Second Prize:
ISyE 641, Reducing lead time for medical diagnostic imaging products at Dielectric Corporation
Students: Jacob Hurt, Klevin Dcunha, Mike Hsieh, Rachna Kamath ($300 per student)

Third Prize:
ISyE 476, Improvement of the restatement process at CUNA Mutual Group
Students: Kevin Atherton, Rachel Henke, Britta Rowan ($300 per student)

We have more customers knocking on our door saying, ‘Okay, you said two weeks, but can we get it in a week?’”says Sam Crueger, manufacturing engineering manager at Pointe Precision, a machining shop located in Plover, Wisconsin.

Using quick response manufacturing (QRM) techniques developed at the UW-Madison QRM Center, which is directed by Associate Professor Ananth Krishnamurthy, Pointe Precision was able to change its operation processes and dramatically reduce unnecessary waits to fill new orders. QRM is a set of principles and methods for reducing product lead times from weeks to days, pioneered by Professor Emeritus Rajan Suri.

Pointe Precision provides complex, high-tolerance parts mainly for the aerospace industry but also for medical devices, industrial power generation and automotive systems. With several thousand different parts it produces, the company struggled with long lead times—a common challenge for many manufacturers today.

After an extensive analysis of product routings and machine capabilities conducted in collaboration with students and faculty at the center, the company decided to change its factory layout. Rather than grouping lathing, machining and other processes into discrete departments, the company created several manufacturing cells, where an entire category of machine parts could be produced, from the ordering process to the finished product, in a “cell” of a few hundred square feet.

In some areas of operations, Pointe Precision was able to reduce lead time from 33 days to 13, and reduce defects by 48 percent. Similarly, a “quick response office cell” brought quoting lead times down to only one or two days. For Pointe Precision, bringing together resources in one cell area and transferring decision-making power over production issues to cell members helped to get employees actively involved in the effort to reduce lead times. Thanks to its shorter lead times, Pointe Precision has been able to expand into new market segments and is planning to expand implementation of quick response manufacturing across the entire enterprise.

Appu Kuttan

One million—the number of disadvantaged students Appu Kuttan helps via the National Educational Foundation (NEF), the nonprofit he founded in 1989, dedicated to bridging academic, digital and employment divides through digital education. NEF’s mission is to make high-quality education accessible to everyone around the world, especially in the United States and India.

Kuttan received his bachelor’s degree in India in 1963. He came to the United States on the prestigious TATA scholarship, and earned a master’s degree from Washington University in 1966, and a PhD in industrial engineering from UW-Madison in 1968. He then launched what would become a long, illustrious career as a global systems expert.

Kuttan pioneered an influential management by systems (MBS) concept that has been applied around the world. In the 1970s, Kuttan helped the Puerto Rican government significantly improve traffic safety by implementing his MBS strategies. Invited by the Venezuelan government, he turned its social security and healthcare program deficit into a surplus, while improving services. He advised Indian leaders on how to turn its economy into an information technology powerhouse.

His expertise also has made him a valued advisor to leaders in the United States, including the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. He has published several books, including From Digital Divide to Digital Opportunity. His latest is Happy Executive—Nurturing Mind, Body and Soul.

In 1986, Kuttan purchased the world-famous Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy in Florida and helped develop three tennis world champions—Andre Agassi, Monica Seles and Jim Courier via Total Tennis based on MBS. After pivotal conversations in 1993 with President Clinton and Intel founder Gordon Moore, Kuttan sold the tennis academy, and used the proceeds to fund NEF, where he remains the CEO and chairman of the board.

The most visible NEF program is CyberLearning, which Kuttan launched in 1993 to provide students in the most disadvantaged schools in the United States with better science, technology, engineering, math, English, social studies, business and test preparation skills. In 2011, CyberLearning launched a program in India with IGNOU, the largest open university in the world, to train, certify and help place a million disadvantaged college students in information technology jobs.

NEF is based in Alexandria, Virginia. Kuttan’s wife, Claudia, a UW-Madison grad; their son, Roger, a Stanford JD-MBA grad and U.S. Presidential honoree; and their daughter Maya, a UCLA environmental law and USC award-winning film graduate, all serve NEF.

How about three?

In 1983, Jeff Plaster became the third of three brothers to graduate with a degree from the department. His two older brothers, identical twins Larry and Gary, graduated in ’80 and ’81, respectively. What drove them to pursue the same degree? Jeff says he was inspired by high-profile CEOs with industrial engineering degrees, and the university’s transition to focusing ISyE study on socio-technical systems and ergonomics. “It really tied the people with the processes and equipment,” he says.

And Larry adds that he liked the department’s emphasis on efficiency and making processes more cost effective, as well as the way the major combined engineering and business concepts.

The Plaster brothers

After receiving their engineering degrees, Gary and Larry also both stayed at Wisconsin and earned MBAs, in finance and marketing, respectively. From there, all three pretty much diverged.

Larry has spent his entire career working for Texas Instruments, working his way from a sales engineer position in Minneapolis to now worldwide corporate account manager and manager of Texas Instrument’s strategic relationship with GE Healthcare. He manages a worldwide team of sales and application engineers that is focused on understanding GE’s initiatives—and developing custom solutions to meet its needs. Larry has nurtured strategic relationships around the world, enabling TI and GE to partner in the development of key joint products. He lives in Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin, where he volunteers for local charities and schools and travels around the world for both business and pleasure.

And though Gary also started with Texas Instruments, working in financial management, he moved on to several other corporations, including Sperry Corporation and Price Waterhouse Cooper, working on improving productivity, cost management, and other business strategy. He’s worked for Grant Thornton, launched an internet start-up, and now helps companies grow profitably with Landhouse Group LLC, a strategic consulting firm that he founded. Gary has also published two books about managing corporate growth, and is a professor at DePaul University’s business school. He also founded a youth lacrosse association in Lake Forest, Illinois, where he now lives. He volunteers with the National Volunteer Caregiving Network, which cares for homebound neighbors who are isolated by chronic health conditions or disabilities, and works with Native American tribes around the country on community planning and economic development. He enjoys gardening and fishing for tarpon—large saltwater fish—in his free time.

Jeff went the way of supply chain management for larger, well-known companies, starting with General Motors and continuing on to GE Healthcare and Pentair. For GE, he led the start-up of a greenfield electronics facility in Budapest. He now works as VP of integrated supply chain for Pentair, which creates water pump and filtration systems for residential and commercial purposes.

For Pentair, Jeff has implemented lean manufacturing, simplified the supply chain and shortened lead times in a model driven by natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods, as well as housing starts and other market drivers. He says he is most proud of his team’s effort in bringing products and supply back to Wisconsin, increasing both labor productivity and the earned hours in his plant. Outside of work, he volunteers in Milwaukee homeless shelters, is an avid sports fan, dabbles in wildlife photography, hikes, and raises and rides horses.

The brothers chose three completely different career paths but say they all agree that much of their career success can be attributed to the education they received at Wisconsin. “The industrial engineering program provided a broad understanding of the bigger picture of manufacturing,” Jeff says. “I never viewed myself as an engineer after graduating—Madison prepared us to be leaders.”

Q: What are some of the things students learn from you? How is this important to their careers as engineers?
A: I emphasize to my students the importance of building a toolbox. While they learn a host of engineering tools in their studies, the real keys are recognizing the best tool for a particular situation and recognizing the tool’s limitations.

Q: How does your consulting work inform your teaching?
A: My consulting keeps me up to date with the challenges that organizations face, as well as current manufacturing and enterprise management technologies. As a result, I can make sure that my teaching remains relevant. I think students appreciate anecdotes relating how organizations currently are using the concepts we discuss.

Q: What do you like about teaching? Do you have a particular approach to teaching that you find helpful for yourself or your students?
A: I like the variety in my weekly schedule. I’m able to be involved with university activities as well as working with a number of consulting clients. The best part of teaching is recognizing that I influence the career paths and mental models of my students. This is an opportunity and a challenge that I do not take lightly.

Q: What other roles do you play in the college?
A: Through an award from the college, I have been involved in converting Introduction to Quality Engineering (ISyE 575) to a distance-learning format to increase accessibility to this class, particularly to students who may be off campus during an internship or co-op and to students outside of industrial and systems engineering. As part of this initiative, I have been pursuing a professional certificate in online teaching through the UW-Madison Division of Continuing Education, Distance Education Professional Development.

Jay Ford, an assistant scientist at the Center for Health Enhancement Systems Studies (CHESS), will serve on the management engineering/process improvement committee of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society. His two-year term ends in June 2013. HIMSS is a cause-based, nonprofit organization exclusively focused on providing global leadership for the optimal use of information technology and management systems for the betterment of healthcare.

A collaborative research program led by the the UW-Madison Center for Health Enhancement Systems Studies (CHESS) has received a five-year, $9.5 million grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to develop innovative approaches to help older adults remain in their homes as long as possible. Research Professor David Gustafson is leading the program, which will bring together UW-Madison researchers from CHESS, the Driving Simulation Lab and the RFID Lab, along with the Mass Communication Research Center, geriatricians, specialists from the Wisconsin State Bureau of Aging & Disability Resources, and community advocates from around the state. Read more.

Researcher Alfonso Gutierrez, who directs the UW RFID Lab and is the director of research and education at the UW E-Business Consortium, has received a 2011 Regents Academic Staff Excellence Award. The award recognizes outstanding academic staff members from across the University of Wisconsin System. HIs leadership of several multidisciplinary university-industry partnerships has garnered international recognition for UW-Madison.

The International Medical Informatics Association selected a paper written by Associate Professor Ben-Tzion Karsh as a best paper in human factors and organizational issues. The paper, “Health information technology: Fallacies and sober realities,” was coauthored by Matthew B. Weinger, Patricia A. Abbott and Robert L. Wears and published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association in October 2010. It has been influential in the establishment of a newly funded research program at the Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research, which focuses on understanding clinical information needs and healthcare decision making processes. Since publication, the paper has been downloaded more than 1,500 times.

A new Center for Quick Response Manufacturing (QRM) has opened in the Netherlands and has helped a Belgian awnings and screens manufacturer, Harol, win a 2011 best practice in logistics award from the Belgium-based magazine Industry Technology and Management. The new center is based on the QRM strategy developed at the UW-Madison QRM Center, founded by Professor Emeritus Rajan Suri and now directed by Associate Professor Ananth Krishnamurthy. Also, the UW-Madison QRM Center was featured March 9 in an IndustryWeek article titled, “Moving beyond lean: Quick Response Manufacturing.” Suri’s new book and recent induction to the IndustryWeek Hall of Fame also were highlighted. Read the article. Also, the Sept/Oct 2011 issue of APICS Magazine, published by the Association for Operations Management, contained a one-page profile of his contributions to manufacturing competitiveness and manufacturing education. The profile included mentions of both UW-Madison and the Center for Quick Response Manufacturing.

Robert A. Ratner Undergraduate Chair and Professor Raj Veeramani has received the 2011 Isador T. Davis Award from the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE). The award, which comes with a $1,000 honorarium, recognizes him for promoting excellence in engineering education through industry involvement and improving diversity in ASEE. Veeramani received the award at the ASEE annual conference in Vancouver, Canada.

Following the National Aeronautics & Space Administration’s decommissioning of its 30-year space shuttle program earlier this summer, the agency will be looking in new directions for the future of space exploration—with University of Wisconsin-Madison expertise on board. In the coming years, Associate Professor Douglas Wiegmann will advise the agency as an outside expert consultant on human factors and mission safety.Wiegmann’s research includes accident investigation and human error analysis and he is the author of a book on aviation accident analysis. “The work I’ve done in the past in analyzing the role of human error in accidents is becoming widely used and known,” he says, and his work includes collaboration with the U.S. Department of Defense. This isn’t Wiegmann’s first time working on problems unique to space flight. He consulted for the agency first in 2003, investigating the crash of the Space Shuttle Columbia. “I think that it’s my general understanding of human error and performance in complex systems that led them to approach me,” he says. He says there are a broad range of human factors that might play a role in aviation or space flight accidents. “Anywhere from just the design standpoint of the aircraft or spacecraft, how decisions are made about mission priorities, and just what sorts of things can break down in the process of designing safe systems from a human operator perspective,” he says. “I’m flattered to be asked, that they think I have something to offer them. What the next generation of spaceflight is going to look like, no one knows yet—being part of something new is kind of exciting.”

Professor Stephen Wright has been elected a fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). The grade of fellow recognizes SIAM members who have made distinguished contributions to the discipline. Wright was recognized for his contributions to the theory and computational aspects of linear and nonlinear optimization.

On May 9, the CBS Evening News featured Professor Emeritus David Zimmerman in a story about unnecessary use of antipsychotic medications to treat dementia patients in nursing homes. Watch the video and read the related article.

These algorithms are used in a variety of programs that perform optimization calculations, such as helping Google Maps calculate the shortest route to your destination, or enabling UPS to determine the best way to use its available trucks and staff to complete the day’s deliveries.

Previously, though, optimization for a problem that has a high degree of symmetry might be impossible for a computer’s capabilities. Linderoth uses the example of “the football pool problem,” which looks at a system of betting on soccer matches in European countries where participants buy tickets based on the outcome—win, lose or draw—they predict for a series of games. In this problem, the yes/no decision is made for each possible ticket a participant could buy: Should they buy this ticket, or not?

To win the grand prize, a contestant must predict the entire set of matches correctly. But if a participant buys a set of tickets that correctly predicts all but one match, he or she can still win a large sum of money.

Currently, computers can calculate the minimum number of tickets a participant might need to buy to ensure they have at least one ticket that is a second-place winner, but only if the number of matches is five or fewer.

For six matches, Linderoth says, the lowest possible number is not yet known, though it previously had been narrowed down to somewhere between 65 and 73. For a computer to make the full calculation, however, would take a massive amount of time. “The computer will eventually come back with an answer. It just might come back when the universe has already expanded back on itself,” Linderoth says.

One reason is that the problem has high amounts of symmetry: The fact that the order in which the matches are listed does not make them different for the purpose of solving the problem. For problems with symmetry, computers can calculate an answer, but not necessarily the best answer. “It’s wasting time searching for answers it’s already found,” Linderoth says.

Working with Italian colleagues Fabrizio Rossi and Stefano Smriglio, as well as former PhD student Jim Ostrowski, Linderoth and the team developed a methodology that algorithms can use to offset this problem.

The new method breaks solutions into “orbits,” or groups of equivalent solutions. Using orbits, an algorithm doesn’t have to tackle all symmetrical solutions simultaneously, but can start by just choosing a ticket—any ticket, because initially, they’re all equally good. In branching, what you’ve already chosen will decide what you can choose next.

The orbits change each time a decision is made and must be recalculated. But even with this calculation process, orbits allow optimization algorithms to
perform orders of magnitude faster for problems with large amounts of symmetry.

The methodology has already been adopted by commercial optimization software, including the popular product Gurobi, and is speeding up calculations of integer programs. “If the problem isn’t symmetric, it does nothing, but in other types of problems, it’s orders of magnitude faster,” Linderoth says.

He calls the improvement a “big win” for optimization processes.

As for that six-match lottery ticket? Thanks to orbital branching, we now know the optimal answer is somewhere between 70 and 73.

Professor and Chair Vicki Bier

It is difficult to believe that by the time you are reading this letter, I will have been chair of the UW-Madison Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering for almost a year. It’s been quite a year, too, with all of the political and budget upheaval in the state of Wisconsin this year.

Unfortunately, though, Wisconsin is not unique. As with most other public universities, the future financial health of the department will be increasingly dependent on gift funding, since the share of state funding per student has been declining for a number of years. Thus, donations will be increasingly important to support everything from nice “extras” (like orientation meetings and scholarship receptions) to endowed professorships that enable us to remain a top 10 department.

People are not used to thinking of donations as being crucial to public universities the way they are to private universities. Still, it’s important for alumni of all ages and income brackets to start thinking about ways in which they can “give back” to their alma mater. Of course, large gifts like endowed professorships or major estate gifts are always nice.

However, small gifts count too! After all, our median donation amount has doubled over the last few years, and is now $100. If all donors gave the median amount, doubling the number of alumni who have ever donated to the department from 500 to 1,000 people would raise $50,000. If all of the alumni from the class of 2011 gave just $20, that would raise almost $2,500 for the department—enough to fund the department’s colloquium series for a semester!

Making a multi-year pledge further enhances the value of your gift.

Here are some examples to give you an idea of how much difference your donations can make to the department:

• If you’re interested in enhancing the educational experiences of our students, think about the fact that $250 can provide a digital camcorder for use in design courses, $1,000 can pay for a graduate student to present research results at a major national conference, and $2,000 can provide audiovisual equipment for a teaching lab.
• If you care about student recruitment, retention and recognition, you should know that $4,000 funds a semester of tuition for a student in economic hardship; $6,000 can supplement a research or teaching assistantship to help recruit a top student.
• Finally, if you’re in the position to make a larger gift in support of faculty recruitment and retention, $75,000 can fund a start-up package for an exceptional new faculty member, and $100,000 can provide partial salary support plus flexible research funding for an outstanding professor for a year.

So, please keep the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering in mind in your giving plans not only this year, but on into the future. In the meantime, I hope to hear from many of you to find out how you’re doing in your careers.

As you can see from this issue, we are starting to profile some of our alumni (and donors) in our newsletter. We would like to continue publicizing alumni achievements, so please do update us on how you’re doing in your careers.

The faculty and staff of the department join me in wishing you all a happy holiday season and a great year in 2012!

Vicki Bier
Professor and Chair

The system they’ve developed, called Addiction-CHESS (A-CHESS) gives users access to an online peer support group and clinical counselors. A “panic button” on the device allows the user to place an immediate call for help with cravings or triggers—people, places and things associated with drug or alcohol use in the past. A GPS feature sends an alert when the user gets near an area of previous drug or alcohol activity. A-CHESS also allows for real-time video counseling. Tools and graphs help the user celebrate milestones in recovery.

In a four-month pilot that began in February, 30 offenders in the Ayer Concord Drug Court Program (ACDCP) in Massachusetts tested A-CHESS as a treatment tool. Drug courts provide substance abuse treatment to addicted offenders as an alternative to incarceration.

Researchers measured how much the pilot participants used A-CHESS during the study period, which features they used most frequently, and how their drug or alcohol use compared to that of other drug court participants. The research team also interviewed the study participants and judges, drug court administrators and substance abuse counselors to get their feedback and suggestions for improvements to the application.

The ACDCP drug court teams and clients were excited about the pilot, says Hilary Curtis, program director. “Being able to reach out during times of risk can be a key factor in maintaining sobriety, and this tool can make that call for help much easier,” she says.

The team’s primary hypothesis is that A-CHESS will improve competence and autonomy, which are important to help individuals succeed in drug court treatment, says Research Professor David H. Gustafson, principal investigator for the A-CHESS study.

Analysis of the results since the completion of the pilot show that information and communication technologies like A-CHESS might become important tools for addiction treatment recovery and support, says Kim Johnson, who conducted the pilot with research assistant Stephanie Richards. “We found that A-CHESS was well-accepted by drug-dependent patients, even those that were mandated to treatment and whose use of the technology was heavily monitored,” Johnson says.

The pair also found that use of A-CHESS appeared to strengthen group cohesions in the patients’ treatment group. “This is noteworthy because
active participation in treatment is a significant predictor of positive treatment outcomes,” Johnson says.

Johnson and Richards presented their full findings on the pilot at the upcoming mHealth Summit in Washington, D.C., in December 2011.