The First 50 Years of the Department of Industrial and Operations Engineering at the University of Michigan: 1955–2005

5.1. National and International Events Affect the Department

The 15 years between 1990 and 2005 provided challenges and opportunities for the Industrial and Operations Engineering (IOE) faculty, and many world events had a direct bearing on the department. The US population had increased by almost 10 percent from 1980 to 1990, some of this attributed to a longer life expectancy, and increased again by more than 13 percent between 1990 and 2000. This population expansion and longer longevity also increased the need for health care service.

The first area of opportunity related to health care. By 2000, the US cost of health care per capita, which was already higher than that of any other industrialized country, was consuming more than 12 percent of gross national product. The high cost of health care provided an incentive for federal agencies, insurance companies, and large hospitals to establish cost containment programs, and these often relied on industrial engineering graduates to develop and implement. The long-standing IOE program in hospital systems engineering benefited from this growing concern. (See chapter 6 for more information about this program.)

The second area related to the military. Although the early 1990s brought an end to the Cold War, it also brought conflicts in other parts of the world, including Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1991, which led to the Gulf War. (As a side note, much of the logistics planning for Operation Desert Storm was developed by Vector Research Inc., a company established in the ’70s by IOE professor Seth Bonder and a number of IOE alumni). In the next decade, the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon precipitated the war on terror and led to US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. As a result, military spending greatly increased, including funding for basic and applied research to improve soldier systems, logistics, and military asset scheduling and planning methods, areas in which IOE has applications.

Environmental issues also dominated the news. The period from 1990 to 2005 saw major hurricanes (Andrew in 1992 and Katrina in 2001) and other natural disasters ranging from massive storms to floods, heat waves, and blizzards, all of which caused deaths and billions of dollars in damage. Scientific evidence of climate change had led to growing public awareness of the issue. In turn, this generated more funding for and student interest in environmental programs of all kinds. In engineering this stoked interest in developing environmentally friendly product designs and manufacturing systems and led organizations to discuss how to design sustainable systems with a minimal long-term adverse impact on the environment.

During the 1980s there was also a growing interest in large corporations to ensure that their managers understood how to use technology to improve the performance of their business. In 1991, the College of Engineering and the School of Business launched a cooperative effort, the Michigan Joint Manufacturing Institute, to encourage students and faculty members to develop joint educational programs related to improving manufacturing systems. This later became the Tauber Manufacturing Institute (TMI), which coordinates joint engineering degrees and summer student project teams between the two schools. By 1996, more than 100 students were enrolled in its master’s degree programs. (See chapter 6 for more about this important program, which has been lead by several IOE faculty members.)

The ’90s also brought a growing realization, especially in large corporations, that markets are global, and to serve these international markets, products and services had to be developed that would meet the needs of people from a variety of cultures. Work by respected economists, such as the 2005 book The World Is Flat by MIT’s Thomas Friedman, stressed the need for engineers to gain a broad understanding of different cultures and international business practices. In the IOE Department this type of thinking led to the development of the Engineering Global Leadership (EGL) program 1992. The resulting five-year, BS/MS program required courses offered in both the College of Engineering and the School of Business, a summer internship, and study abroad. Only select students with high grade point averages were admitted into the EGL program, and thus it became the first honors program in the department and in the College of Engineering. By 1996, 35 IOE students were enrolled in the EGL program. (More information about the EGL program is presented in chapter 6.)

Another example of how global issues were affecting engineering was realized from the work of IOE professor Jeff Liker, who had been studying the engineering and management practices of Japanese automotive company Toyota. His studies contrasted the management and engineering processes used by Toyota with those of several US companies. He authored several popular books on this topic and in 1993 began offering short courses that presented fundamental principles related to engineering production systems. In his books and lectures he stressed the importance of product quality and the elimination of waste in all facets of the planning and management of a production system. By this time Toyota had become the world’s largest automobile manufacturer; thus, Liker’s writings and teaching about their production systems were very popular. (See Appendix A.5 for a list of Liker’s books on this subject.)

Also in 1993, the chair of the IOE Department, Chelsea White, organized and directed the Intelligent Highway Systems Center, which was funded by the state of Michigan and several automotive companies. This program combined courses from IOE, electrical and computer science, the School of Business, and the School of Urban Planning to provide an interdisciplinary master’s degree. The interest in designing safer and more efficient transportation systems in the United States had great public appeal, and by 1996 this MS program had 65 students.

Lastly, by 2000 the stock market was at its all-time high. Some of this success was credited to the sophisticated analytical models that were being used by large stock brokerage firms on Wall Street. These stochastic and statistically based models predicted the probability that certain companies would meet or not meet their financial goals in a given time period, and thus proclaimed with statistical confidence that a company posed a good or bad risk for investment. The excitement over the development and use of such analytical models became the basis for financial engineering degree programs in several industrial engineering and operations research programs in the United States. Within the IOE Department this interest guided the hiring of several new faculty members with expertise in this area and the development of a multidisciplinary master’s degree program in financial engineering, first led by IOE professor John Birge. (See chapter 6 for more information about this program.)

5.2. Enrollment Trends and New Space

As a result of all of these national trends, the IOE Department experienced a large increase in student enrollments. This was particularly true at the undergraduate and master’s levels, as depicted in the graph showing the annual degrees granted by the department. In fact, a 2001 survey of industrial engineering department heads indicated that the popularity of the undergraduate IOE program at the University of Michigan (UM) resulted in twice the number of students enrolled compared with other industrial engineering departments at the time. This same survey also reported that more than 100 students had enrolled in the IOE master’s program in the preceding year, almost twice the number of MS students per faculty member at any of the other schools included in the annual survey.

It is interesting to note that the dip in undergraduate degrees awarded from 1993 to 1995 coincided with a period of changes in the IOE physical facilities. The IOE building on North Campus was being transformed and expanded by about 16,000 square feet, which included additional offices, laboratory spaces, and most of all, contiguous lecture and seminar rooms. At the same time the Lurie Engineering Administration Building was being built within a couple hundred feet of the IOE building. The construction around and in the existing IOE building provided some challenges for the students, staff, and faculty for a couple years. When the construction was completed in 1996, the new IOE building was much more welcoming for all students, and this, along with the hiring of some exciting new full-time and adjunct faculty members and the development of various master’s degree programs, resulted in the undergraduate and graduate programs becoming very popular in the late ’90s and beyond.

The entrance to the new IOE building in 1996. The original building and entrance are behind the trees on the left. The Lurie Engineering Administration Building is partially shown on the right.

5.3 Improving the Computing Environment

By the early ’90s it was clear that networked personal computers would be providing the computational capabilities that previously relied on large mainframe computers in a computer center. The early establishment of the Computer Aided Engineering Network (CAEN) in the 1980s, led by Associate Dean Dan Atkins, not only facilitated the use of personal computers by faculty and PhD students for research purposes but also provided personal computer laboratories where students at all levels could use high-level personal computers to solve routine homework problems and perform research on a variety of problems. The CAEN program in the College also provided, at little or no charge, contemporary software applications in a number of engineering domains. This latter aspect of the information technology (IT) environment in the ’90s required departments throughout the College to hire computer hardware and software support staff who were able to install and maintain the large array of applications students and faculty demanded. The IOE Department was no different in this regard. Soon, the department had established a small but very capable staff of software experts, led by Christopher Konrad, a UM graduate with degrees in IOE and computer science, assisted by Rod Capps and Mint Minto. The IT support that this staff provided, combined with the specialized hardware and software computing staff support embedded in the Center for Ergonomics, lead by James Foulke and Charles Woolley, assisted by Eyvind Claxton, provided an excellent environment for the development of original computer algorithms to solve a vast array of IE problems. (More on this aspect of the department is discussed in chapters 6 and 7.)

Christopher Konrad – Manager, IT and Facilities

James Foulke – Ergonomics Research Engineer

Charles Woolley – Ergonomics Research Engineer

Rod Capps – Web Applications Developer

Eyvind Claxton – Engineering Technician

5.4 Rankings Remain High

All the new developments in the educational programs during the ’90s, the new teaching and laboratory spaces, and the hiring of excellent new faculty and staff resulted in the 1996 Gorman Report ranking the department’s graduate program as number one in the country; US News and World Report ranked the undergraduate program number one and the graduate program number three. A 1995 National Research Council survey of doctoral programs ranked the doctoral program in IOE as number two in the United States, behind the much larger School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech University. The 2003 US News and World Report ranked the department number two overall. According to two departmental reviews (performed in 1996 and 2003), most agreed that the operations research and ergonomics areas of the department remained the driving force behind these high rankings. It also is worth noting that in 2001 the annual survey of industrial engineering department heads in the United States indicated that the Michigan faculty had the largest number of members who had achieved fellow status in various scientific and professional societies. (See Appendix A.3 for a listing of some IOE faculty awards and honors.)

5.5 Faculty Changes

From 1990 to 2005 the department hired 15 new faculty members who had a major effect on the department, but lost 12 to other universities or to retirement. In addition, 10 faculty members hired during the period were with the department for six or less years. The 2003 departmental review indicated that from 1990 to 1996 there were 23 tenure-track faculty members, and the full-time equivalent (FTE) count remained steady at about 18.5 members on the General Fund budget. Unfortunately, there was a lag in replacing some of the faculty members who left during the next few years, and by 2001 the FTE count was down to about 14.3 members. With the rapid rise in undergraduate enrollments in the department during this same period, however, the department was able to quickly hire more faculty members, and by 2005 the FTE was back to 19 members, and 25 faculty members were in tenure track positions. What follows is a brief description of the 15 faculty members hired during this period who had a significant and lasting effect on the IOE Department.

Chelsea White, PhD

Chelsea (Chip) White joined the IOE Department in 1990. He had received his PhD from the UM in 1974 in computer information and control engineering. He then served on the faculty at the University of Virginia until returning to UM. In 1993, he chaired the IOE Department. He also developed a consortium of transportation companies that combined state and federal transportation funds to establish the Intelligent Highway Systems Center. White served as president of the IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society in 1992, and received several IEEE Awards for his “significant contributions in research developments in global transportation and logistic systems”. He is an expert in the use of real-time information to improve logistic decisions of all types. He left UM in 2002 to take an endowed professorship at the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech University, and in 2005 became chair of the school and director of their Trucking Industry Program. (See White’s page on the UM Faculty History Project website: http://um2017.org/faculty-history/faculty/chelsea-c-white-iii.)

Bernard J. Martin, PhD

Bernard Martin joined the IOE Department in 1990. In 1981, he received his PhD in neuroscience from the Universite’ d;Alix-Marseille in France. Martin worked as a research scientist at the National Transportation Research Institute in Lyon, France, until joining the department. His expertise is in neuromuscular control of movements and the modeling and prediction of manual exertions that cause muscle fatigue. His work provides guidance in the design of hand tools, keyboards, and other devices commonly used in workplaces. (See Martin’s College of Engineering web page: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~martinbj/.)

Yili Liu, PhD

Yili Liu joined the department in 1991 after completing his PhD in engineering and cognitive psychology at the University of Illinois. His research interests include human information processing, cognitive engineering, and cognitive ergonomics, and his research focus is on computational cognitive modeling. He has developed a queuing network model of mental architecture for modeling performance of complex cognitive tasks. This work has provided a quantitative basis for the evaluation and design of a variety of human-machine system interfaces. In 2003, he became an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor. Liu has received more than a dozen teaching awards and is the coauthor of a best-selling human factors textbook. He has been serving as the IOE undergraduate program adviser for almost two decades. (See Liu’s UM web page: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~yililiu.)

Vijay Nair, PhD

Vijay Nair joined the departments of statistics and IOE in 1993 as a full professor. He received a PhD in Statistics from the University of California–Berkeley, in 1978 and then joined Bell Laboratories in their Operations Research Center and later moved to their Mathematical Sciences Center. In 1998, he became chair of the Department of Statistics and, in 2002, received a collegiate-chair professorship. His research interest is quality engineering, especially industrial experiments, reliability engineering, and process control. He is a fellow of the America Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Society for Quality, the American Statistical Association, and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. (See Nair’s UM web page: http://dept.stat.lsa.umich.edu/~vnn/.)

Chien-Fu Jeff Wu PhD

Jeff Wu came to the University of Michigan as the H. C. Carver Professor of Statistics and an IOE professor in 1993. He received his PhD in statistics from the University of California–Berkeley, in 1976 and then held faculty positions at the University of Wisconsin and the University of Waterloo before joining UM. He was elected to memberships in the National Academy of Engineering (2004) and Academia Sinica (2000). He has fellow status in the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (1984), the American Statistical Association (1985), the American Society for Quality (2002), and the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (2009). Wu is highly regarded as an expert in the development and use of advanced statistical methods to solve product quality and reliability problems. His work has garnered him major awards and honors from various scientific and professional societies. He served as chair of the Department of Statistics from 1995 to 1998. In 2004 Wu, became the Coca Cola Chaired Professor in the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. (See Wu’s Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C.F._Jeff_Wu.).

Jianjun “Jan” Shi, PhD

Jan Shi completed his PhD in mechanical engineering at UM in 1992 and then joined the Mechanical Engineering Department. In 1995, he became a tenure-track faculty member in the IOE Department and was later appointed the G. Lawton and Louise G. Johnson chaired professorship in IOE. Shi’s research interests focus on system informatics and control for the design and operational improvements of manufacturing and service systems. He has published one book and more than 160 frequently cited papers. He has worked closely with many different industrial companies, has served as principle investigator and co–principle investigator for $19 million of research grants and has advised 28 PhD students. Shi has received many honors for his research from the Institute of Industrial Engineers and other professional and research societies. The technologies developed in his research group have been implemented in various production systems and have had significant economic impacts. (See Shi’s web page at Georgia Tech: http://www2.isye.gatech.edu/~jshi33/.)

Stephen E. Chick, PhD

Stephen Chick joined the IOE Department in 1995 as an associate professor after receiving his PhD in industrial engineering and operations research from the University of California–Berkeley. He worked for five years in the automotive and software industries before joining academia. His research brings together simulation and statistical decision-making tools to help improve process design decisions in a variety of industries, including the health sector. His research has been funded by the US Environmental Protection Agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health, and he has worked with several pharmaceutical, vaccine, and health care delivery organizations. He has served as president of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences’ Simulation Society and is on the editorial boards of the journals Management Science, Operations Research, and Production and Operations Management. In 2003, he became professor of technology and operations management at the INSEAD school of business, which has campuses in France, Singapore, and Abu Dhabi, where he later held the Novartis Chair of Healthcare Management. (See Chick’s page at the UM Faculty History Project: http://um2017.org/faculty-history/faculty/stephen-e-chick.)

Marina A. Epelman, PhD

Marina Epelman joined the IOE faculty in 1999 after completing her PhD in operations engineering from MIT. Her research has focused on the development and optimization of complex stochastic networks, with applications in scheduling manufacturing maintenance operations, distributed service systems, and cancer radiotherapy procedures. She has received awards for her research from INFORMS and for her teaching from Alpha Pi Mu. (See Epelman’s curriculum vitae: www-personal.umich.edu/~mepelman/vita.pdf.)

Barry H. Kantowitz, PhD

Barry Kantowitz was appointed professor in IOE Department in 1999 and director of the University’s Transportation Research Institute, a position he held until 2004. In 1969, Kantowitz received his PhD in psychology from the University of Wisconsin. He joined the Purdue University faculty as an assistant professor in 1969, and rose to full professor in 1979. He served as chief scientist in the Human Factors and Organizational Effectiveness Research Center at the Battelle Memorial Institute (1987–1993) and as the human factors scientific adviser to the NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System (1991–1999). He was also director of the Battelle Human Factors Transportation Center from 1993 to 1995 and chief scientist from 1993 to 1999. Kantowitz’s research focused on human attention and information processing. His applied ergonomics research has improved safety and efficiency in aviation, nuclear power, and intelligent surface transportation systems. He is the author of more than 100 papers in peer-reviewed journals, more than two dozen books, and 18 book chapters. He retired from IOE in 2012. ( See Kantowitz’s page at the UM Faculty History Project: http://um2017.org/faculty-history/faculty/barry-h-kantowitz )

Lawrence M. Seiford, PhD

Larry Seiford joined the IOE Department in 2000 as professor and chair. He received his PhD from the University of Texas–Austin in 1977. He has served on the faculty at the University of Massachusetts, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Kansas, and York University. Seiford also served as program director of the Operations Research and Production Systems programs at the National Science Foundation from 1997 to 2000. Seiford’s teaching and research interests are primarily in the areas of quality engineering, productivity analysis, process improvement, distributed-systems design issues, and performance measurement. In addition, he is recognized as an expert in the methodology of data envelopment analysis. Results of his research efforts have been incorporated in academic course offerings and practitioner workshops on benchmarking, productivity, and performance measurement. He has authored and coauthored four books and more than 100 articles in the areas of quality, productivity, operations management, process improvement, decision analysis, and decision support systems. He is a fellow of the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE), the American Society for Quality (ASQ), and the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). (See his UM web page: www-personal.umich.edu/~seiford.)

Jussi Keppo, DrTech

Jussi Keppo joined the IOE Department in 2001 after holding a postdoctoral position at Columbia University. He received his Dr.Technology in applied mathematics from the Helsinki University of Technology in 1998. His research focuses on stochastic control, statistical analysis of stochastic processes, and optimization methods, with applications in information economics, banking regulation, optimal investment under uncertainty, and risk management. He has had several publications in top-tier journals, such as the Journal of Economic Theory, Review of Economic Studies, and Journal of Business on such topics as investment analysis, information economics, and banking regulation. His research has been supported by several Asian, European, and US agencies, including the National Science Foundation. He left UM in 2012. (See Keppo’s page at the National University of Singapore website: http://bizfaculty.nus.edu/faculty-profiles/314-jussi-keppo.)

Amy M. Cohn, PhD

Amy Cohn joined the IOE faculty in 2002 after receiving her PhD from the Operations Research Center at MIT. Cohn is as an affiliate of the MIT Global Airline Industry Program and is actively involved with INFORMS, AGIFORS, and the Industry Studies Association. Her primary research interest is in robust and integrated planning for large-scale systems, predominantly in health care and aviation applications. She also works on a number of other applied research projects, including collaborations in satellite communications and robust network design for power systems. Cohn is also known for her outstanding contributions to teaching engineers. Most recently she assumed the codirectorship of the Center for Healthcare Engineering and Patient Safety (See Cohn’s UM web page: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~amycohn.)

Nadine B. Sarter, PhD

Nadine Sarter received her PhD in industrial and systems engineering, with a specialization in cognitive ergonomics/cognitive systems engineering, from Ohio State University in 1994. She joined the IOE faculty as an associate professor in 2004, after serving on the faculty at the University of Illinois and the Ohio State University. Sarter’s primary research interests include multimodal interface design (with an emphasis on tactile feedback and crossmodal attention), attention and interruption management, decision support systems, adaptive function allocation, and human error/error management. She has conducted her work in a variety of application domains, most notably aviation and space, medicine, the military, and the automotive industry. For her work on pilot-automation interaction, she received the Aviation Week and Space Technology’s Laurels Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Commercial Air Transport in 1996, a National Science Foundation Faculty Early CAREER Award in 1998, and the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society’s Ely Award for the best paper published in Human Factors in 2008. Sarter is associate editor for Human Factors and Applied Ergonomics and was a member of the National Research Council Transportation Research Board Committee on Electronic Vehicle Controls and Unintended Acceleration (2010–2012). She was also a member of the Federal Aviation Administration Performance-Based Operations Aviation Rulemaking Committee/Commercial Aviation Safety Team Flight Deck Automation Working Group (2006–2013) and served as an expert witness in the 2013 National Transportation Safety Board investigative hearing on the crash of Asiana Flight 214. In 2015 Sarter was appointed director of the Center for Ergonomics. (See the Human-Automation Interaction and Cognition Lab website: http://thinclab.engin.umich.edu.)

Jionghua (Judy) Jin, PhD

Judy Jin joined the IOE Department as an associate professor in 2005 after serving on the faculty in the Department of Systems and Industrial Engineering at the University of Arizona for five years. She received her PhD in the industrial and operations engineering at UM in 1999. Jin is a recognized leader in quality engineering. Her research has focused on data fusion and system informatics for better comprehension and operation of engineering systems and decision making for quality and reliability assurance. Her research innovation and broad industrial impacts have been recognized with numerous awards, including nine best paper awards from IIE Transactions, the Industrial Engineering Research Conference, ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress, and International Conference on Frontiers of Design and Manufacturing; the Forging Achievement Award from the Forging Industry Educational and Research Foundation, and CAREER and PECASE Awards from the National Science Foundation. Recently, she has been serving as a departmental editor for IIE Transactions and an editorial board member for Journal of Industrial and Production Engineering. She also serves as the vice president of international activities of INFORMS; the chairperson of the Quality, Statistics, and Reliability division of INFORMS, and the president of the Quality Control and Reliability Engineering division of IIE. Jin is a professor in the IOE Department and the director of the Manufacturing Engineering Program of Integrative Systems and Design Systems. (See Jin’s UM web page: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jhjin.)

Mark P. Van Oyen, PhD

Mark Van Oyen joined the IOE Department in 2005 as an associate professor after serving on the faculties at Loyola University of Chicago and Northwestern University. He received his PhD in the electrical engineering systems from UM in 1992. His area of expertise emphasizes the development and use of stochastic methods to improve operations and systems, including the scheduling of production systems, flexible workforces and policies to support effective processes, and health care operational improvement. He has received two grants for teaching, as well as grants for his research from the National Science Foundation, the General Motors Foundation, and the Electrical Power Research Institute. Van Oyen has received best paper awards from Institute of Industrial Engineers, and was selected as an ALCOA Manufacturing Systems Faculty Fellow. His teaching in IOE has included the creation of several courses: IOE 440, Operations Analysis and Management (which included operations, supply chain, and queuing analysis of services); ENG 480, Global Synthesis Project, a revision of IOE 574, Simulation Analysis; a revision of IOE 545, Queueing Networks; and the senior capstone design course IOE 481, Practicum in Hospital Systems. He had been involved in the Engineering Global Leadership program for the College of Engineering in the roles of director, faculty adviser to the student honor society, and member of the admissions committee. During that time the program nearly doubled its enrollment and expanded from a program serving only IOE and mechanical engineering to one engaging students from almost every department of the College. He has served as an associate editor for IIE Transactions, Naval Research Logistics, and Operations Research and as senior editor for Flexible Services and Manufacturing. (See Van Oyen’s UM web page: http://vanoyen.engin.umich.edu/.)

In addition to these faculty members, nine others joined the faculty for shorter periods: Medini Singh (1990–1993), Tava Olsen (1994–2001), Rachel Zhang (1994–2001), Shane Henderson (1996–2002), Mark Lewis (1999–2005), Sebastian Fixson (2002–2006), Sushyant Sharma (2002–2007), Goker Aydin (2003–2009), and Volodymr Babich (2003–2009).

Though the department was able to hire a number of outstanding people during this 15-year period, the following tenured faculty members retired or accepted academic positions at other institutions: Jack Lohman, Nandyan Srinivasan, Candace Yano, Walton Hancock, John Birge, Jim Miller, Dan Teichroew, Jim Bean, and Steve Pollock.

5.6. The 2000 Curriculum

The curriculum in 2000 was similar in structure to what was presented 10 years earlier, with the exception that students were given more flexibility in electing courses in non-IOE subjects, both within engineering and outside engineering. This flexibility has probably contributed to the popularity of the undergraduate program.

The master’s degree had course requirements that continued to be flexible during this period. The master’s degree requirement simply stipulated that students were to select about two-thirds of their courses from courses at the 400 level and above, and they could combine these with courses outside the department that were approved by a faculty adviser. This would allow students to obtain a professional-level knowledge in a subspecialty of interest, such as ergonomics, financial engineering, global leadership, or transportation systems.

The PhD program course structure continued to emphasize six areas: applied statistics, engineering economy and management engineering, ergonomics, information systems, operations research, and production and manufacturing. This broad selection of courses also contributed to the popularity of the IOE PhD degree during this period, and more than 75 PhD students were enrolled in 2001.

A typical PhD program resembled the following. During the first year the students were required to complete at least 24 credit hours of mostly IOE courses. After successfully completing these courses with high grades, they would then take a written qualifying examination, based on courses they had taken in three of the six areas of concentration. They would also propose a research topic. If they passed this exam, they would commence their initial research. After completing their second year, they would write a thesis proposal and present it to a prospective thesis committee, one member of which had to be from outside the department. The thesis committee would then conduct a preliminary examination of the thesis topic. This examination included the written proposal and an oral presentation describing the proposed research. It allowed the student and faculty members to fully understand the intent of the research, its scope, its potential impact, and the resources required to perform the research. Successful completion of the preliminary examination allowed the student to become a candidate for the PhD degree and commence their thesis research.

Securing the financial and other resources necessary to complete the required PhD thesis research could be a daunting task for a student. Most often it depended on the financial support provided by the primary faculty thesis advisers at the time of the preliminary examination. Since a PhD thesis research project could cost over $250,000, particularly in areas that required extensive experimentation and/or fieldwork, the primary thesis adviser and student had to form an effective team to secure funding. Often the sources and types of outside grants and contracts secured by IOE faculty members shaped the nature and ultimate quality of a PhD thesis. This financial reality required successful faculty members to aggressively seek and secure the type of funding needed to ensure that high-quality PhD thesis research could be performed. Assuming that adequate resources could be provided, the PhD thesis research would typically be completed two or three years after the thesis preliminary examination. To conclude the PhD program, the student would submit a written doctoral thesis to the thesis committee and stand for an oral, public presentation and examination of their research by his or her committee.

5.7. Funding Sources

As mentioned earlier, the IOE PhD program had become very popular during the ’90s, but this also created a large financial burden on the faculty. It also should be kept in mind that at this same time the undergraduate and master’s degree programs were demanding significant time and effort from the faculty. To their credit, the faculty members managed to find support for their own research and that of their students from a variety of sources. The 2003 departmental review indicates that the faculty had secured more than $15 million in sponsored research in the previous five years. Of this, the federal government provided about $10 million; about $3 million came from industrial groups; and the rest came from foundations, states, and other sources. As would be expected because of the highly empirical nature of the research related to ergonomics and manufacturing quality engineering, almost $10 million was expended in these two areas of concentration, followed by about $3 million in operations research, $1.8 million in production systems, and $1.4 million in engineering management and financial engineering.

5.8. Staff Support

In addition to the technical staff support described earlier, as the size of the IOE faculty and student body increased from 1990 to 2005, and government reporting requirements became more demanding, the department needed a competent staff to provide administrative support. Some of the people who have provided continuing and important assistance over the past couple of decades are shown here.

Candy Ellis – IOE Departmental Administrator

Elizabeth Fisher –  Marketing and Communications Administrative Assistant

Kelly Cormier – Center for Ergonomics

Tina Picano Sroka – Department Assistant

Mary Winter –  Research Administrator

Wanda Dobberstein – Undergraduate Student Adviser

Matt Irelan – Graduate Student Adviser

5.9. Synopsis of 1990–2005—IE Contributions and Major Events

Many significant and important events occurred during this 15-year period. One of the most prominent was the completion of the expanded IOE building in 1996. This provided lecture and seminar rooms as well as new teaching, research laboratory, and shop spaces. But it wasn’t only the physical facilities that were improved; the hiring of additional information technology support staff allowed faculty and students to use and even develop new computer programs to address many contemporary and important problems in the field.

This 15-year period also saw a significant (about 40 percent) increase in enrollments, particularly at the undergraduate and master’s levels. It was also a period in which female students now made up about 40 percent of the undergraduates, 25 percent of the master’s degree students, and 22 percent of the PhD students. Thirteen percent of the undergraduates, 11 percent of the master’s students, and four percent of the PhD students were classified as being from underrepresented minority populations from 1997 to 2002. It was also during this period that the faculty had the largest number of women faculty members.

The tuition provided by the additional students electing IOE degrees supported the hiring of many new faculty members, resulting in the highest number of tenure-track faculty members (25) in the department’s history. There was also a threefold increase in the number of adjunct faculty members hired during this period to assist in teaching the lower-level courses. One of the benefits of the larger number of faculty members was that a critical intellectual mass in ergonomics, operations research, production systems, quality and manufacturing engineering, and management and financial engineering existed for most of this period. There was also a good balance between theoretical and applied research.

During this period several of the senior faculty members in the department developed exciting new educational programs in cooperation with faculty members from other UM schools. Their leadership resulted in the Tauber Manufacturing Institute, a joint venture with the School of Business, the first College of Engineering honors program in engineering global leadership, and a popular financial engineering master’s Program that involved five different schools and colleges. The structure and impact of these new programs, along with other such continuing initiatives lead by IOE faculty members is described in the next two chapters.

There was also an increase in the number of well-qualified PhD students in the department during this period, reaching 74 in 2004. Though this was a positive turn of events, it created an increased need for the 25 faculty members to find support for the research projects these students wished to perform. Although the faculty members were able to increase their sponsored research, and by 2001 had secured an average of over $200,000 per faculty member (higher than other peer schools), the 2003 departmental review indicated that most faculty members believed this was still not sufficient for the size of the PhD program. The pressure to find increased funds to support students while teaching courses with a large number of students resulted in the loss of some excellent faculty during this period.

Alumni relations were also greatly improved during this period with the publication of a much more comprehensive biannual IOE Newsletter and the establishment of an IOE Alumni Academy that met several times each year to discuss how alumni could assist the department. An Outstanding Alumni Award was established, along with the endowed Bert Steffy Lectureship Awards. (See Appendix A.1 for a description of the winners of these awards.)

In summary, during this 15-year period the IOE Department had grown in size, impact in its field, and prestige. As part of one of the preeminent, large public universities in the United States, with more than 120 different departments, it is clear that after 50 years the IOE Department was now doing its part by providing outstanding industrial engineering leaders in many different areas of endeavor.