May 2019.

Matthew Aguirre,

while a senior in

the Department of

Industrial and Systems

Engineering at Texas

A&M University, was

selected as the first-

place winner of the

James Barany Student

Award for Excellence

from the Institute of

Industrial and Systems Engineering (IISE).

The award recognizes undergraduate students

who have exemplified excellence of scholarship and

campus leadership since the beginning of their junior

year. The Texas A&M IISE student chapter could

nominate two graduating seniors for this award.

Aguirre graduated in May with plans to eventually

earn his Ph.D. in industrial engineering. He was

honored at the IISE Annual Conference and Expo.

Hammett selected receives National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship

Aguirre receives James Barany Student Award for Excellence

Tippey Receives PEGASAS Award; Nomination for U.S. Department of Transportation Award



Dr. Hamid Parsaei, professor in the


Engineering at Texas A&M University and

director of academic outreach at Texas A&M

University Qatar, was recently inducted into

Western Michigan University’s (WMU) College

of Engineering and Applied Sciences Alumni

Excellence Academy.

The Alumni Excellence Academy recognizes

outstanding graduates of the college of

engineering and applied sciences at WMU who have become leaders in

engineering.

“It is an honor to be selected,” said Parsaei, who earned his master’s degree

in industrial engineering from WMU. “The mentorship of the faculty and the

quality education provided during my years in the college shaped my career

and gave me lifelong vision. I am forever indebted to the college, to Western

Michigan University and to those who inspired me and guided me.”

Before joining Texas A&M, Parsaei served as professor and chair of the

Department of Industrial Engineering in the Cullen College of Engineering at

the University of Houston for over nine years.

Within the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE), Parsaei served

as the director of the Engineering Economy Division, senior vice president-

at-large (international), and a member of the board of trustees. He is also a

fellow of IIE and the American Society for Engineering Education.

Parsaei has acted as principal or co-principal investigator on projects

sponsored by the National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of

Homeland Security, Qatar National Research Fund and Texas Department of

Transportation, among many others.

Parsaei is a registered professional engineer in Texas and holds a doctorate

in industrial engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington.

Dr. Erick Moreno-Centeno, assistant professor

in the Department of Industrial and Systems

Engineering at Texas A&M University, has been

selected to receive the Dr. Hamed E. Eldin

Outstanding Early Career Industrial Engineering

(IE) in Academia Award from the Institute of

Industrial and Systems Engineering.

Sponsored by Integrated Systems Technology,

this award recognizes those who have

demonstrated outstanding characteristics in

education, leadership, professionalism and potential in industrial engineering.

Early career IISE members are honored for their contributions in application,

design, research or development of industrial engineering methods.

Moreno-Centeno’s research is focused in the theory and applications of

discrete optimization with an emphasis on network optimization. His focus is to

design and analyze optimization models and algorithms that are computationally

possible for real-world applications. To achieve this, he combines effective

modeling with efficient computational techniques. His current projects include

designing a roundoff-error-free and fast-in-practice linear programming

algorithm and solving problems in energy (topology control), decision theory

(voting) and machine learning.

Moreno-Centeno accepted the award at the IISE Annual Conference and Expo

in May.

Dr. Hamid R. Parsaei, professor in the Department of Industrial

and Systems, has been selected for the George L. Smith Award for

Excellence in the International Promotion of IE Award by the Institute

for Industrial and Systems Engineering (IISE).

The George L. Smith Award honors Dr. George L. Smith’s

commitment and dedication to advancement of the industrial

engineering profession. This award recognizes the contributions

of industrial engineers, like Parsaei, who continue the tradition of

advancing the profession at a global level. Recipients of this award

are comprised of individuals who have made significant, long-

standing contributions to the industrial engineering discipline and

exemplify role model behavior as ambassadors of goodwill for the

profession across national boundaries.

Parsaei has served as the director of the Engineering Economy

Division within IISE, as well as senior vice president-at-large and a

member of the board of trustees.

He was be honored at the IISE Annual Conference

and Expo in May.

Moreno-Centeno receives Outstanding Early Career IE in Academia Award

Parsaei inducted into WMU’s College of Engineering and Applied Sciences Alumni Excellence Academy

Parsaei selected for the IISE George L. Smith Award


Researchers in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Texas A&M University are studying memory limitations in high-workload environments, weather alerts for general aviation pilots and remote health monitoring to save the lives of veterans. Dr. Farzan Sasangohar, Dr. Thomas Ferris and Dr. Mark Lawley are improving the lives of people around the world.

“Our work is focused on using emerging technologies to improve human welfare by making complex tasks and chronic diseases easier to manage in noisy, evolving environments,” said Lawley, interim department head of industrial and systems engineering.

Improving intensive care

Many people experience lapses in memory when the workload at the office becomes a bit heavier than usual. These lapses can be dangerous if the work involves time sensitive, safety-critical decision making. Sasangohar, assistant professor, is working to make hospitals safer by applying his expertise on human decision-making, interruptions and memory limitations to the demanding environment of intensive care.

According to the Patient Safety Movement, more than 200,000 deaths occur each year due to preventable causes under the care of a medical professional, costing $1.26 trillion per year to treat these medical errors. The mission of the Patient Safety Movement aligns with that of Sasangohar’s research: decrease mistakes made by medical professionals.

“Humans in high-workload environments are especially prone to memory limitations,” Sasangohar said. “My research investigates the design and evaluation of memory aid tools in safety-critical settings. This will help intensive care unit nurses manage their duties during high-workload or interruption episodes.”

He uses displays that provide smart checklists and visual timelines of important events to achieve reliable workload management and efficiency.

“Interactive graphical representations of events could also help personnel in safety-critical settings recover from interruptions in an efficient and effective manner,” he said.

Sasangohar was recently honored with a best paper award sponsored by Lockheed Martin from the Houston Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. The paper is titled “Systematic management of interruptions to nurses in an intensive care unit.”

Alerting general aviation pilots

General aviation includes all civil aviation, except passenger airline services. Often referred to as the ‘wild west’ by those in the aviation world, it has seen a number of pilots flying into dangerous weather, resulting in death. In 2015, 384 people lost their lives due to crashes while aboard general aviation aircraft, weather being the cause.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is investing in research to determine the cause of these decisions. Ferris, assistant professor, has joined the FAA’s efforts on this project.

“It’s some combination of did not receive the right weather information, did not receive it in time, received and did not believe it or the pilots were overconfident in their ability to handle the weather,” Ferris said. “One interesting factor we are looking at now is that often the weather data arrives, but it is not unusual for the data to arrive late, referring to weather that is a half-hour old or even more latent.”

He and his team are working to not only determine why these pilots flew into dangerous situations, but also identify the best and most effective alert system to assist the pilots in decisions about whether or not to fly into the area.

“We are looking for this project to define the minimum effective way that weather updates could be given to pilots while they are flying,” Ferris said. “The reason we say minimum is because it is the wild west, and anything that has the potential to be airborne, could be airborne. You cannot make assumptions that everyone has a nice GPS or that they have one of the dozens of products out there that allow them to get the key data.”

After a couple years of simulation and in-flight studies, the team has found some answers regarding the best way to notify pilots of the weather ahead.

“We found that the vibrating aspects of smart watches were really useful,” Ferris said. “Even in a vibrating aircraft, the vibrations were received and responded to every time.”

Excited for the next phase of the study, Ferris believes this is a good application area to test attention-based problems.

“This next study will build a bit upon what we found useful in vibration cuing by focusing our methods to test vibration patterns more directly,” Ferris said. “It’s a cool problem to work on, there will definitely be more flight testing next year.”

Nurses, pilots and veterans to benefit from new technologies

HIGH IMPACT


Saving veteran’s lives

Lawley is the deputy director of the TEES Center for Remote Health Technologies and Systems, whose mission is to “develop breakthrough remote health technologies, algorithms and information systems to address the critical needs of patients and providers globally and enable healthy living.”

As part of this center, he is actively involved in several projects related to using remote health technologies to improve the care of patients with chronic diseases, including Type 2 diabetes, sleep apnea and cardiovascular disease.

Lawley is collaborating with Sasangohar and Dr. Hye-Chung Kum of Texas A&M, and Dr. Justin Benzer of the Veteran’s Health Administration, to develop technologies and smart phone applications for the remote care of veterans with post traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD).

“Over 20 veterans take their own lives every day due to depression, anxiety and other mental health challenges,” Lawley said. “For our veterans, PTSD is foremost among these. Our hope is to develop technologies and systems that will enable remote monitoring and care interventions that can save these lives.”

The key to this work is to develop effective smartphone apps for daily PTSD monitoring. Although some PTSD apps have been developed, they are standalone and do not remotely monitor the patient’s biometrics essential for remotely gaging emotional state. Essential biometrics could be changes in the patient’s heart rate or voice characteristics.

The group’s hypothesis is that key mental state change indicators can be monitored through mobile sensors to identify episodes of heightened PTSD symptoms. This will allow the daily tracking of the patient’s emotional state and implementation of timely interventions to save lives.

The team is taking a “user-centered” design approach to systematically derive key functional and informational requirements from stakeholders in order to develop an easy-to-use and efficient PTSD information system and to collect sufficient preliminary data to support the central hypothesis. The system developed could be a mobile app used by veterans and a set of displays to support clinicians’ workflow.

“The system will help veterans to communicate key mental state changes to healthcare professionals and enable clinicians to monitor

patients by presenting them with information that supports their work and meets their expectation,” Lawley said.

The team has obtained seed funding from Texas A&M to develop the initial prototypes and will be seeking longer term resources to carry the project to full fruition.

“If we are successful, this research will save veteran’s lives,” Lawley said. “We feel privileged to work on the behalf of those who have suffered and sacrificed for our freedom.”

Benefitting the future

The research conducted by Sasangohar, Ferris and Lawley showcase the dedication they have to improving the quality of life for current and future generations.

As a result of their work, personnel in high-workload environments will benefit from memory aid technologies to more efficiently serve their patients. General aviation pilots will benefit from low-cost technology to receive alerts when approaching dangerous weather situations. Veterans will receive the appropriate care they need as a result of remote health monitoring technologies.

“Overall, we are concerned with human welfare,” Lawley said. “Our research is about helping people live longer and better lives.”


For many engineering students, the daily

grind consists of waking up, studying

and going to sleep. Matthew Baumgartner, a senior in the Department

of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Texas A&M

University, found time to impact lives by co-founding

a branch of 180 Degrees Consulting.

“180 is an international organization that was founded

nine years ago in Australia at the University of Sydney,” Baumgartner

said. “It now has branches in 31 countries at 74 top-tier universities. We are the first university in the heartland of America and in Texas to begin serving.”

The organization provides affordable consulting for nonprofit organizations by merging the talent and passion of university students with nonprofits’ problems to create social impact. College students all over the world are trained as consultants to design and implement strategies with the goal of helping organizations run more efficiently.

“One of the groups we are working with is called Elijah Rising and they are trying to end human trafficking,” he said. “They bought this old college campus and are converting it to a restoration home for women. The facility is now called Kendleton Farms.”

This 84-acre farm in Houston will provide a safe place for victims to heal physically, spiritually and emotionally. To serve these women and provide the best resources, the staff asked for help from Baumgartner’s team to create effective business models for the women to obtain fiscal independence and re-adjust to society.

“We are building sustainable business models for the women to live and work on the farm,” he said. “The six businesses range from a wedding venue to a flower shop to a bed and breakfast.”

In addition to working with Elijah Rising, 180 Degrees Consulting at Texas A&M has completed 16 other client engagements since its

founding three semesters ago with nonprofits in the Bryan-College Station area and Houston.

The idea for establishing a branch of 180 Degrees Consulting at Texas A&M came from Callie Lowe, a graduate student in industrial and systems engineering. Together, they began consulting nonprofit organizations in the area.

“My friend Callie heard about 180 Degrees Consulting during an internship from a co-worker,” Baumgartner said. “She was really interested and asked me to help her get it started here.”

180 Degrees is the world’s largest pro bono consultancy and offers a broad range of consulting services for nonprofit organizations. The company’s mission is to create value for both the organizations and the student consultants.

“The mission of 180 is to strengthen the ability of socially conscious organizations to achieve high-impact social outcomes through the development of innovative, practical and sustainable solutions,” he said.

For Baumgartner, 180 Degrees Consulting allowed him to carry out his passion of helping those in need.

“My goal during my time at Texas A&M and beyond is to love God and to love people well, which I hope is reflected by the things I chose to invest my time in,” he said.

Besides functioning as president of 180, Baumgartner was involved in other student organizations including serving as the community director of the International Justice Mission, founding Aggies at All Faiths, worked as a resident adviser in the dorms on campus, and performed research in multiple studies in the Human Factors and Cognitive Systems Lab within the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering.

While consulting may not be a field that initially comes to mind when industrial engineering is mentioned, Baumgartner has found many areas in which his education and consulting skills complement his passions.

“My four years in industrial and systems engineering have given me a foundation of skills that can be applied across industries,” Baumgartner said. “That toolkit has helped equip me for my job after graduation at The Boston Consulting Group where I’ll be advising a wide range of organizations.”

Consulting a Better World

NEXT GENERATION


Buchanan selected for the IISE Pritsker Doctoral Dissertation Award

Adolfo R. Escobedo, Ph.D. graduate

of the Department of Industrial and

Systems Engineering at Texas A&M

University, was selected as a 2016

recipient of the U.S. Senator Phil

Gramm Doctoral Fellowship.

The U.S. Senator Phil Gramm Doctoral

Fellowship was established to promote,

encourage and reward outstanding

teaching and research by doctoral

students. Each college selects two students whose command of

their respective disciplines exemplifies the meaning of scholar/

mentor in the highest sense to submit to the Office of Graduate and

Professional Studies. Recipients are then evaluated and selected by a

committee.

Under Dr. Erick Moreno’s supervision, Escobedo’s research focuses

on the theory and application of optimization: linear, mixed-

integer, and nonlinear programming, mathematical programming

error reduction/elimination; and the design, analysis, and high-

performance-computing implementation of algorithms.

Escobedo has three publications that have appeared or been

selected to appear in journals, such as IISE Transactions and IISE

Transactions on Power Systems. A publication in the INFORMS

Journal on Computing was named a top six finalist in the INFORMS

Junior Faculty Paper Competition Honorable Mention.

Escobedo taught ISEN 302 in the spring of 2015 and 2016 and

currently serves as a mentor for the Louis Stokes Alliance for

Minority Participation Bridge to the Doctorate Program at Texas

A&M. Through his mentor service, Escobedo

works to develop necessary skills in peers

to help them be successful minority

professionals.

Escobedo is now an assistant professor

in the School of Computing, Informatics

and Decision Systems Engineering at

Arizona State University.

Dr. Austin Buchanan, graduate of the Department

of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Texas

A&M University, has been selected for the second

place Pritsker Doctoral Dissertation Award by the

Institute for Industrial and Systems Engineering.

The Pritsker Doctoral Dissertation Award

recognizes outstanding research in industrial

engineering.

During his time at Texas A&M, Buchanan

published five articles, one of which was selected

as the May 2015 President’s Pick article. He is now an assistant professor in

the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management at Oklahoma State

University.

Buchanan was honored at the IISE Annual Conference and Expo in May.

Hammett receives the Heep Graduate Fellowship

Julie Hammett, Ph.D. student in the

department of Industrial and Systems

Engineering at Texas A&M University,

was selected to receive the Heep

Graduate Fellowship by the Texas

A&M Institute for Advanced Study.

The Heep Graduate Fellowship is

awarded to those who demonstrate

outstanding academic performance,

research ability and potential and leadership qualities.

Under the supervision of Dr. Mark Lawley, Hammett is working

to develop a remote healthcare system to monitor patients with

chronic illnesses such as diabetes and sleep apnea.

Escobedo awarded U.S. Senator Phil Gramm Doctoral Fellowship


The Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Texas A&M University was well-represented at the annual College of Engineering Project Showcase. Four teams and 30 students participated in the event, explaining their research and solutions to industry leaders.

The 2016 Engineering project showcase featured the work of 145 teams comprised of more than 750 students. Two teams with students from the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering received top awards at the showcase.

“Our students are constantly learning and researching ways to better our world,” said Dr. César Malavé, former head of the department. “The Engineering Project Showcase is a great opportunity for them to present their research as well as learn from other teams in other disciplines.”

Notifying Caretakers

Families with loved ones taking prescription medication have a hard time reassuring themselves that medication is being taken consistently and correctly. A team of students is developing technologies that remind users to consume their medication as prescribed by their doctor, then send notifications to their loved ones.

“By doing this, we are attempting to solve prescription compliance problems that are currently a burden to national healthcare systems and kill an estimated 125,000 individuals annually in the U.S.,” said Dylan Begnaud, a junior industrial and systems engineering major.

Begnaud works with Sanjay Nair, a graduate student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Jason Sieben, a senior computer science major.

“We establish a healthy form of communication again between family members instead of treating our elders like children,” Begnaud said. “Every day we get notifications from Facebook, so why not have notifications when your loved ones have taken their medication?”

Measuring Performance

EDP Renewables (EDPR) primarily uses wind turbines to generate electricity with renewable energy. As an energy wholesaler, EDPR recently made a strategic shift to perform maintenance on its wind turbines rather than contracting out maintenance work with the equipment manufacturer. While the company takes on more risk by handling its own maintenance work, it can be certain the work is done correctly and efficiently.

“The objective of our project was to update EDPR’s set of key performance indicators to accurately measure and describe their wind farm’s performance in detail,” said Mitchell Mesenbrink, a senior industrial and systems engineering major. “The metrics must align EDPR’s new self-perform maintenance model and focus on driving value by achieving maximum equipment reliability and performance while minimizing cost.”

The team is comprised of senior industrial and systems engineering students, Joel Betancours, Jake Klahs, Kevin Hsieh and Mesenbrink. With the potential to grow the renewable energy industry, Mesenbrink and his team is excited to present its report to the representatives at EDPR.

“Helping make renewable energy sources more viable on a large scale is better for our planet and future generations of people,” Mesenbrink said. “The most beneficial part of this experience was working with the EDPR representatives to create something that is meaningful and useful.”

Predicting Seizures

The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Strokes states that two million people in the United States have experienced an unprovoked seizure or been diagnosed with epilepsy. During the past 30 years, several algorithms for predicting seizure onset based on EEG recordings have been developed, but with limited success.

“Our system aims to detect, predict and notify the patient before the seizure occurs and text the location of the patient to their loved ones upon predicting a seizure,” said Sheril Loke, a senior industrial and systems engineering major. “Additionally, the caretakers can consistently and reliably monitor the patient’s epilepsy condition on a daily basis.”

The placement of the sensor to perform an EEG requires an invasive technique, as of today. The team will develop and design a less invasive and comfortable device to perform the same tests.

“The outcome of the project would provide a non-invasive and comfortable wearable headset device coupled with an effective

Students honored at Engineering Project Showcase

NEXT GENERATION


detection and prediction algorithm with over 90 percent accuracy,” said Ashif Iquebal, a graduate student in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering. “This device will be integrated with a mobile application that can allow point of care and real-time monitoring of the seizure.”

The multi-disciplinary team has students working in four main groups to ensure the timely achievement of the project goals.

“As students, the most beneficial part of this project was getting the chance to work on an interdisciplinary project, among many different nationalities and of all different levels of education,” Loke said.

The team was one of two teams to be selected as winners of the Shell Award at the Engineering Showcase. This award is presented to the highest scoring non-capstone team project by the College of Engineering at Texas A&M.

Creating Interest

With a declining interest in areas of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) in elementary school children, the STEM Space team has developed a game to reverse the trend.

“The way we get kids hooked on learning is by making the app social,” said Julian Franklin, a junior industrial and systems engineering major. “Our research showed that a gaming aspect helped promote kids to compete and collaborate with each other in order to have the highest score.”

The younger students were not the only ones learning from this project. The engineering students also learned to work off of each other’s strengths and weaknesses.

“The most beneficial part of this experience has been learning how to play to the strengths and weaknesses of an individual in a team,” Franklin said.

The team was comprised of Franklin, Nivedhan Manavalan, a graduate student in the Department of Information and Operations Management; Mohammad Sagor, a sophomore computer science

major; Thomas Rockwood, a sophomore biological and agricultural engineering major; Murphy Young, a graduate student in the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Culture; and Austin Verrett, a junior industrial and systems engineering major.

Optimizing a New UPS Hub

As a part of the senior capstone design course, a team of four industrial and systems engineering students were tasked with planning a United Parcel Service (UPS) facility that will

be built in 2018 in Houston. When planning the facility, UPS asked the team to balance the workload per center, determine the number of drivers and vehicles needed on the first day of operation and suggest an implementation process as the area continues to grow.

“Our project will help UPS better service hundreds of thousands of customers in the Houston area,” said Robin Hall, a senior industrial and systems engineering major. “We also strove for a solution that would create an ideal work situation for hundreds of UPS employees.”

The team was excited to have the opportunity to apply their undergraduate education to a real-world situation.

“The most beneficial part of this experience was getting the chance to work collaboratively with a company we respect,” Hall said. “Most of our education has been theoretical and it has been a great experience to apply our knowledge to a real-world problem.”

Hall and her team members, Charles Bentz, Cody Keller, and Sarah Valero, worked all semester to design a plan for UPS and help its customers in the Houston area.

“Our planning will now help UPS get their packages to the public’s door as efficiently as possible,” Hall said. “Hopefully it will allow UPS to maintain low prices and excellent customer relations.”

The team competed against other capstone design teams in the Engineering Showcase last month. Its project was selected as the winner of the Capstone – Other Majors category.

Bringing Home the Gold

“The Engineering Showcase gives our students an opportunity to showcase their work, practice critical skills and get recognized for what they have done – it’s the trifecta of opportunities,” said José Vázquez, lecturer in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering. “In our case, one of our teams has won in each of the past two years, so now we have a tradition to build on that motivates students.”


QUALITY SERVICE

Entrepreneur, researcher, professor, software designer, federal task force director, vice chancellor and dean, all titles held by Dr. G. Kemble Bennett during his unusual, yet rewarding career.

Over the course of his career, Bennett was active in the Institute of Industrial Engineers, now the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE). In May he was honored with the Frank and Lillian Gilbreth Industrial Engineering award, the highest and most

revered honor given by IISE. The award recognizes the contributions recipients have made in the field and to the welfare of mankind.

“I was both honored and humbled to receive this award,” Bennett said. “To be listed among those who have achieved this award is just unbelievable.”

Bennett is the vice chancellor and dean emeritus of the Texas A&M

LIVING THE DREAM JOBBennett’s Career of Opportunities


University College of Engineering and a senior professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering.

A successful foundation

“I honestly did not have a dream job,” Bennett said. “I went into the military right out of high school and then I went to Florida State University to study mathematics.”

Bennett soon decided to pursue higher education, moved across the country to California and began working for the Lockheed Missiles and Space Division. After some persuasion from a colleague at Lockheed, Bennett moved to Lubbock, Texas, and began running a computing center at Texas Tech University while earning his Ph.D.

Prior to finishing his Ph.D., Bennett was offered a job at Virginia Polytechnic Institute (VPI) by Dr. Paul Torgersen, the department head of the Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research.

“I became a faculty member in the industrial and management systems engineering department at the University of South Florida and eventually became the department head,” he said.

In his “spare” time

In addition to actively teaching and conducting research, Bennett and two other professors combined their expertise to develop a hardware and computer system to automatically record the results of blood tests.

“Back then, they had to hand-record the results,” Bennett explained. “There are a lot of places to have errors with people manually recording numbers. We developed a way to record the data electronically.”

Bennett and his colleagues, a computer scientist and an electrical engineer, ran the small company out of the bedroom of an apartment.

“We formed this company because several hospitals and laboratories were interested in our solution,” he said. “The next thing you knew, we were buying big computers ourselves, tying in our hardware, putting all of our software packages on them.”

Soon, Smith-Kline, a large pharmaceutical company, asked Bennett’s team to implement its programs in 77 different offices around the United States.

“We were not ready to become full-time businessmen, nor were we willing to leave education,” Bennett said. “So, we sold them the company and they got a good deal.”

Aggies are calling

A few years later, Bennett was asked to apply for the department head position in industrial and systems engineering at Texas A&M.

While he was reluctant at first, Aggieland won his heart.

“I came to College Station and really liked what I saw,” Bennett said. “The potential in the department was clear and there was a very strong faculty needing leadership.”

With the blessing of his wife, Bennett accepted the position and began his career in administration at Texas A&M in 1986.

“At my first job, Paul Torgersen told me that academically, I could touch more lives through management than I could in the classroom,” Bennett said. “He said it would not be as visible, but it would have greater impact. As department head, I found this to be true.”

A fire ignites

Known as an outstanding researcher, Bennett quickly became the associate dean for research and oversaw three state agencies: the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES), the Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) and the Texas A&M Engineering Extension Service (TEEX). Impressed with his work, the Texas A&M Board of Regents then appointed him the director of TEEX.

“I went to TEEX in 93 and found the world’s best people,” he said. “They were so dedicated to their job-skill training mission, serving the state and helping people get jobs. It was infectious.”

During his early time at TEEX, Bennett saw a need for more work in emergency response.

“The state emergency management plan gave TEEX the responsibility to respond to and coordinate urban search and rescue disasters for the state,” Bennett said. “As the director, I had to be sure we were prepared to respond when called upon.”

The biggest wake-up call for Bennett came with the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995.

“I realized that I was responsible for getting people to respond if something like that occurred in Texas, but I didn’t know what to do,” he explained.

Bennett recognized the need for a state urban search and rescue team and began talking with other leaders in the field to create such a team. With the closest Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) team a few states away in Tennessee, Bennett immediately realized two goals for his developing group.

“I knew, number one, we had to be a state team,” Bennett said. “And number two, I wanted to become a federal team.”

Living the Dream Job continued on page 33


Preparing for the take off of faster production, Lockheed Martin and the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Texas A&M University are investigating the use of advanced industrial engineering tools and procedures to study F-35 production rate.

“The main focus of the Texas A&M study is the many integrated processes that must be optimized and balanced as the production line of F-35 aircraft ramps up production to meet the customer’s demand,” said Dr. Lewis Ntaimo, an associate professor and the Marilyn and L. David Black Faculty Fellow in industrial and systems engineering.

Ntaimo and Dr. Amarnath Banerjee, with the help of graduate students Ashley Owenby and Ryan Hillegass, are modeling and analyzing the process of assembling an F-35 aircraft at the Lockheed Martin facility.

“Lockheed Martin is responsible for putting the final aircraft together,” said Banerjee, professor and the Corrie and Jim Furber ’64 Faculty Fellow in the department. “One company builds the engine, another company builds the seat and so on. Our job is to model the mating of the four fuselage sections followed by the final assembly stations. Modeling these assembly processes with real-world probability distributions will help us understand the critical process elements and potential bottlenecks as production rates increase.”

Lockheed Martin has already developed the plans to implement the increased production rate, but is open to new techniques that may identify improvements in the current plan.

“Lockheed Martin plans to increase their F-35 production rate by about four and a half times from their current rate,” Banerjee said. “The plan is to increase the production rate in stages over the next few quarters.”

After visiting the facility, the team of researchers began collaborating on how to go about studying the complex F-35 manufacturing systems and identifying the processes that should become more efficient as production rates increase. The application of advanced industrial engineering simulation techniques was of particular interest to Lockheed Martin.

“In order to do this, as industrial engineers, we have to understand the processes,” Ntaimo said. “Once we understand the process, we capture and model it. Then we build simulation models that allow us to actually run the process to see how long it takes to get an aircraft out.”

While every plan works perfectly in theory, a complex manufacturing system like the F-35 must be able to deal with unanticipated quality, material or engineering issues as they arise.

“One such variable is that some jobs that are supposed to be done in a given station, due to engineering, quality, personnel or material issues, do not always get finished on time resulting in out of station work,” Banerjee said. “Out of station work typically costs more to complete when it is moved out of its original position on the assembly line. So, there are buffers in the models to allow for the crews to catch up. When there is unfinished work, they have to figure out what crew to allocate to the job, the level of the unfinished work, and who can perform the job. When people are reassigned, the work rotation becomes non-standard and thus a disruption to the line.”

Ideally, the buffers should not have any work and should only serve as holding stations, which would indicate no out of station work. The F-35 is a mixed-model production line — producing three variants on the same line — which was one of the advantages of the original joint strike fighter affordability strategy. In spite of the shared learning and commonality between variants, the changeover between them does result in some variability in the system.

“When there is a shift in production from one variant to another, disruption occurs from the differences in tasks required to assemble another variant,” Banerjee said.

Additionally, not all of the variants are produced in equal numbers. When a variant is produced in smaller numbers, the production staff is not as familiar with all the steps.

The team is analyzing different types of data including future production plans and proposed increases in production staff to handle the growing production rate.

HIGH IMPACT

Soaring to Faster Production


“It is a learning process,” Banerjee said. “The more they make a particular variant, the better they get at it.”

The team is first building simulation models that will accurately replicate the results currently seen on the Lockheed Martin production line.

“We use simulation to see the extent of the variabilities, look at the schedules, which transitions are happening, and when they are occurring,” Banerjee said. “Once we know if this works, we will then apply optimization techniques to help efficiently increase the assembly of the planes.”

“The optimization problem will involve determining the appropriate levels of decision variables for the production line to meet the desired production schedule for each type

of aircraft,” Ntaimo said. “In addition to optimizing the schedules, we want to help Lockheed Martin minimize the risk of missing any internal scheduled dates. If they miss these deadlines, then they may incur additional costs.”

Brent Lyon, president of the industrial and systems engineering advisory council and Lockheed Martin industrial engineering senior manager, is looking forward to executing the future plans of the company as it increases the F-35 production rates.

“By bringing in outside eyes with this level of expertise in analytics and optimization, we can assure that as we execute our future plans for increasing production rates that we will do so at the most efficient and effective level,” Lyon said.


Five faculty members and one student from the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Texas A&M University were recognized during the 2016 Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE) Annual Conference and Expo in Anaheim, California.

The largest industrial and systems engineering event of the year provides educational and networking opportunities through sessions, receptions, town halls and keynote presentations.

Individuals from the department were recognized at the honors and awards ceremony on the last night of the conference.

The 2017 IISE Annual Conference and Expo will be held in Pittsburgh.

Industrial and systems engineering faculty members, student recognized at IISE Annual Conference and Expo

Frank and Lillian Gilbreth Industrial Engineering Award

Dr. G. Kemble Bennett

IISE Fellow AwardDr. Satish Bukkapatnam

IISE Fellow AwardDr. César O. Malavé

George L. Smith AwardDr. Hamid R. Parsaei

Outstanding Early Career IE in Academia AwardDr. Erick Moreno-Centeno

James Barany Student AwardMatthew Aguirre



Dr. César O. Malavé, professor in the


Engineering at Texas A&M University,

has been named the new dean and chief

operating officer (COO) at Texas A&M

University at Qatar. Malavé’s appointment

was effective July 1.

The Texas A&M University System Board

of Regents and Chancellor John Sharp

formally approved Malavé’s selection

upon the recommendation of Texas A&M

President Michael K. Young and Provost

and Executive Vice President Karan Watson.

“The Texas A&M University at Qatar

program is very important to Texas A&M

University and the State of Qatar and I am

honored to have been selected to serve

in this capacity,” Malavé said. “I look

forward to the opportunity to work with

the faculty and staff as they continue to

educate world-class engineers and conduct

impactful research.”

Malavé will be responsible for the administration and

management of the academic, research and public service

programs of the institution, as well as for providing vision and

direction for the engineering-oriented branch campus in Qatar.

“Dr. Malavé brings extensive administrative and academic

experience to the position,” President Young said, “and that will

serve him and the university well in working with the faculty and

students at our Qatar campus, as well as with his counterparts at

the other American institutions there and with Qatar Foundation

officials.”

Internationally recognized for his contributions to engineering

education, Malavé brings more than 30 years of service to Texas A&M

University to his new role. Under his leadership, the Department of

Industrial and Systems Engineering has recruited new faculty at both

the junior and senior level, developed a new advanced manufacturing

initiative and launched major initiatives to revitalize the undergraduate

curriculum and graduate program. Additionally, Malavé also served as

the lead principal investigator for Texas A&M’s participation in a 10-

year National Science Foundation funded Foundation Coalition Grant to

revamp engineering education. In this role, he coordinated all activities

related to curricula development, implementation, and outcomes

assessment across partner institutions, and disseminated the resulting

educational model through workshops in the United States and abroad.

“I have had the privilege of working with Dr. Malavé for over 30 years,

he is internationally recognized for his contributions to manufacture

engineering and engineering education, has a passion for his students

and our unique Aggie spirit,” Watson said. “I can think of no better

choice for this position as we continue our commitment to a full Texas

A&M University experience for our students in Qatar.”

Before his appointment as department head, Malavé served in

a variety of administrative positions in the College of Engineering

including assistant dean for international programs, assistant and

associate director of the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station

(TEES), and associate dean for recruitment and international programs.

Malavé Named Dean and COO of Texas A&M University at Qatar


HIGH IMPACT

From the healthcare industry, to wind energy, the oil and gas industry

and manufacturing, researchers from the system informatics group in the

Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Texas A&M University

are developing data-driven methods to improve the systems and processes

involved with each area.

“We take in data and solve engineering systems by developing

sophisticated data analytics methods while considering engineering domain

knowledge and models,” said Dr. Yu Ding, professor and senior member of

the group. “System informatics fuses system knowledge into data modeling

and analysis. It is a key area in addressing the challenges of big data.”

Serving Efficiently

As a result of the Affordable Care Act, the call for improved access to

primary care for all Americans has reached an all-time high. Additionally,

there has been a nationwide trend amongst healthcare providers to

transform their practices to become Patient Centered Medical Homes

(PCMH), with the primary emphasis on improving quality of care. A key

function of PCMH is accessible service that requires improving accessibility

of primary care for patients.

With 90 percent of patient care delivered throughout patient services,

appointment schedules must be improved to ensure the success of all

patients. Dr. Amarnath Banerjee, associate professor, is working with his

Ph.D. student, Yu Fu, to develop models that will enable a clinic to serve the

right mix of traditional patients and same day request patients, which will

improve timely access to primary care.

“The objective is to develop a balanced schedule that tends to minimize

both the waiting time for patients as well as idle time for physicians,”

Banerjee said.

This problem becomes difficult to solve in a one size fits all manner.

Banerjee and his team use stochastic factors, estimated using advanced

statistical techniques, to account for each clinic’s individual characteristics.

“The model uses existing clinic-specific information available for the

previously scheduled traditional patients and the stochastic factors to

develop a daily schedule for the clinic,” Banerjee said. “In the process, the

model also determines the value of the available information and the extent

it helps in developing the appropriate schedule for the clinic.”

This research will help practice managers develop better appointment

schedules for their clinic using the clinic’s own data, and will improve

accessibility and quality of care for its patients.

Understanding wind speed

According to a report from the Renewable Energy Policy Network for the

21st Century, countries worldwide invested $286 billion in renewable energy

and about 7.7 million jobs around the world were associated with the

industry in 2015.

Wind energy is a type of variable renewable energy, which means the

primary energy source, the wind, and other influencing environmental

factors — air density, humidity and atmospheric stability — cannot be

controlled by people. Therefore, the wind power output of a turbine is

constantly changing.

As a result of this variable nature, the Big Data-driven predictive analytics

is needed by wind energy producers and wind farm operators for decision

making. These analytics allow the producers and operators to understand

how the wind field is changing or if the turbines are performing to the

design standards. Dr. Yu Ding and his research group are improving

the reliability of wind power production to enhance the market’s

competitiveness.

“Our group has been working closely with practitioners in the wind

industry and received over 100 gigabytes of wind farm operational

data,” Ding said. “The large amount of data provides an unprecedented

opportunity for us to address some critical technical challenges in wind

energy predictive analytics.”

Ding’s team is developing statistical and machine learning models to

understand the local wind field and its dynamics to help farm operators

forecast wind speed more accurately in the future.

“We also use the in-field measurements of both power outputs and

environmental inputs, wind speed included, to understand how a turbine

performs,” Ding said. “Answering these predictive analytics questions helps

the operators plan maintenance actions to counter turbine degradation,

justify costly retrofitting turbine upgrades, or optimize turbine control for

better production capability or a longer service life.”

The group has received grants from the Texas A&M Energy Institute and

the National Science Foundation to perform research in this field.

Developing Success

Almost 20 million barrels of oil are used each day in the United States.

Therefore, extracting oil from the earth is a process that must occur in a

timely manner.

Dr. Andrew Johnson, associate professor, is working to develop a

manufacturing system for National Oilwell Varco (NOV). This system will

allow it to be the world’s leader in the manufacturing of complex, highly

engineered oil extraction equipment. This project is in collaboration with

researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Pennsylvania

State University.

Systematically Changing the World


Constructing land or subsea drilling systems is a very

lengthy and expensive process. Additionally, the industry

is ever changing. A year and a half ago, the demand

for drilling was very high, but today, there is very little

demand.

“NOV’s manufacturing processes are making significant

improvements,” Johnson said. “The goal of this project

is to develop an integrated manufacturing system for

NOV to build complex and highly customized products

that will allow them to be as successful as Toyota was

with the mass production of cars.”

To accomplish this goal, the researchers have

identified three critical areas for development.

“These areas are manufacturing organization,

measuring manufacturing performance and

manufacturing processes,” Johnson said. “Texas

A&M is leading the research in measuring

manufacturing performance.”

The Texas A&M team is comprised of Johnson and four graduate students.

Over the past five years, 11 students have worked with six different

plants and saved the company millions of dollars through improved

communications and efficiency in operations.

“We have focused on improving the integration of shop floor metrics with

the overall objectives of the plants and company,” Johnson said.

While the oil industry is currently in a downturn, this is the right time to

apply improved measurement and operational practices to continue to allow

NOV to be the world’s leading provider of equipment and components used

in oil and gas industry.

Building Quality Control

Dr. Li Zeng, assistant professor, analyzes and monitors manufacturing and

healthcare delivery systems for improvement and quality control.

“The concerns on energy and environment during the past two decades

have led to improvements in house and building design,” Zeng said. “This

is made possible through the use of energy efficient windows made of low-

emittance glass.”

Low-emittance glass can reduce unwanted heat gain in the summer and

heat loss in the winter by reflecting up to 90 percent of infrared radiation.

“One study suggests that if all windows are made of such glass, the

collective annual energy bill of our nation could be reduced by 25 percent

per year,” Zeng said. “This has made low-emittance glass manufacturing an

important sector of the glass industry.”

The current quality control methods are unreliable because of the simple

use of quality measurements such as the measurement of optical properties

at different locations of the glass surface. Essentially, the low emittance

glass industry is a data-rich environment due to the application of advanced

information and sensing technologies in recent years. Unfortunately, the

traditional quality control system is not able to integrate the data collected

with the process monitoring and root cause diagnosis efforts.

“I am developing a method that will make full use of the information in

the measurements, thus being able to provide more reliable results,” Zeng

said. “For example, when quality problems occur, current methods may still

report false information that the manufacturing process is running normally.

My method will generate a signal of process change.”

Zeng’s work on process control in glass manufacturing was awarded the

Best Applications Paper award by the Institute of Industrial and Systems

Engineers. The paper, titled “Bayesian Hierarchical Modeling for Monitoring

Optical Profiles in Low-E Glass Manufacturing Processes,” was featured in

the Industrial Engineering (IE) Magazine.

Changing the world

Drs. Banerjee, Ding, Johnson and Zeng are conquering processes in their

respective industries to improve the life we know today.

As a result of their work, patients will get care when they need it and avoid

costly emergency room visits and hospital admissions. Wind energy will

become more available, resulting in cheaper energy rates with decreased

effects on the environment. The oil and gas industry will be capable of

producing highly customized equipment at a lower cost and in a timely

manner, making them more accessible to consumers quicker. By creating a

higher quality low emittance glass, the home or business owner will benefit

from big savings in energy use.

Whether directly or indirectly, every project will impact our daily lives for

the better.


HIGH IMPACT

Researchers in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Texas A&M University are working to better the world with their latest projects in energy, information and biological systems. They are dedicated to tackling these large-scale problems, as well as the variability and uncertainty that may arise.

Advancing Optimization

Dr. Sergiy Butenko, Donna and Jim Furber ’64 Faculty Fellow in industrial and systems engineering, is working to develop mathematical global optimization techniques, while taking advantage of other network representations of complex systems.

“By exploring structural properties, we aim to characterize and optimize the corresponding network representations of the complex system,” Butenko said.

Currently supported by the National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research, Butenko’s team works to solve these problems in social networks, biological systems and financial networks.

“Our goals include solving several important classes of hard discrete optimization problems in networks,” said Butenko, “as well as applying the developed methods to various areas ranging from social network analysis to materials.”

Operating Efficiently

Dr. Natarajan Gautam, associate department head for undergraduate affairs, is conducting research on efficiently adding renewable energy to the power grid. In an effort to maintain great performance with minimal waste and low cost, his team is looking for ways to generate and transmit power more efficiently.

“This is particularly challenging when the environment has significant uncertainty and is constantly varying over time,” Gautam said. “The ultimate objective is to improve the quality of life.”

The amount of solar power generated has a pattern of variability that usually occurs on a daily or weekly basis. When researchers look for this pattern, often described as riding the wave, the variability and uncertainty becomes a bit easier to handle. In turn, decisions are made effectively when looking at the design and control of the system.

“We usually have some historic information with which we build a model to simplify a randomly evolving process,” Gautam said. “Then, at each time instant when the environment is revealed, we need to make a decision that is best for the long run. Some challenges are simplifying the large amount of information collected to develop algorithms that run as fast as possible on a computer.”

Gautam and his team work in sensor networks, healthcare and smart manufacturing researching reliability and uncertainty.

Faster, Better, Cheaper


Analyzing Efficiently

As director of the Mathematical Optimization and Data Analysis Lab (MODAL), Dr. Kiavash Kianfar leads a team in analyzing large bodies of data and optimizing large systems. The goal of this research is to develop and implement faster and more efficient computational methods.

“The research done in MODAL is funded by the National Science Foundation, Qatar National Research Fund and the Texas A&M College of Engineering,” Kianfar said.

The research in MODAL can be categorized under three initiatives. The first looks for ways to develop faster and efficient algorithms to solve problems from a set of feasible solutions.

“We have a project working on improving the efficiency of a system’s production by putting together modules of various sizes and capacities,” Kianfar said. “This kind of planning arises in power generation, data storage and manufacturing systems.”

The second initiative studies the reliability of large systems of sensors. These systems are used to control the operation of manufacturing and service settings.

“Our underlying question is, ‘What are the best methods to determine the robustness of a particular system design against failure of its individual sensors?’,” he said.

The final initiative develops fast and resource-efficient algorithms to process biological data. The data is generated by genome sequencing technologies in research and clinical settings.

“Next-generation sequencing has revolutionized the research and treatment of complex diseases,” Kianfar said. “The research has resulted in enormous volumes of data which need to be processed and analyzed to answer various biological and medical questions. Our research aims at developing algorithms for this purpose.”

Achieving Accuracy

Dr. Erick Moreno-Centeno and his team are looking to more accurately calculate answers to algorithms.

When calculations are made, they are often rounded up or down after any number of decimal places. Proceeding with calculations and using the rounded off answers creates errors. These errors may accumulate and create a snowball effect. Therefore, the final results obtained may be dramatically incorrect. This is troublesome in applications that require completely accurate solutions.

“Our goal is to eliminate the inaccurate solutions and invalid solver output in an efficient manner,” said Moreno-Centeno.

Adolfo Escobedo, Ph.D. student, has supported Moreno’s efforts to develop a process that guarantees completely accurate solutions in algorithms.

“We have eliminated round-off errors in two of the core subroutines, the renowned LU and Choleksy factorizations, of linear optimization algorithms,” Escobedo said. “Now, we are trying to collaborate with other researchers who can implement our contributions into a commercial-grade optimization solver.”

This research will greatly impact any industry where inaccurate results can have dire consequences.

“One example is the $300 billion energy industry where inaccurate solutions can cost millions and even lead to disastrous blackouts,” Moreno-Centeno said.

Another example is the healthcare industry, where practitioners must be certain that the recommendations given by the software are accurate because inaccurate results can have serious health and, consequently, financial liabilities.

Sensing the Breeze

Dr. Lewis Ntaimo, Marilyn and L. David Black Faculty Fellow in industrial and systems engineering, is using sensors installed in wind turbines, to find the best way to gain preventive maintenance policy for turbine systems under random weather conditions. This policy decreases the expected average cost of wind turbines.

“This work is important because wind farm managers are faced with a very difficult problem,” Ntaimo said. “They must decide when to perform maintenance on wind turbines and before the components fail to minimize downtime and maintain production.”

If the components fail, they must be replaced as soon as possible to keep production losses low.

“Performing maintenance requires a maintenance crew and very expensive equipment such as a crane to allow the crew to reach the wind turbine,” Ntaimo said. “These can be located hundreds of feet above the ground.”

Ntaimo and his team have begun applying policies, such as the one used for wind turbines, to the healthcare, energy and space industries.

Impacting the World

The research these faculty members are conducting will make the world we live in a better place, while operating efficiently and maintaining the quality of the products and services we deliver. The Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering continues to focus on positively impacting the world for future generations.

“The main impact of our research is to make the goods and services faster, better and cheaper in terms of quality and environmental impact,” Gautam said.


Dr. Dinakar Sagapuram

has joined the Department

of Industrial and Systems

Engineering at Texas A&M

University as an assistant

professor.

Sagapuram comes to Texas

A&M from Purdue University

where he earned his Ph.D.

in material engineering.

His research broadly focuses on manufacturing, materials

processes and tribology.

His contributions include the development of new process

technology for creating fine-grained sheet and foil from poor-

workability alloys and methods for controlling flow instability

occurrences in machining processes. He has authored or

co-authored over 15 peer-reviewed journal and conference

publications and three U.S. patent applications in these areas.

“I am excited to begin my teaching career at one of the top

engineering schools in the nation,” Sagapuram said. “This

fall, I will be teaching ISEN 654: Manufacturing Systems,

Planning and Analysis.”

Sagapuram joins Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering

Dr. Zhijian (ZJ) Pei has joined the Department of Industrial

and Systems Engineering at Texas A&M University and the

Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) as a

professor and researcher.

Pei brings years of experience from working in industry,

academia and government environments. He earned his Ph.D.

in mechanical engineering in 1995 from the University of

Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, working under Dr. Placid M.

Ferreira.

Prior to joining Texas A&M, Pei was a professor in the Department of Industrial and

Manufacturing Systems Engineering at Kansas State University and holder of the Carl and

Mary Ice Industrial Engineering Professorship. He also served as the program director of the

Manufacturing Machines and Equipment program at the National Science Foundation (NSF)

from 2012 to 2016.

Pei holds three patents and has published more than 140 journal articles and 90 articles

in peer-reviewed proceedings. He has received the NSF Director’s Award for Excellence

Program Director and NSF CAREER Award. Pei served as an associate editor for three

journals and as an editorial board member for seven journals. He also initiated and

developed the CAREER Proposal Writing workshop in 2004 and organized this workshop

annually with more than 1,400 young faculty members from across the nation in

attendance.

During his first year with Texas A&M, Pei will be working as the assistant director for

research partnerships in the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)-hosted

Advanced Manufacturing National Program Office.

Pei joins industrial and systems engineering faculty

M. Katherine Banks, vice chancellor

and dean of engineering at Texas A&M

University, has appointed Dr. Mark

Lawley as the interim department head

in the Department of Industrial and

Systems Engineering. Lawley is a TEES

research professor in the department.

Lawley joined Texas A&M and the


Engineering in 2014 after serving for

17 years as a faculty member at Purdue

University, and two years as a faculty member at the University

of Alabama. He is a registered Professional Engineer in the State

of Texas and has done extensive consulting, as well as working

in engineering positions with the Emerson Electric Company and

Westinghouse Corporation.

He earned his bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering from

Tennessee Technological University in 1982 and his master’s degree in

1988 from Auburn University in manufacturing systems engineering.

Lawley earned his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-

Champaign in 1995.

Lawley’s research interests are in healthcare delivery systems with

emphasis on population health and chronic disease. Lawley also serves

as the deputy director of the Center for Remote Health Technologies

and Systems. The center focuses on developing breakthrough

healthcare devices, technologies and systems for disease prevention,

diagnosis and management in the global health setting.

Lawley Appointed Interim Department Head

QUALITY SERVICE


2,017 Miles, Four Weeks, Countless ExperiencesTaking the class out of the classroom is becoming increasingly

popular among summer courses. Students in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Texas A&M University studied 2,017 miles from the usual classrooms this summer to learn about engineering economics and real-time control.

The four-week journey included tours of a pharmaceutical company and a biomedical device manufacturing facility, a visit to the Department of Marine Sciences at the University of Puerto Rico – Mayagüez (UPRM), as well as hands-on research experiences.

Jeana Goodson, senior academic advisor in industrial and systems engineering, traveled with the group of 22 students during the first portion of the trip.

“Study abroad trips are an excellent way for students to gain invaluable experiences that are not available in the traditional classroom setting,” Goodson said. “The Puerto Rico trip is a phenomenal opportunity for our students to observe research topics that are different from what we have available at Texas A&M.”

Students also enjoyed trips to the cities of Ponce and Old San Juan to take advantage of being in the unique culture and location, while making friends with other students from Texas A&M and UPRM. Joseph Clegg, a junior industrial and systems engineering student,

would repeat the experiences given the opportunity.

“The best part of the trip was definitely the scenery Puerto Rico has and making memories with some new friends,” Clegg said. “The only thing I would change is my ability to speak more Spanish.”

Study abroad opportunities provide students with a first-hand experience of how others live around the world. Steven Houston, a senior industrial and systems engineering student, was originally born in Colombia. While he has grown up with an in-depth understanding of cultural differences between Latin American and the United States, he was enlightened from the moment he landed in Puerto Rico.

“The best way I can explain my thoughts and perception of Puerto Rico is that the island has the best of both worlds, the convenience of being tied to the United States and the great culture of Latin America,” Houston said.

Houston recommends students participate in a study abroad program as early in their collegiate career as possible.

“I wish I could have gone on this study abroad earlier,” Houston said. “While I was there, it felt as if I was at home both in the United States and Colombia. I recommend that a student either do it after their freshman year, or ideally between their sophomore and junior year.”

NEXT GENERATION


Additive manufacturing service bureaus are located in many regions over the world, but the Middle East is not one of them. Dr. Alaa Elwany, assistant professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Texas A&M University, jumped at the opportunity of a lifetime to participate in founding the first metal 3-D printing service bureau in this region.

“There are many in the United States, a few in Europe, but there are none in the Middle East,” Elwany said. “We are based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and are absolutely the first service bureau offering metal 3-D printing service in the Middle East.”

Julian Callanan is the founder of the new company, Sinterex. Callanan has vast experience in consulting services in the Middle East. He worked on forming a strong multi-disciplinary management team for the new business, and reached out to Elwany and Dr. Paul Smith, a research fellow from the Glasglow School of Art Institute of Design Innovation in Scotland, to serve as technical directors.

“He wanted to build a team with expertise that spans design, manufacturing, optimization and business development,” Elwany said. “Dr. Smith and I go there every four to five months to hold a meeting for the directors, discuss business development activities, meet with potential clients and participate in technology events.”

Sinterex will provide two main services to those interested in 3-D printed parts.

“First is the consulting services,” Elwany said. “Basically, when there is a manufacturing or service company in the region that is not sure what metal 3-D printing has to offer, we help them understand the value proposition of metal 3-D

printing and how it can contribute to time and cost saving compared to traditional manufacturing technologies such as CNC machining.”

The second benefit Sinterex will provide is manufacturing services. With a newly acquired metal 3-D printer on site, the team

will hire an engineer and a technician to operate the machine and provide metal 3-D printed parts for interested businesses in the region. They plan to begin production in November 2016.

In the beginning, the entrepreneurs are targeting a small biomedical sector in the Middle East to begin building their reputation and brand of services.

“We would like to be true leaders in additive manufacturing services for the biomedical sector with a focus on dental applications,” Elwany said. “So, we will be manufacturing customized crowns for dental labs and focusing on establishing our names as leaders in the entire Middle East. That list includes 22 countries such as the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Lebanon.”

In the future, the trio plans to target the production of tooling for manufacturing companies with the purchase of a larger machine. Tooling is a major cost component for companies in the manufacturing and oil and gas sectors, and Sinterex plans to offer additive manufacturing services that can help in significantly reducing cost and lead time.

“One big application for additive manufacturing is to not make the end-part itself, but to make the tool or mold that will be used to produce the part,” Elwany said. “This is a big sector of the additive manufacturing market and we would like to target this sector moving forward.”

Recently featured in major news outlets such as Metal Additive Manufacturing magazine and Al- Arabiya English, the leading 24-hour news station in the Arab world, the group is looking forward to what the future has in store for the new company.

“We are a relatively young business and were not even hopeful that we would be able to start production in the first year, but our business team secured funds from the region to begin production in November,” Elwany said. “So, we are happy with our progress thus far.”

Elwany Trail Blazes the Way for 3-D Printing in Middle East

HIGH IMPACT


Using blueprints mandated by the State of Texas and federal guidelines, Texas Task Force 1 was established to provide trained recovery and medical assistance in response to natural and man-made disasters in the state and around the country. Bennett pressed on to achieve his second goal of the task force, becoming a federal team. He met with U.S. Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn to support his efforts.

“They joined me and agreed that we should have a national team here,” Bennett said. “Today, we are one of the most experienced and elite teams in the federal system. They had never seen an operation like ours.”

An invisible threat

In his efforts to establish Texas Task Force 1, Bennett made numerous contacts with leaders and government officials who were working to prevent a terrorist attack on U.S. soil.

“We formed the National Preparedness Consortium and I became the chairman,” Bennett said. “We developed curriculum and training materials that were transferred to the states. Seeing the level of preparedness grow was definitely rewarding.”

With new equipment came the need for new knowledge. The consortium developed training teams across the country.

Unfortunately, Bennett had the right hunch when it came to a terror attack on American soil. As a result of his efforts, Texas Task Force 1 and other national response teams were prepared to fly to New York City and aid in recovery efforts on Sept. 11, 2001.

“We spent roughly nine days in New York City,” Bennett said. “Later, President Bush came to Dallas to thank us for our service and the Texas Senate passed a proclamation recognizing our contributions at ground zero in New York.”

Texas Task Force 1 also responded to the Bonfire collapse in College Station, Texas in November 1999, and many other disasters throughout the state.

FEMA is knocking

Shortly after the Hurricane Katrina disaster, Congress called for the creation of an advisory council for FEMA. The newly named FEMA director, David Paulison, called on Bennett to chair the committee.

“He wanted a council that would evaluate what FEMA was doing, listen to testimonies from people and really clean up our national response system,” Bennett said. “We did that.”

Meanwhile, in Aggieland…

Bennett was instrumental in developing the college of engineering as it exists today. In 2003, Bennett became vice chancellor and dean of the college.

“I became dean under President [Robert] Gates, who later announced he was going to increase the faculty at the university by 400,” Bennett said. “Fortunately, we were able to make the case that 100 needed to come to the college of engineering.”

Per the request of Gov. Rick Perry, Bennett also served on the Texas State Board of Engineers for six years, serving as chairman for two of those years.

“I saw this as a way to give back to the profession that has given me so much,” Bennett said..

Keys to success

A servant’s heart and the desire to succeed are among the many qualities Bennett exuded throughout his career, although he claims it was the people supporting him along the way that led to his opportunities and accomplishments.

“I have always had a sense of service and I like using my skills to design and build systems that work and add value to peoples’ lives,” Bennett admitted. “There are a lot of hands holding you up and a lot of people doing the work.”

Bennett believes a bit of luck and happenstance played a large role in his successful career, quoting advice once given by Gates, “A little serendipity is a good thing.”

“It’s kind of a strange background for an industrial engineer,” he said. “I never really had a dream job, instead, I have lived a dream job.”

Living the Dream Job continued from page 21

Scan the QR code to learn more about Dr. Bennett’s

lifetime of service.


Expanding Staff Support

Yesenia Zavala has joined the undergraduate advising team in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering. She graduated from Texas A&M University with a degree in international studies and English. Zavala is originally from Laredo, Texas, and has worked with high school students and their families in Donna, Texas, to provide access to higher education opportunities. While in Donna, Texas, Zavala specifically worked with the Advise TX program through the office of admissions at Texas A&M, leading low-income and first-generation students to college. She is excited to return to College Station and work with students regarding their coursework. Zavala enjoys reading and traveling in her spare time.

Lorian Hopcus joined the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering as the communications coordinator in February 2016. Hopcus, a Bryan, Texas, native, graduated from Texas A&M University with a degree in agricultural communications and journalism. She has experience in engaging diverse audiences and writing for online education and printed publications. In her spare time, Hopcus enjoys spending time with her family and working on her family’s farm. She is passionate about telling the stories of those around her and is looking forward to promoting faculty and students in the department.

Shannon Caldwell is originally from Leakey, Texas and graduated with his bachelor’s degree in animal science from Texas A&M University. He joined the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering as the facilities manager in 2016 and brings 15 years of experience in manufacturing light guage metal buildings. In his spare time, Caldwell enjoys many outdoor activities including flying and sports.

Diego Alvarado completed his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Texas A&M University and has returned to help students as an undergraduate academic advisor. Prior to this position, he conducted research for industry leaders on campus and advised students working on some of his projects. This experience taught him how to help students conquer the many obstacles they may be faced with during their undergraduate career. Originally from Guatemala City, Alvarado enjoys spending time with his family, working out and keeping up with sports.

QUALITY SERVICE


ISEN Advisory CouncilGarrett Blundell

Co-Founder, Managing PartnerHexa Lining and Services

Greg ClappVice President of Business DevelopmentAsociar

Steve DumainePresidentCheap Caribbean

Michael HaackChief Operating OfficerEagle Materials

Brian HayesExecutive Vice President, Asset

OperationsEDP Renewables, North America

Gil HeldenfelsV.P. General Manager Building Systems

DivisionHeldenfels Enterprises, Inc.

Randy HoffChief Executive OfficerCenergistic

Victoria Hunter**Field Quality & Logistics Manager,

Mid-Atlantic AreaStryker Orthopaedics

Marci JacksonDirectorPremier Healthcare Alliance

Jerrie KertzSr. Vice President, OperationsAT&T

John KorryPartnerAccenture

Juan Manuel LampareroDirector GeneralIndustrial Solutions Technology de

Mexico

Kevin LeathDirector of Systems EngineeringBoeing Commercial Airplanes

Edwin Keith Lee Solution ArchitectDassian, Inc.

Dean LiollioPresidentPAA Natural Gas Storage

Sean LofgrenVP of Business Development

Overwraps Packaging

Brent Lyon*Sr. Manager, Industrial & Manufacturing

Systems EngineeringLockheed Martin

James Menke**VP/GM, Global Account ManagementFlextronics

Jorge MitreManaging Director Tenaris Coil Tubes

Stacy L. PughVice President Supply ChainCoca-Cola Refreshments

John “Jack” Scott**PresidentApplied Systems Technology and

Transfer, Inc.

Douglas SellersVice President - Application ServicesHalliburton

Buford ShipleyTechnical Fellow and Program Chief

EngineerBoeing Defense, Space and Security

Tim SmithSenior Vice President, Business

Integration & AdministrationEADS Distribution

Lee Sneddon**Manager of Construction - Ariz, Cal.,

Tex., Latin AmericaIntel Corporation

Charlie StegemoellerVP, Program Management; Space,

Aviation & Science Operations; Homeland & Civilian Operations

SAIC Science Applications International Corporation

Eddy WeverPresidente EjecutivoDIPCMI División Industrial Pecuaria

Danny WhiteVice President, OperationsAcumera

Rick WilkinsonVice President, Engineering & Logistics

ServicesDollar Tree | Family Dollar

** denotes Emeritus Member * denotes council chairman


Steering Clear of Distracted Driving

HIGH IMPACT

Researchers in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Texas A&M University are working to make cars smarter and drivers safer through cutting-edge technology and research.

Dr. Thomas Ferris, assistant professor in industrial and systems engineering, and his students in the Human Factors & Cognitive Systems Laboratory are collaborating with principle investigator Robert Wunderlich, researchers at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) and Texas A&M’s Mechanical Engineering department, the University of Houston, the University of Michigan and Texas Tech University. This mega-team is investigating possible human and vehicle factors contributing to abnormal driving events.

“Motor-vehicle accidents are a complex problem with many potential causal factors, including driver errors,” Ferris said. “Humans are not very good at problem-solving when the vehicle does something they aren’t expecting, especially when under high stress, high workloads or while multi-tasking. So we are trying to use the computational power of the vehicle to detect when drivers exhibit particular stress patterns. If the car knows that the human driver is under the influence of a particular stressor, it can provide support that is more appropriately tailored to the driver’s cognitive state.”

The ‘super-group’, as Ferris has termed the group of transportation research collaborators, has a goal of developing a system that can be installed in an advanced vehicle to detect when a driver’s cognitive state turns problematic.

“This could be a driver experiencing high workload in the driving task or attempting to conduct a secondary task, such as texting and driving,” Ferris said. “Imagine the number of lives that could be saved if the vehicle automation could detect when these distractions pose a problem and then take action to improve safety, such as by guiding the driver’s attention back to the roadway.”

The research is being conducted in a simulation facility at TTI, as well as a test track at Texas A&M’s RELLIS campus. Participants

spend time driving in a simulator in the lab, or in a real vehicle on a controlled course, while being monitored using biometric sensors. Researchers monitor heart rate and the amount of perspiration a person produces through galvanic skin response and thermal imagery to determine different patterns in changing levels of stress. By using the simulator, researchers are able to safely explore problematic driving contexts, as it allows researchers to simulate unintended vehicle acceleration or distracted driving conditions.

“What we are actually able to detect is a pattern in sympathetic autonomous nervous system arousal,” Ferris said. “When a surprising, mentally challenging, or strongly emotional experience occurs, the driver is feeling their sympathetic nervous system preparing to fight or flight – to assess a potential threat and to focus cognitive efforts on that threat.”

This is helpful to the person if they are trying to flee an attacking tiger, but can impair the ability to maintain control of a complex system such as a modern vehicle. In addition to distractions, a driver’s cognitive state could also be impacted by stress from an emotional response, being overworked or lack of sleep.

The researchers have explored several concepts to deploy after the system determines that the driver is operating under a problematic state, such as disengaging the transmission or removing distractions like the radio. “The researchers are testing how indicators of driver stress level can be effectively communicated back to the driver, and whether this can help the driver achieve a calmer state,” explained Ferris.

Although the industry is a long time away from installing such a device in new cars, the group is currently testing a prototype


device developed by members of the research team. A number of upcoming studies will test this and other potential solutions in simulation studies, on the controlled test-track and maybe even in vehicles on active roadways. The idea is to ultimately test research participants in a realistic setting with real distractions and experiencing the real emotional responses encountered in traffic.

The super-group published a first article on this work earlier this summer in Scientific Reports, an online open-access research journal from the Nature Publishing Group. The article, ‘Dissecting Driver Behaviors Under Cognitive, Emotional, Sensorimotor, and Mixed Stressors,’ received an altmetric score of 303 only five days after being published online. This score is based on the number of downloads, amount of press coverage and social attention.

The article has since been covered by numerous media outlets including Medical Daily, Reuters, and Gawker.

While the current funded project will be completed at the end of the calendar year, the group has already begun exploring funding to continue this work. Its desire is demonstrate how innovative uses of technology can be used to make driving safer.

This work was funded in part by the Toyota Class Action Settlement Safety Research and Education Program. The conclusions being expressed are the authors’ only, and have not been sponsored, approved, or endorsed by Toyota or Plaintiffs’ Class Counsel.


With honest advice and a genuine smile, Jeana Goodson is changing the lives of students.

Goodson, an adviser in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Texas A&M University, has been awarded the President’s Award for Academic Advising by the Office of the Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs.

The award honors five academic advisors from across the university for their dedication to the success of the students.

A+ Dedication

“She knows our potentials and is not afraid to give the tough love to push her students to success,” said Katherine Klassen, a senior industrial and systems engineering major. “Many people respect her and take her advice to heart due to the fact that her love is easy to see in every action. Her compassion and intentionality is always displayed through a friendly smile and giant hug.”

“Jeana has been our undergraduate academic advisor for over 11 years, and prior to that, an adviser in agriculture engineering for almost 10 years,” said Dr. Natarajan Gautam, associate department head for undergraduate affairs in the department. “In the beginning of fall 2015, we had 777 undergraduate students in our department and just one adviser, Jeana.”

For many students, she is the first person they meet when thinking about pursuing a degree in industrial and systems engineering. Mitchell Mesenbrink ’16 recalls his first experience with Goodson.

“I distinctly remember when she gave me an industrial and systems engineering lanyard,” he said. “It was far before I was able to transfer in and she told me, ‘I know you are going to get in. I’ll see you when the semester starts.’”

The senior enjoys now looking back on the motivation Jeana has given him during his time as a student.

“Here I am, about to graduate in May of 2016 and I still keep my keys attached to the lanyard,” Mesenbrink said. “I cannot thank Jeana enough for all she has done for me.”

Goodson treats every student in the department as her own. She takes pride is seeing them succeed and achieve their dreams.

“Jeana always has an open door, treating all of her students equally,” Paola Gutierrez ’16 said. “If you’re in trouble, Jeana will step up. If you need to enroll in a class, she will make sure to get you in. If you need guidance, she will direct you to the right people.”

Faculty members in the department are impressed with her dedication and enthusiasm she shows toward the students.

“Her first priority is the students,” Gautam said. “Jeana would not hesitate to stand up for a student, even if that would jeopardize her own situation. She is extremely selfless.”

In Hindsight

Over the past decade, she has built strong relationships with her students which led to her being chosen as a Fish Camp Namesake in 2014.

“Jeana had a great impact in getting me to where I am now,” said Mariam Al-Zubeidi ’15 a procurement associate at ExxonMobil. “I am truly forever grateful for Jeana’s skill, care and mastery of undergraduate advising.”

When the department began building a study abroad program to Puerto Rico, Goodson immediately stepped up to make sure the program would succeed in providing the best experience for the students.

QUALITY SERVICE

Goodson Earns Prestigious President’s Award for Academic Advising


“She was instrumental in building the stage for the study abroad to Puerto Rico,” said Dr. César Malavé, Mike and Sugar Barnes Professor and department head of the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering. “Every year, she continues to recruit students for the program and travels with us.”

While developing these relationships, Goodson is always available to help, complete with a caring and helpful attitude.

“Jeana routinely monitors student progress and regularly keeps in touch with them, even if she has not been asked to do so by the college or department,” Gautam said. “She is the first person the students go to whenever they have any issues to deal with.”

Serving the Future

Due to a growing department and meeting university requirements, two additional advisers were hired during the 2015-2016 academic year. Up to this point, Goodson has handled the advising of all undergraduate students.

Diego Alvarado, a former student of the department, recently joined Goodson’s team of advisers.

“Now that I am a fellow adviser, I am additionally grateful for how supportive Jeana has been as a mentor and a friend,” Alvarado said. “Advising students is a challenging task and I have always admired her for how well she handles it.”

Goodson enjoys the potential impact she has on the lives of her students.

“I have always said that being an academic adviser is the next best thing to being a high school teacher because you are still involved in guiding and shaping the lives of young people, then seeing their success,” she said. “I have been fortunate to have received so much support from this department. What I do is not just a job or career, it is a passion.”

Department of Industrial and Systems EngineeringEmerging Technologies Building3131 TAMUCollege Station, TX 77843-3131

NONPROFIT ORG.U.S. POSTAGE PAIDCOLLEGE STATIONTEXAS 77843PERMIT NO. 215

INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING

facebook.com/ISEN.TAMU @TAMU_ISEN

Research within the department has resulted in improved processes in various industries, new companies and increased economic activity. With increasing demands for designing and optimizing systems of people, materials, technologies and facilities, the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Texas A&M University is positioned to become the premier source of talent for engineering socio-technical systems of the future.

Documents

MAGAZINE / 2016 - Dwight Look College of Engineeringengineering.tamu.edu/media/4206976/isen_mag_2016.pdfMAGAZINE / 2016 LIVING THE DREAM JOB SOARING TO FASTER PRODUCTION P. 22 SYSTEMATICALLY