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President's Message | New Le
aders & Conferences
Hello SEMS friends,
Hope you all are having a good summer. For those of you who attended this year's IISE
Annual Conference at Pittsburgh, we hope you had a good conference We trust that you used the opportunity to attend the excellent program, which was put together across the various tracks. Thanks to all of you who made the conference a tremendous success - our track chairs, invited speakers, and the presenters. We are collecting the feedback from the conference to identify specific actions we that can improve for the 2018 conference.
As we transition to the new year in SEMS, we will use the inputs and suggestions from the town hall to shape our key initiatives in 2017-18. This is an exciting year as we expand our collaboration with American Society for Engineering Management (ASEM) and continue our initiatives to gain industry participation through mentoring programs, webinars and other media. Over the next few weeks, we will provide you with details on our efforts and seek your feedback to deliver value to our stakeholders.
One of the key areas we like to expand our focus is around client advocacy and engagement. We want to engage our engineering managers in a conversation around how to improve client advocacy and learn best practices along the way. We know there are experts in our society who can help us with this - so please reach out to us if you are willing to share your learnings
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As always, we welcome suggestions (and volunteers!) to ensure SEMS remains your preferred society for engineering and management systems. Contact any of your Officers to offer input or get involved. Have a wonderful summer and we will be in touch shortly!
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SEMS Says | Pittsburgh conference was a winner: How to get involved
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Brian Smith
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What a great conference we had in Pittsburgh!
I hope you were able to attend and that you are making plans for joining us next year in Orlando, Florida. I have been involved with SEMS going on 10 years now, and the IISE Annual Conference always has been a treat for me professionally, largely because of the opportunity to visit face to face and catch up with the great members of the SEMS community and hear the presentations of state-of-the-art research in engineering management.
The conference in Pittsburgh was very special for me, as I officially became part of your SEMS executive board for 2017 through 2020. I am extremely honored by you voting me in as president-elect. I look forward to giving back to the society that has given so much to me. I am sure that many of you share my sentiments of what a great organization SEMS is and how much value we as members get from the society.
SEMS is a volunteer-run society within IISE, and it is the work of volunteers that enables the society to thrive and provide value to the membership. There are many opportunities to serve SEMS. We are guided by an executive board and a board of directors. The executive board consists of the president-elect, president and past president. Members vote annually for president-elect, and that person serves three years on the executive board, transitioning from president-elect to president to past president, holding associated responsibilities for one year each.
The members of the board of directors are also elected annually to three-year terms. Directors have one or more specific areas of service to the society, such as the IISE Annual Conference, communications and international membership, among others. There are also numerous opportunities to serve without running for a director position, with one of the most important being serving as a co-chair for the Engineering Management track at the IISE Annual Conference. I have served in many roles for SEMS, including a term on the SEMS board of directors and four years as a co-chair of the Engineering Management track. The work can be busy at times, but it is well worth the reward.
If you attended the SEMS Town Hall meeting during the conference in Pittsburgh, you heard a call for volunteers. We still need you. At the time of this writing, we have one co-chair lined up for the conference next year in Orlando; we need at least two more. I can think of no better way to interact personally with so many members in our field. SEMS President Sreekanth Ramakrishnan will be laying out other opportunities to volunteer as he begins his term if you wish to serve in some other fashion.
Feel free to contact me if you would like to discuss opportunities to serve within SEMS or if you have ideas for how the society may better add value to your membership. Again, I am honored to be president-elect for the 2017-2018 year, and I look forward to working with you all to continue improving the value SEMS provides for its members.
SEMS President-elect Brian K. Smith is an assistant professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Mississippi State University. His research interests include data analytics applications within engineering management. He has more than 10 years of industry experience in quality engineering and engineering management.
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SEMS Says | Three new faces join the SEMS board of directors
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Julie Drzymalski
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Thank you for electing me to the SEMS board of directors. I will be joining the board along with two other newcomers: Gene Dixon, an associate professor at East Carolina University, and Kira Hansen, an engineer in the Technical Excellence Program for Harley-Davidson.
I am excited to be able to offer additional opportunities to our members. Since last June, I have served as a clinical professor and program director for systems engineering and engineering management at Drexel University after eight years at Western New England University, where I was an associate professor and interim chair. Prior to that, I spent 12 years in industry and decided in 2004 that academia was where I could envision myself effecting greater change, so I changed paths and completed my Ph.D. in industrial engineering at Lehigh University in 2008.
While I still am somewhat new to the SEMS community, I previously served as the secretary for the Hartford Chapter of IISE and was the faculty advisor for seven years. I feel strongly about bringing global perspectives into practice and academia and thus have been serving as the chair for the International Committee of SEMS since fall 2016.
On July 13, SEMS had a webinar about the impact of regulatory initiatives on the pharmaceutical industry titled "Regulatory-Driven Initiatives: The Burdens and Opportunities." Find the webinar at
www.iise.org/webinars. If you miss it, you can find it the presentation archived under "Engineering Management" at
http://bit.ly/SEMSwebinar.
My main goal for this year is to increase our collaborations with our global partners. This can be in the form of research projects, co-taught classes, professional development and developing a repository of connections and expertise for our members to use when they are looking for assistance with their endeavors. This year, ASEM and IISE have partnered with other organizations to co-host an international conference whose motto is "New Global Perspectives on Industrial Engineering and Management".
I would like to increase these types of collaborations on any scale, so I welcome suggestions and input from all of you. Please feel free to contact me
Julie Drzymalski.
I look forward to creating new opportunities.
Julie Drzymalski is a clinical professor and program director for systems engineering and engineering management at Drexel University and works in the areas of predictive human behavior models as well as building robust supply chains. She has been in academia for nine years and has 12 years of industrial experience in quality, project and program management.
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IISE Annual Conference & Expo | Best Paper Award
Engineering Management Track
The Engineering Management Track Best paper Competition was sponsored by Missouri Science & Technology University and Old Dominion University.
The Best Paper Award for the recognizes excellence in research among regular track submissions. Top three EM track papers were identified by a paper review committee.
3rd Place:
Impact of Requirements Management Documentation on Software Project Outcomes by Sujatha Alla & Pilar Pazos (Old Dominion University) and Rolando Del Aguila (Sentara Health)
2nd Place:
Relationship between Formal Engineering Design Methodologies and Human Behavior: A Source for Process Missteps by Gary Gress & Theodor Freiheit (University of Calgary
1st Place:
Determinants of Goal Achievement for Continuous Improvement Projects in Hospitals by Fernando Gonzalez Aleu (Universidad de Monterrey), Eileen Van Aken (Virgina Tech University), Jennifer Cross (Texas Tech University) and Wiljeana Glover (Babson College)
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IISE Annual Conference & Expo | Student Paper Competition
Engineering Management Track
Engineering Management Track Student Competition Paper Sponsored by Missouri Science & Technology University.
The seventh annual SEMS Student Paper Competition recognized highly qualified undergraduate and graduate students from the IISE with diverse academic experiences. This year's first place:
1st Place: A Methodological Approach for Kaizen Events in Assembly Cells by Mateus Lima, Universidade Federal Rio Grande do Sul
SEMS Best Paper Competition Coordinating Director: Pilar Pazos-Lago, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director in the Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Department at Old Dominion University.
SEMS Best Paper Competition Coordinating Director: Pilar Pazos-Lago, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director in the Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Department at Old Dominion University.
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Lend a Helping Hand | Call for Volunteers
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