Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering

Last update: 09/22/2005

The Alumni Night organized by the IIE student officer was held on the Busch Campus on April 21, 2005. Many thanks to the alumni and the students who participated.

The following two design groups won the regional IIE Technical Paper Competition.

They are placed in their respective ranking 1 and 2 respectively.

Congradulations to the students and to Dr. Elsayed and Dr. Basily who spent a lot of time with them.

1. Color Blind and Color Coordination Assistant
Iyadi Adi, John K Fischer, Dariusz M Karpiuk,
John-Fayek R. Michail

The objective of the Colorblind and Color Matching Assistant (CCMA) is to develop a system that identifies the color of clothes and matches them with other clothes. The system ranks the quality of the match as either 0 (not a match) to 1 (a match), and the result of the identification and match are provided to the user with a vocal output. This is accomplished through integrating a digital flatbed scanner, computer control of the scanner, and software. The software provides color analysis of the image, identification of the color, matching the color of clothing with other clothes, a graphical user interface, and a vocal output. The CCMA also has the capability to solely identify the colors of clothes and solely match colors of two articles of clothing, as opposed to doing both processes. The user simply places their clothes on the scanner, goes through the graphical user interface to start the program, and the results of the CCMA are both displayed on screen and spoken to the user. After completing numerous trial runs, the CCMA consistently identifies and matches two articles of clothing with solid colors, defined as clothing with small variation in color.

2. Fully Automated Stand Alone Mailboxes
Adam J. Diener, Jonathan D'urso, Kathlene W. Lechner,
David W. Wong

This project deals with the design and implementation of a Fully Automated Stand-Alone Mailbox (FASAM) in order to provide postal services to business and residential customers at all times, and to notify the post office when a parcel is ready for retrieval. More specifically, the FASAM weighs, dispenses the proper amount of postage for, and stores a package or letter for retrieval. It is intended to achieve these objectives through integrating the hardware components of the mailbox with computer control and software code. The FASAM includes an easy to use interface and accepts a credit card payment from customers. It also incorporates a scale, a parcel guiding system, and computer control for the detection of packages and or letters. Our extensive research strongly suggests if implemented, this product would bring about many benefits for United States Postal Service.

Dr. Pham received IEEE Fellow Award Hoang Pham, Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Rutgers University, was recently elected a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the world’s largest professional technical organization with over 360,000 members worldwide. Pham is being honored for notable contributions to analytical techniques for modeling the reliability of software and systems. Pham was among 268 worldwide members of IEEE elected as Fellows in 2005. Pham is the author of over 80 journal articles, 2 books, 4 edited-books, and editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Reliability, Quality and Safety Engineering and associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics Pham’s recent research interests focus on modeling the reliability and vulnerability of complex systems in high risk environments.

Congradulations to authors Drs. Elsayed and Zhao! They received the 2005 Golomski Award for the outstanding paper in the 2004 Proceedings of the Annual Reliability and Maintainability Symposium, by their paper entitled Zhao, W. and Elsayed, E. A., “An Accelerated Life Testing Model Involving Performance Degradation."

Dr. Wanpracha (Art) Chaovalitwongse won the William Pierskalla Best Paper Award

Dr. Wanpracha (Art) Chaovalitwongse won the William Pierskalla Best Paper Awardin Operations Research and Health Care Applications by the INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences).
http://www.informs.org/Prizes/HealthPrize.html
The award was presented at the 2004 INFORMS annual meeting held in Denver, CO.

The paper was titled "Seizure Warning Algorithm Based On Optimization And Nonlinear Dynamics." The paper was presented by Art, and authored by P.M. Pardalos, W. Chaovalitwongse, L.D. Iasemidis, J.C. Sackellares, D.-S. Shiau, P.R. Carney, O.A. Prokopyev, and V.A. Yatsenko.

A number of companies are involved in student projects...

Students under the direction of Dr. Michael Tortorella are working on their term projects in Work Design and Ergonomics. These projects with local companies help the students gain valuable context for their studies and real-world experience for their development and resumes. They also provide benefit to the companies by helping them solve problems that they may not have the resources to tackle in a timely fashion. This semester's project sponsors, all valued supporters of the I&SE program, are S. S. White, International Flavors and Fragrances, United Parcel Service, AT&T Laboratories, and the New Jersey EcoComplex. Please join me in wishing our students well and in offering our sponsors our sincere thanks.

ISE Students Kept the Top Place in the SME Regional Conference!

Society of Manufacturing Engineers Regional Professional Development Conference was held in NJIT, Newark, NJ on October 2-3, 2004.
Industrial and Systems Engineering students; Thomasz Bysakal, Miguel Salinas, Laure La Rue, Deborah Cabezas, David Boum, Darius Karpiuk represented SME Rutgers University Student Chapter in the Student Chapter Display Competition where they have won the Best Student Chapter Display Award.
Thomasz Bysakal and Miguel Salinas lalso competed in the Research Competition: Future Directions in Manufacturing with their presentation on "Fully Automated Chocolate Machine" and won the second place.

Honda Corporation awards Drs. E. A. Elsayed and B. B. Basily the 2003 Honda Initiation Grant for "An Innovative Sheet Folding Technology for Weight and Vibration Reduction of Vehicles". Hideaki Ikeno, President of Honda R&D America, Inc. presented the award to Drs. Elsayed and Basily at the 2003 Honda Initiation Grant Symposium, held in Newport Beach, California, November 19, 2003.

Dr. Luxhøj received a $1.16 million research contract from the NASA Langley Research Center to develop a probabilistic decision support system to evaluate new technology and to assess aviation safety system risk.

Susan Albin received the IIE Transactions on Quality and Reliability Engineering 2001-2002 Best Paper Award. The award will be presented at the 2003 Annual Meeting of IIE in Portland, Oregon. The paper, "A Hierarchical Method for Evaluating Products with Quantitative and Sensory Characteristics," is co-authored by Prof. Flavio Fogliatto, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. He was a graduate of the Rutgers ISE doctoral program and Dr. Albin served as his thesis advisor.

Open house was held on April, 2003. A number of families and children visited the premises of the ISE Department.

>>> see the pictures of Open House!

Andrew Patti (IE ’61) is our commencement speaker on May 22, the graduation day.

Andrew S. Patti graduated from Rutgers in 1961. He served as the president and CEO of the Dial Corp. for 1967 to 1996. He was the executive vice president of Ameritech until 1997. Currently, he is the President of Belae Brands Inc. and also a Managing Member of Rianco, L. L. C., a venture capital and consulting company.