Focus

Keeping pace with IIE in the November 2012 issue of Industrial Engineer

The executive and the doctor

Shingo Prize winner and emergency medicine chairman lead speakers at healthcare conference
A co-author of a Shingo prize-winning book and a board-certified emergency medical doctor are the keynote speakers at next year’s Healthcare Systems Process Improvement Conference.

Roger A. Gerard, executive business partner at ThedaCare, a Wisconsin-based integrated healthcare delivery system, will speak on March 2, 2013. Dr. Joseph S. Guarisco, chairman of the Department of Emergency Medicine and system chief of emergency services for the Ochsner Health System in New Orleans, will speak on March 3, 2013.

Gerard has more than 37 years of experience, specializing in developing executives and managers, improving processes and using lean methods to add measurable upgrades to organizations.

Before joining ThedaCare in 1991, he worked for Northern Michigan Hospitals, the Sandy Corp. and Gulf + Western Manufacturing. Gerard and ThedaCare’s CEO emeritus, John Toussaint, wrote On the Mend: Revolutionizing Healthcare to Save Lives and Transform the Industry to detail the company’s seven-year journey to lean healthcare, an effort that continues today. Lean has helped ThedaCare slash medical errors, improve patient outcomes, raise staff morale and save $27 million. The book was honored with the 2012 Shingo Research and Professional Publication Award.

The other keynote speaker, Guarisco, has worked at Ochsner since joining the Department of Emergency Medicine in 1980. He has extensive experience in emergency department informatics automation regarding how to design, develop and implement information systems. When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005, Ochsner’s emergency department faced dangerously long waits as ambulances lined up. Guarisco, who also has a bachelor’s degree in engineering, used lean engineering principles to redesign the department’s workflow completely and adjust to accommodate the new normal.

His department received the clinic foundation’s award for outstanding achievements in patient satisfaction in 2005. Guarisco, who also has a bachelor’s degree in engineering, won the Press Ganey 2005 National Success Story Award for the innovative use of data and process design in improving patient satisfaction.

The Healthcare Systems Process Improvement Conference will be held March 1-4, 2013, at the Sheraton New Orleans Hotel in New Orleans. For more information, visit www.shsconference.org.

Bringing systems together

International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) President John A. Thomas (left), standing with IIE Chief Executive Officer Don Greene at IIE headquarters, met with IIE officials in September to discuss how both professional organizations can further the interests of industrial and systems engineering. IIE and INCOSE jointly publish the Journal of Enterprise Transformation and are looking into ways to collaborate in continuing education and other areas.

Go Ergo Cup for glory

Dealine is Nov. 30 for annual competition
So you, your team or your engineers and ergonomists have figured out process improvements that make the workplace safer. Or the organization has developed or revamped ergonomics programs that save lives.

What now? How about going for the glory and prestige of an Ergo Cup?

The submission deadline to compete for the Ergo Cup, which will be awarded in four categories at the 16th annual Applied Ergonomics Conference 2013, is Nov. 30.

The Ergo Cup competition started with one category at the 1999 Applied Ergonomics Conference. Interest and categories have grown since, with a fourth classification added last year when Team-Driven Workplace Solutions was divided into a category for entrants that did not go through an internal competition and one for those that did.

The other two categories are Engineering/Ergonomist-Driven Workplace Solutions and Ergonomic Program Improvement Initiatives. The Ergo Cup is sponsored by the Ergonomics Center of North Carolina and the Edward P. Fitts Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at North Carolina State University.

The Global Organization of Ergonomics (GOErgo) will present the Applied Ergonomics Conference March 18-21 at the Hilton Anatole in Dallas.

For more information about the conference, visit www.appliedergoconference.org.

Systems engineering expertise

IIE members contribute to first online SE Body of Knowledge
Volunteers from IIE collaborated with academic and industry professionals worldwide to develop version 1.0 of the Guide to the Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge, which has been released at www.sebokwiki.org.

“Targeted to a broad audience, including practicing systems engineers, researchers, process improvement leads, project managers and faculty, the SEBoK is a major step forward for the rapidly maturing systems engineering discipline,” said co-editor Art Pyster, a research professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology.

SEBoK contains 112 articles on key topics, defines 364 glossary terms, and identifies more than 200 primary references and hundreds of additional references, according to Pyster. It was published in a Wiki format to make updating and community participation in maintenance easier. Regular updates will incorporate user feedback, advances in the field, and improvements in the articles.

Seventy contributors authored SEBoK, and hundreds of reviewers provided comments. The authors hope the operational phase leads to its broad adoption within the systems engineering community.

IIE Chief Operating Officer Donna Calvert said the endeavor is an important outreach activity that integrates IIE with systems engineering interests.

Hans Demmel, IIE senior vice president at large for industry, is the official IIE representative to SEBoK. Demmel spearheaded IIE’s involvement and was instrumental in authoring the systems engineering and industrial engineering section in the related disciplines chapter of SEBoK. He said participation reinforces IIE’s domain breadth, including integration with the systems engineering arena.

SEBoK is the first time an authoritative body of knowledge for the systems engineering discipline has been compiled online, according to Demmel.

“It is not designed to replace the systems engineering handbook, but to summarize key information and direct the reader to references for detailed information. As such, a body of knowledge and a handbook are complementary items,” Demmel said.

The SEBoK website is hosted through an arrangement between the U.S. Department of Defense, the Stevens Institute and the Naval Postgraduate School.

Step into the arena

Winter offers second crack at Student Simulation Competition
Student teams who missed the deadline for the fall IIE/Arena Student Simulation competition have a second chance beginning Dec. 1.

Teams of three industrial engineering undergraduate students use Rockwell Automation’s Arena simulation package to solve a real-world case study prepared by Rockwell. A total of three teams from the fall and winter competitions will be selected to compete in the finals at the IIE Annual Conference and Expo, scheduled for May 18-22, 2013, in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Students and their faculty advisors don’t have to be IIE members, but they must be able to attend the conference. And courtesy of Rockwell, non-IIE members who compete in the finals will become IIE members.

Each finalist team receives $1,250 for travel expenses to the finals, complimentary conference registration, complimentary tickets for the Honors & Awards Banquet and a framed certificate.The winning team receives $5,000, and an additional $500 goes to the team’s IIE chapter. Second place includes a $2,500 reward for the team and $250 to the team’s chapter, while the third-place team wins $1,500 and $250 for the team’s chapter.The winter competition session opens Dec. 1 and ends Jan. 18. Submissions for both the fall and winter competition will be judged in March.

For more details, visit www.iienet.org/studentcenter and click on “simulation” underneath the competitions subhead.

Continuous improvement at home

SEMS’ first virtual conference is near
The Society for Engineering and Management Systems’ first virtual conference is moving rapidly toward your domicile’s computer room (or kitchen, living room or wherever else you have a desktop or laptop computer).

Best Practices in Managing Continuous Improvement will run from 7:30 a.m. until 6 p.m. Nov. 14. (All times are Eastern Standard.) Users can log in from anywhere in the world.

SEMS has teamed with the presenters to put together nine sessions that cover sustainable improvement, lean transformation at IBM, product development, strategic alignment, optimization and transformation at UPS, the Toyota way, process capabilities and more.

For more information and to register, visit www.iienet.org/managingCI.

Kudos

Celebrating member achievements

	Mark Jannone has been appointed director of planning and decision support at Atlantic Health System in Morristown, N.J. Jannone was previously the deployment leader for Atlantic’s Six Sigma, lean and industrial engineering initiatives.
	Khaled Mabrouk has been named an instructor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at San Jose State University. He will remain operational engineering leader for Sustainable Productivity Solutions.
	Brian M. Kleiner, director of the Myers-Lawson School of Construction and professor of industrial and systems engineering in the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech, has been reappointed the Ralph H. Bogle Professor Fellow in Industrial and Systems Engineering.
	Hans Demmel, IIE’s senior vice president at large for industry, has been inducted into the Rochester Institute of Technology Industrial and Systems Engineering Academy. Demmel is senior manager of systems engineering at Raytheon Missile Systems.
	Rudolf Herrmann has received the Alumni Award, the premier award given to alumni by the Iowa State University Alumni Association. He is the retired president and CEO of Dover Resources Inc.

SHARE YOUR ACHIEVEMENT
Let your peers know about hirings, promotions, awards, appointments and other notable accomplishments. Send Kudos items to Michael Hughes at mhughes@iienet.org.