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

Acknowledgments

There are many people whom I wish to thank and acknowledge for their contributions to this text. In particular, there was the invaluable assistance of Elizabeth Fisher and Candy Ellis, who provided the minutes of past faculty meetings, scanned copies of IOE newsletters, provided past departmental reviews, and gathered the data and assembled the tables in the appendices that describe the expertise of and awards received by past and present faculty members and alumni. Elizabeth also deserves credit for her work in assembling the biographical information about many of the faculty members and alumni. I also wish to thank my good friend and colleague Steve Pollock, who contributed much of the text describing the history of operations research and reviewed and edited the text related to the financial engineering and ISDOS programs. To develop the history of the faculty’s many different contributions to health care, I would be remiss to not thank Walton Hancock, a mentor, friend, and colleague who patiently responded to my many questions about this activity in the department. Bob Smith also took time out of his retirement to provide a description of the development and contributions that resulted from the work done in the department’s Dynamic Systems Optimization laboratory. Much of the excellent history of the ISDOS program, as well as the description of its commercial development, was supplied by Hasan Sayani. Yavuz Bozer, Larry Seiford, and Jim Bean collaborated with Nancy Davis to provide a description of the roles IOE faculty members played in promoting and sustaining the Tauber Manufacturing Institute. Mark Daskin also deserves credit for providing critical comments and editorial advice regarding the epilogue. The wonderful photographs throughout the text were often obtained from the university’s Millennium Project, developed and maintained by Anne and Jim Duderstadt, two people whose tireless efforts to capture and record the extraordinary history of the university and the College of Engineering have inspired the writing and publishing of this text. Rod Capps and Eyvind Claxton have also provided photographs from their collections. Lastly, I must thank Tom Armstrong, my colleague and friend in the Center for Ergonomics, for his assistance in describing the Rehabilitation Engineering Center Grant.

On a more personal note, I wish to thank my wife, Barbara, the joy of my life, for letting me know that retirement can be a good time to give back by remembering those who have meant so much in our lives. In many ways this book has been my way of saying thank you to her and the people in this institution who have enriched my life far more than I could ever have imagined or hoped for when I first visited in the spring of 1964. Soon after that visit I decided to undertake my PhD studies here. And the rest, as they say, has been a very good journey.