Bruce Ankenman | MEM | Northwestern University

Bruce Ankenman

Director, Master of Engineering Management
Associate Professor, Industrial Engineering & Management Sciences Department

Course: IEMS 428 - Design for Six Sigma

As a design engineer in the automotive parts industry, Bruce Ankenman found that an engineer's job depends heavily on the ability to efficiently collect data and accurately analyze it. He found that most engineers do not have access to a wide variety of statistical methods to help them to perform these critical tasks. His research addresses this problem through the development of simple to use, yet statistically powerful tools for the design and analysis of industrial experiments. Bruce Ankenman has recently been working on design of simulation experiments for discrete event simulation models. He is primarily interested in statistical tools of experimental design and analysis such as factorial and fractional factorial experiments, response surface methodology, and model building. He is also very interested in the use of statistical models to help suggest or develop mechanistic models of engineered systems. He views statistical methods merely as tools to be used for an engineering or scientific purpose. He is therefore concerned not only with the tools, but also with the entire process of design, development, and continuous improvement in industry. He has recently been involved with research on adapting design of experiment techniques for use in simulation experiments. These experiments are run on simulation models of manufacturing or other large scale systems and help engineers and managers to make tactical and strategic decisions based on realistic computer models.

Education:
PhD     1995 Industrial Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison
MS      1991 Manufacturing Systems Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison
BS      1984 Electrical Engineering, Case Western Reserve University

Professional Experience:

Segal Design Institute, Northwestern University
Director of Undergraduate Programs
Industrial Engineering Department, Northwestern University
Director of MEM

Publications:
Bruce Ankenman has been published in numerous publications, including the Handbook of Production Planning, the Encyclopedia of Statistics in Quality and Reliability, the Journal of Quality Technology, Naval Research Logistics, the Proceedings of the American Society of Engineering Education Annual Conference, Operations Research, the International Journal of Engineering Education, the Handbook of Statistics, IIE Transactions, Statistica Sinica, the Journal of Statistical Computation and Simulation, Technometrics, Quality and Reliability Engineering International, and Quality Engineering.