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SPRING/SUMMER 2009

NEWSDEPARTMENT OF INDUSTRIAL AND SYSTEMS ENGINEERING

THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISONCOLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

www.engr.wisc.edu/ie

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n the difficult business climate following Sept. 11, 2001, leaders of Madison-based printing company Omnipress decided it was time for a change as costs continued to rise. Omnipress, which specializes in conference and educational

meeting material solutions such as printed books, handouts, CD ROMs and flash drives, decided to implement quick-response manufacturing (QRM), a set of principles and methods for reducing product lead times from weeks to days pioneered by Professor Emeritus Rajan Suri. With help from students in the UW-Madison Center for Quick Response Manufacturing, Omnipress reorganized its CD production to ensure a flexible workflow by combining all CD-related operations on one team and cross-training the team members to do almost every job. The result was startling: Within months, staff slashed their CD publication time by 70 percent.

From left: Ananth Krishnamurthy, Omnipress Vice President of Operations Tracy Gundert, and CEO David McKnight.

“We saw that the QRM principles worked,” says Omnipress CEO David McKnight. “We also anticipated we could get better efficiencies and results if we ap-plied the concept to the whole company.”

Again, results were almost immediate. Within one quarter, the time to finish a print or digital job was on average cut by half. The shorter production time means Omnipress is well positioned to remain competitive in future economic downturns. The reorganized workflow has also reduced costs, increased revenue, uncovered hidden resources and created new growth potential.

Omnipress is one of more than 190 companies to have worked with the QRM center in the past 15 years. “Omnipress’ success shows how QRM’s focus on lead time reduction strengthens competitiveness,” says QRM Center Director and Associate Professor Ananth Krishnamurthy. “The center provides companies like Omnipress a forum to learn about QRM and help in the transition from theory to practice.”

Hy-Vee partnership will optimize warehouses for a soon-to-be Wisconsin business

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Veeramani

Luedtke

hen a store runs low on a product, an employee orders more from the warehouse, and when inventory at the warehouse runs

low, an employee places an order with the supplier. The product arrives at the warehouse via truck, is put away on pallets, and later pulled out again to be put onto other trucks for delivery to the store.

This basic supply chain process is how retailers have operated for decades. While it is a simple process, it is not the most efficient, cost-effective strategy to manage

inventory, according to Professor Raj Veeramani and Assistant Professor James Luedtke, who are researching new ways to optimize supply chain management for retailers. Their research is part of a new partnership between the UW-Madison School of Human Ecology Center for Retailing Excellence, with which Veeramani and Luedtke are affiliated, and Hy-Vee Inc., an employee-owned retailer with plans to open its first Wisconsin store in Madison in fall 2009.

Hy-Vee has developed a flow-through ordering system, which has reduced warehouse inventory by more than 50 percent, and in an effort to build on the existing system, the company has awarded a one-year, $84,948 grant to Veeramani and Luedtke. For their project, titled “Warehouse Management for Hy-Vee Flow Through System,” Veeramani and Luedtke will focus on how to transform warehouse practices and leverage information technology to tackle

(Continued on p. 7)

In tough times, printing company uses UW-Madison methods to recover

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Patricia F. Brennan, Chair

3270 Mechanical Engr. Bldg.1513 University Avenue

Madison, WI 53706

Phone: 608/263-1315Fax: 608/262-8454

E-mail: pbrennan@engr.wisc.eduWeb: www.engr.wisc.edu/ie

MESSaGE fRoM thE ChaIR

here is nothing like summer-time in Madison! Many of our students are away from campus,

but they are still working hard, as evidenced by the fact that more than 50 percent of our students take summer internships with industry. Hundreds of companies come to campus each year to interview and select students to spend two to three months on site working under the supervision of professional engineers and managers. Students have taken internships with such firms as Intel Corporation, Cysco Systems, Harley Davidson Corporation and Kimberly Clark, and these internships provide our students with valuable exposure to the life of industrial engineering.

Faculty are also working hard in the summer. Most of our faculty members run large research programs that are funded by federal, industrial or private sources. They use these funds to spend intensive time during the summer working on their projects. Read the description of Associate Professor Ananth Krishnamurthy’s work in this newsletter to get a glimpse of one faculty member’s research program.

In other news, two groups led by ISyE faculty will form part of the core of the new

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Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery. I will establish the Living Environments Laboratory, a physical laboratory and virtual reality chamber designed to accelerate development and production of personal care technologies. Professor Michael Ferris, Associate Professor Jeff Linderoth, Assistant Professor Jim Luedtke, and Professor Steve Wright will create the Optimization Center, a compu-tational resource that will provide advanced analytical support for bioinformatics and nanotechnology discoveries.

I would also like to say welcome to all MentorNet and LinkedIn members—by

now you should have received the special ISyE message and be sure to look for subsequent exclusive messages at least once a quarter. We believe that these networks will help you stay especially informed about the new initiatives of the department.

Finally, it is my responsibility to let you know how we are faring in the current fiscal crisis. Like all parts of the campus, we have had to make cuts in both the number of positions and the total dollars available for instruction. I am happy to tell you that the department faculty have identified many creative strategies to manage this situation, and we are able to offer the same number of courses and teaching resources to our students.

Thus, although we have been faced with some belt-tightening, we are confident that we can achieve the department’s mission of producing the next generation of industrial engineers equipped with the knowledge that they will need to best serve industry and society.

We do hope you will plan to join us in the fall at Engineers’ Day on October 16 and at our Celebration for Dave Gustafson on

Patricia Flatley Brennan RN, PhD, Professor and Chair

Alumni ResouRcesMentorNet and LinkedIn

The ISyE department offers two convenient and valuable resources for alumni to connect with students and other alumni.

The ISyE Alumni-Student E-Mentoring Program is a great opportunity for alumni to make a difference in the lives of current students in as little as 15 minutes a week. Via the entirely Email-based system, you can control your availability and acceptance of a student protégé. Join the more than 50 alumni already serving as mentors and sign up today at www.mentornet.net. Visit the FAQ at www.mentornet.net/documents/other/help/mentorfaq/aspx.

The ISyE Alumni LinkedIn Group is a chance to reconnect with classmates and build a professional network. LinkedIn, which is entirely free, allows you

to search, find and contact ISyE alumni in addition to the hundreds of thousands of other users you can reach through your extended LinkedIn network. Join more than 200 alumni in the group at www.linkedin.com/e/gis/138818/3BB9EC23DFE5.

Contact department administrator Carol Anne Krueger with questions about either MentorNet or LinkedIn at 608/262-9660 or cakrueger@engr.wisc.edu.

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rofessors on sabbatical generally focus on reinvigorating either their research or teaching methods, but Associate Professor Ben-Tzion Karsh is focusing on both, and his ambitions have kept him very busy.

It’s been time well spent, as Karsh, who is on sabbatical until fall 2009, has jump-started a new line of research and has intensively studied the science behind how his students learn.

Karsh is interested in the cognitive work that primary healthcare workers perform, and he is investigating how computers are changing primary healthcare overall. Cognitive work refers to the problem solving that healthcare workers do every day, including how they make diagnoses, assign treatments, make decisions and recover from those decisions at the end of the day.

As computers become a mainstay in doctors’ offices, Karsh is investigating how technology affects doctor-patient relation-ships, diagnoses decisions, and primary care patient safety in general. He has received a grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, a sister agency of the National Institutes of Health, to work on these questions with a team of primary care doctors from the Wisconsin Research and Education Network.

Karsh’s new research parallels his efforts to improve his teaching. “The two areas combine for me in the sense that my teaching is informed by my research,” Karsh says. “Students get to hear firsthand about the real-world experiences of their professors, and my experiences include going to hospitals and clinics and learning what it’s like.”

Beyond simply expanding his research to, in turn, share with his students, Karsh is also rethinking his teaching methodology.

“I have always loved teaching, but I was acutely aware that I didn’t know the science behind teaching,” he says. “I never felt equipped to make changes to my courses, but once you understand the science of learning, you can make effective, evidence-based changes.

“Otherwise, you’re just guessing, and as a scientist, I don’t like to guess.”Karsh and PhD student A. Joy Rivera enrolled in a semester-long course through the

UW-Madison Delta Program in spring 2009. He also enrolled in the 2009 UW-Madison Teaching Academy Summer Institute. The courses taught Karsh how to scientifically design and improve courses and materials that could, for example, accommodate different learning styles and promote interaction. He also learned how to craft exams that more accurately evaluate student knowledge.

“I can now apply a lot of same ideas we teach in class to creating more effective engineering courses,” Karsh says.

With Rivera, Karsh used the principles from the Delta course to redesign ISyE 349, Introduction to Human Factors. “I have almost 60 pages of notes on how we are making the course better for students and tie into other department courses,” Karsh says.

Karsh is also redesigning ISyE 556, Occupational Safety and Health Engineering, and plans to bring in guest lecturers, such as industrial hygiene consultants and staff from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, to talk about applying the course principles to the real world.

Overall, Karsh is ready and excited for the fall 2009 semester. “I’m really charged to get back into teaching and right away apply what I’ve learned,” he says. “During the sabbatical, I accomplished the things I wanted to realize, and it’s been a great benefit for my research and students.”

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Patricia Flatley Brennan RN, PhD, Professor and Chair

Former ISyE chair retires

More than free time: Sabbatical offers chance to recharge research, teaching

fter 26 years as a faculty member, Emerson Electric

Professor in Total Quality Harold Steudel retired from the ISyE department. A member of the American Society of Quality, Steudel is a recognized leader in the fields of quality engineering and quality manage-ment, pursuing several aspects of quality in manufacturing with the goal of reducing defective products and increasing production efficiency and customer satisfaction.

A Wisconsin native, Steudel received his BS and PhD degrees (’68 and ’74, respec-tively) in mechanical engineering from UW-Madison. He spent eight years as a faculty member at the Marquette University School of Business before joining the UW-Madison College of Engineering in 1982.

Steudel chaired the ISyE department from 1998 to 2007 and recently served as a guiding force through the Mechanical Engineering Building planning and construction phases. He has authored 36 publications, conducted 15 sponsored industrial research projects and served as director of the Quality Assurance Systems Research Consortium.

However, he considers the greatest highlights of his career to be his time spent teaching more than 10,000 students, providing them with knowledge and skills useful to improve their lives and the world in which they live. He developed four popular quality-related engineering courses, including a web-based course offered through the Master of Engineering in Professional Practice program.

“I feel very fortunate to have been part of the vibrant learning community at UW-Madison, rich with opportunities to work with students of all ages in research and the exploration of ideas and methodologies, both traditional and emerging,” he says.

In retirement, Steudel plans to stay connected to the ISyE department and the College of Engineering through teaching, service, development and other opportuni-ties that might arise. He also plans to travel more with his wife, Carol.

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QRM directorDEPaRtMENt NEWS

Assistant Professors Oguzhan Alagoz (pictured) and Beth Burnside (radiology) along with PhD candidate Jagpreet Chhatwal developed a computer

model for better predicting cancer based on mammography findings. The team published its breakthrough in the April issue of the American Journal of Roentgenology. The news appeared on yahoo.com, medicalnewstoday.com, sciencerelay.com, sciencedaily.com, Eureka! Science News, HULIQ, and many more outlets around the world.

A report titled “Decision Support for Pandemic Planning for the State of Wisconsin” by Professor Vicki Bier garnered the attention of numerous media

outlets nationwide after the outbreak of H1N1 (swine flu) virus this spring. The report was published by the Wisconsin Department of Health and Family Services (DHFS) in June 2008 and was cited by the Washington Post, MSN, Yahoo, the Wisconsin State Journal, and numerous other local newspapers and television news stations.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has approved $5.3 million to continue funding for Project HealthDesign, an initiative designed to create

a new generation of personal health record (PHR) systems led by Lillian S. Moehlman-Bascom Professor and Chair Patricia Brennan. The grant, which brings total project funding to approximately $10 million, will support a program that engages four to six grantee teams to demonstrate how to improve people’s heath by enabling them to record, interpret, and act on health information that emerges in the course of their daily living. An important component of the new project will be to demonstrate how these observations of daily living can be integrated into the clinical practice workflow, assisting patients and the clinicians to best manage chronic illness.

Professors Pascale Carayon, Dave Gustafson, Ben-Tzion Karsh, Doug Wiegmann and Assistant Scientist Todd Molfenter have been funded by the U.S. Department of Veterans

Affairs for their proposal “Midwest Mountain Veterans Engineering Resource Center.” VA hospitals are coming together to form multi-operational systems engineering schools known as Veterans Engineering Resource Centers (VERC). The proposal from ISyE faculty will create the Midwest Mountain (MWM) VERC. The goal of VERCs is to create the healthcare work places of the future by recognizing the complexity of transforma-tional improvement with a shared vision of facilitating innovative solutions.

Associate Professor Ben-Tzion Karsh has been elected a fellow of the UW Teaching Academy. Fellows represent faculty, academic staff, and outreach

instructors who have demonstrated excellence in teaching and a commitment to improving the quality of teaching and learning across campus. The goal of the Teaching Academy is to promote effective teaching and learning here and nationally by encouraging innovation, experimentation and dialogue among faculty, instructional staff and teachers of the future. Karsh teaches several courses in human factors, occupational safety and ergonomics.

Professor and Chair Robert Radwin (also biomedical engineering and orthopedics and rehabilitation) has been elected fellow of the American

Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA). The AIHA has more than 10,000 members dedicated to health and safety in the work-place community and environment from industry worldwide. Only five percent of AIHA members can be selected for the fellow award, which is given to people who have made significant contributions to the field. Radwin is recognized for his research in occupational biomechanics and ergonomics on musculo-skeletal disorders in the workplace.

On March 31, WISC-TV news featured the UW-Madison Trace Center and its director, Professor Gregg Vanderheiden (also biomedical engineering). The

segment focused on technology developed at the Trace Center to increase accessibility for people with disabilities, such as features included in automated post office kiosks and electronic voting machines and computer applications such as StickyKeys and others.

RETIREMENTSAlong with Professor Harry Steudel (see p. 3) three other distinguished industrial and systems engineering faculty retired in 2008 and 2009. Their combined years of experience total more than 100 years of teaching, research and outreach. (Read complete profiles about the retirees at www.engr.wisc.edu/alumni/perspective/35.2/retirements.html)

Professor Dennis G. Fryback joined the UW-Madison faculty in 1974. Population health sciences was Fryback’s home department; however, he maintained a close affiliation with ISyE as a methodologist who built analytical tools and methods to analyze the cost-effectiveness of health care technology, drugs and treatments. Overall, his findings have helped standardize the way in which scientists measure

health-related quality of life. “This is important to measuring the benefits of healthcare, which is not just about making life longer, but about improving quality of life, too,” he says.

He is a founding member of the Society for Medical Decision Making and has remained continuously active in its activities since 1978. He has received many honors and fellowships, and in 2000, he was elected to membership in the Institute of Medicine.

Fryback is among a group of researchers who are part of a U.S. government initiative to assemble a national health account. He plans to continue his consulting work and participation on National Academies committees. In addition, he is hoping to enjoy more time with his wife and extended family. “I’d like to get back to my hobby of astrophotography, too,” he adds.

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ssistant Jim Luedtke never thought he’d have the chance to return to UW-Madison. The Colby,

Wisconsin, native and ISyE undergraduate alumnus joined the UW-Madison faculty in fall 2008 after obtaining his PhD from Georgia Institute of Technology and completing a postdoc at IBM Research.

While the decision to settle in Wisconsin was easy, since he has family in the state and has always wanted to return, not all of the situations Luedtke encounters in his optimization research are so clear-cut. He is investigating two challenging optimization situations: making discrete decisions and making decisions in the face of uncertain data and outcomes.

Luedtke is collaborating with Associate Professor Jeff Linderoth on an integer programming project to tackle discrete decisions, which are essentially yes or no situations. An example of a discrete decision is when a retail manager decides whether to open a new warehouse. “It’s an all or nothing decision—you can’t open a third of a warehouse,” Luedtke says. He and Linderoth are studying algorithms to solve problems with discrete decisions that are further complicated by nonlinear constraints.

Luedtke is also working on stochastic optimization, which addresses uncertainty in problem solving. In traditional stochastic optimization research, the objective is to find the best solution on average. Often, this assumes a decision will be made multiple times. However, Luedtke recognizes that in many situations, a decision is made only once, and the decision-maker cares about a single outcome rather than an average of multiple outcomes. An example is investing in stocks: When an investor retires, they care about their personal outcome rather than the average outcome of all investors.

A “Decision-makers want to avoid bad outcomes, and I’m researching methods that try to find good solutions that limit the likelihood or magni-tude of bad outcomes,” says Luedtke. “It’s about finding a better match between the decision and the risk toler-ance of the decision-maker.”

He is also exploring how his techniques can be applied. One example is Luedtke is part of a new partnership between the UW-Madison School of Human Ecology Center for Retailing Excellence, with

which Luedtke is affiliated, and Hy-Vee Inc., an employee-owned retailer and grocer that will be opening two stores in the Madison area.

The Hy-Vee project requires Luedtke to examine uncertainty around product de-mand in order to create a new warehouse process. The new process will be based on the flow through philosophy that moves product from the supplier to the ware-house to the store quickly. Luedtke will use stochastic and discrete optimization in a system that can operate the new process.

Jim Luedtke

foCUS oN NEW faCULtY

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Professor Steve Robinson joined the UW-Madison faculty in 1972. A pioneer in decision science and stochastic optimization, Robinson is a leader in optimization and

developing tools for complex situations. Military applications are important to Robinson, who served as an officer in the U.S. Army from 1963 to 1969, spending two years in the elite Special Forces in Vietnam. He remained in the U.S. Army Reserve until 1993, retiring as a colonel.

“My time as a professional soldier gave me an appreciation for complex operations and some of the difficulties people face when they have to do things in a hurry and without much preparation,” he says.

Robinson has received many honors and awards from professional societies. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2008, marking

him as one of the most distinguished engineers in the nation. Since retiring, Robinson has retained a presence on campus, continuing to teach, write and pursue research. “My basic goal was to have very little change in what I’m doing, and so far that has worked,” he says.

Professor Rajan Suri joined the UW-Madison faculty in 1985 and established himself as a revolutionary in manufacturing practices. He directed the Manufacturing Systems Engineering Program for 14 years, and in 1994 he founded the Center for Quick Response Manufacturing (CQRM).

More than 250 companies have partnered with the CQRM to revolutionize their manufacturing practices. In developing the QRM philosophy, Suri combined management methods, engineering techniques, and behavioral insights to create a comprehensive theory for reducing lead times throughout a manufacturing enterprise, and put that theory into practice through the CQRM. “While everyone knows that ‘time is money,’ I was able to demonstrate that time is a lot more money than most managers realize,” he says.

QRM also has provided students with ample hands-on experience, both through the CQRM and Suri’s ISyE 415 and ISyE 641 courses, among the highest rated large-enrollment classes in the department. Currently, Suri is writing a second book on QRM targeted to executives, explaining QRM in management language. He continues to be involved in the CQRM through workshops and industry projects.

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StUDENt NEWS

PhD student Safa Erenay, who works under Assistant Professor Oguz Alagoz, has won the best PhD scientific poster award in the PhD colloquium at the recent Industrial Engineering Research Conference. The conference was held in Miami, Florida, on June 1, 2009. Erenay won the best poster award among a total of 40 submissions for his dissertation, which is titled “Optimal screening policy for colorectal cancer prevention and surveillance.”

Each semester the ISyE department presents the Ratner Senior Design Project Award to the three best projects from an ISyE senior capstone design course. Each winner receives an award certificate and a share of their team’s prize money. For the spring 2009 semester, first place and $800 went to Advait Raje, Andreas Roenning, Kemaleddin Farrokhnia, Majid Aksari, Vishal Labade and Zariat Rahman for their project, titled “Reducing delivery lead times for aftermarket parts at P&H Mining Equipment.” Second place and $600 went to Lucas Bohac and Ronald Uglow for “Spine clinic access project.” Third place and $475 went to Debon Dyreson and Tom Thorvaldson for “Peds speciality clinics template optimization.”

• Richard S. and Harriet K. Fein Scholarship Richard Holden

• Donald Liechty Scholarship—Engineering Tyler Haag, Tom Thorvaldson, Jayme Udvare

• Robert J. Mensel Scholarship Allison Newman, Benjamin Rissman,

Yodsadhorn Vinitwatanakhun

• Robert A. Ratner Scholarship Jacquelynn Lamb, Mariama Morrison,

Yodsadhorn Vinitwatanakhun

• Robert A. Rohn Scholarship Kristine Juno, Colin Wiesner

• Dr. Vinod K. & J. Gail Sahney Scholarship Debjit Roy

• Jeanne and Thomas Snodgrass Scholarship Angelene Bauch, Jennifer Gerschke

• Roland E. Stoelting Scholarship Thomas Davich, Maia Jacobs

• Erich Victor Streich Memorial Scholarship Martin DeZell

• Anthony and Alice Thistlethwaite Lin Yu, Elizabeth Richards, Tracy Schumitsch

• University League— Rosa B. Fred Endowed Scholarship

Rachel Hinkes

n the 2008-2009 academic year, 27 ISyE students were awarded 40 scholarships from alumni and

industry totaling $47,000. Undergraduate scholarships were awarded in fall, while graduate students received their awards in the spring.

• Victor W. Bergenthal Scholarship Andrea Hilliker, Maia Jacobs, Paul Swanson

• Lewis Raymond Brown Scholarship Tyler Haag, Allison Newman, Jayne

Sammons, Jayme Udvare

• Gilbert and Genevieve Buske Scholarship Angelene Bauch, Elizabeth Richards,

Tracy Schumitsch

• Fred W. & Josephine Colbeck Scholarship Jayne Sammons, Paul Swanson,

Tom Thorvaldson, Ronald Uglow

• Antoinette Derjani-Bayeh Scholarship Bonnie Paris

• Engineering Undergraduate Scholarship Ryan McAsey

• Carl and Henry Grotophorst Scholarship in Engineering

Martin DeZell, Andrea Hilliker

IISyE scholarship recipients

Richard Holden, lecturer and PhD student under Associate Professor Ben-Tzion Karsh, has been named the first recipient of the IBM scholarship from the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS). HIMSS is an international organization focused on providing leadership for the optimal use of healthcare information technology and management systems for the betterment of healthcare. Its philanthropic arm, the HIMSS Foundation, awards scholarships to student members who have achieved academic excellence and have the potential to be future leaders in the healthcare information and management systems industry. The scholarship carries a $7,000 cash award and a sponsored invitation to the annual HIMSS conference and exhibition.

IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering (T-ASE) chose a paper by graduate student Liang Pi, alumnus Yunpeng Pan (PhD ’06) and Professor Leyuan Shi for its Best Paper Award. In “Hybrid nested partitions and mathematical programming approach and its applications,” published in the October 2008 issue of T-ASE, the researchers presented a new approach to hybrid nested partitions and mathematical programming, which can provide approximate solutions and handle different kinds of constraints for many types of problems. The award includes a certificate for each author and a $1,000 honorarium.

During the spring 2009 semester, a group of industrial and systems engineering students volunteered to redesign the Democratic caucus room at the Wisconsin State Capitol. The students worked with State Representative Kelda Roys (D-Madison) and her aides. The caucus room had been designed like a class-room, and the students proposed a U-shape design to better facilitate communication and group work among representatives. The legislators quickly adopted and praised the new design. Student Matt Myers led the group, which included Ben Borsuk, Mark Cigich, Jake Gafner, Ji Shun Liu, Joe Madden and Arjun Mishra. ISyE Lecturer Terry Mann advised the group.

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the basic challenge of supply chain management: delivering the right products in the right quantities at the right time and place for minimal cost.

Hy-Vee, which is based in West Des Moines, Iowa, operates 225 supermarkets and drugstores across the Midwest. The company, which emphasizes well-ness, freshness and one-stop shopping convenience, is ranked among the top 30 supermarket chains and top 50 private companies in the Unites States.

“Hy-Vee is excited about the partnership with UW-Madison and we believe the results of this project, coupled with our existing processes, will become the most efficient replenishment system in the industry,” says Dan Gubbins, Hy-Vee director of business analysis.

Veeramani and Luedtke will develop a design for a new warehouse process based on the flow-through philosophy and create

a system that can operate the new process efficiently. The research will challenge the assumption that warehouses must put product received from a supplier away before preparing shipments to individual stores. Instead, Veeramani and Luedtke will design a process to allow Hy-Vee to flow most of the product directly from supplier trucks through the warehouse to trucks bound for stores. The eliminated step enables warehouses to carry less inventory overall.

To achieve this, Veeramani and Luedtke will use optimization techniques to improve the Hy-Vee model for estimating the right amount of product to order. “You can’t just order a little extra of everything when you’re

dealing with large-scale retailers,” says Luedtke. “The goal is to have less inventory, while still having enough to avoid having empty shelves at the stores.”

Veeramani and Luedtke are focusing on the intellectual challenges of an entire class of retailing issues, which could affect the entire industry. “The collaboration between ISyE and the Center for Retailing Excellence reflects the Wisconsin Idea of community building that fosters cross-campus collabora-tion and interdisciplinary work,” says Human Ecology Associate Professor Nancy Wong, who is the faculty director for the center.

Veeramani agrees that the project high-lights what multiple departments can achieve together. “UW-Madison has a comprehensive set of faculty expertise across multiple disciplines to address the complex challenges and new opportunities facing the retailing industry, and the Center for Retailing Excellence and ISyE have come together to focus on innovations in supply chain management, which is key for any retailer to be successful,” he says.

Hy-Vee partnership(Continued from front page)

IDepartment Picnic

n May, the department hosted a picnic for ISyE faculty, staff and students. The picnic encouraged interaction within the department and celebrated

the end of the school year and our graduates. The department is hoping to make the picnic a regular tradition.

Pictured, top: Professor Gregg Vanderheiden plays Ladder Ball with students. Bottom center: UW RFID Lab Director Alfonso Gutierrez supervises student TJ Madsen at the grill. Bottom left, Associate Professor Jeff Linderoth socializes with students, while at bottom right, Assistant Professor Jim Luedtke joins a team of students playing a bean bag game.

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ISyE NEWS

Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering1513 University Ave.Madison, WI 53706

Published twice a year for alumni and friends of the UW-Madison Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering.Produced by: Engineering External Relations / Editor: Sandra Knisely / Design: Phil Biebl Paid for with private funds.

Research Professor Emeritus David Gustafson is the director of the UW-Madison Center for

Health Enhancement Systems Studies. Gustafson applies his interests in decisions, change and information theory to health systems and brings these topics together in the design and evaluation of systems, and tools that help individuals and organizations cope with major changes.

His research teams address individual change by creating systems to detect suicidal

propensity, help teenagers adopt healthy behaviors and help families cope effectively when faced

with major health crises. These systems rely on the Comprehensive Health Enhancement Support System

(CHESS), a computer system that helps people facing a variety of serious medical situations. CHESS has been tested

in the field and in randomized trials involving thousands of people, and the system is shown to provide insight into the acceptance, use and impact of computer-based support systems for health, health-related behavior, and health service use.

Along with CHESS, Gustafson has developed the Quality Improvement Support System to help organizations implement and sustain quality improvement. He has also created new techniques for facilitating groups and understanding customer needs. New models to measure customer satisfaction, severity, medical under-service, and quality of care have stemmed from Gustafson’s computer systems, and his behavior change research has led to models to predict and explain how organizational changes are initiated and adhered to. These organizational change initiatives are primarily tested in the addiction treatment field.

SaVe tHe date!SatUrday, NoV. 7, 2009

Lifetime achievement recognition for research Professor Emeritus daVid H. GuStafSon

Madison, Wisconsindetails to follow

Gustafson is the author of several books and more than 100 journal articles. He is a fellow of the Association for Health Services Research, American Medical Informatics Association and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, where he served as vice chair. Additionally, he is chair of the eHealth Institute and past chair of the U.S. Science Panel on Interactive Communications in Health. He is also national program director of NIATx, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation initiative to improve quality of services in substance abuse treatment agencies.