Jeffrey W. Herrmann

Engineering Decision Making

In the Spring, 2009, semester, I will be offering ENME 808X / ENRE 648C, Engineering Decision Making. This course will cover material on individual decision-making, group decision-making, and organizations of decision-makers. The course will present techniques for making better decisions and for understanding how decisions are related to each other. See the schedule of classes for more information.

QUEST

I serve as Associate Director for the University of Maryland Quality Enhancement Systems and Teams (QUEST) Honors Fellows Program.

QUEST is a unique undergraduate experience found only at College Park that includes exceptional students from majors in engineering, business, and computer, mathematical and physical sciences. The program offers special courses and experiences that are focused on cross-functional collaboration, quantitative methods, interactive planning and quality principles.

Each year, QUEST admits approximately 75 students to participate in the three year program. QUEST collaborates with professional partners representing organizational settings of all kinds that enable student interaction with real-world applications of the quality approaches, tools and methods learned in the program courses.

Teaching

Course Descriptions

ENME 426, Production Management. (This course was ENME 489J.) This course covers the basic concepts and intuition needed to design and control manufacturing systems. The content will include the key behavioral tendencies of manufacturing plants, including the corrupting influence of variability. Understanding the underlying behavior of manufacturing systems helps one to improve existing systems and design new systems. The course covers the history of manufacturing, production planning and scheduling, lean manufacturing, manufacturing system performance measures, queueing systems, variability, push and pull production control, and end-user modeling. The textbook is Factory Physics, by Hopp and Spearman.

ENME 601, Manufacturing Systems Design and Control. (This course was numbered ENME 808G.) Use the following link to view or download the course notes. This course presents techniques for modeling and analyzing discrete event systems like manufacturing systems. The content will include the key types of deterministic and non-deterministic models, including discrete-event simulation and stochastic processes. Understanding the underlying system behavior helps one to improve existing systems and design new systems. It includes the following topics:

Systems Modeling and Analysis
Simulation
Discrete Event Systems: Deterministic Models
Discrete Event Systems: Stochastic Models

ENME 808X Engineering Decision-Making. This course is relevant to engineers in a wide variety of areas. In the course of engineering design, project management, and other functions, engineers have to make decisions, almost always under time and budget constraints. This course will cover material on individual decision-making, group decision-making, and organizations of decision-makers. The course will present techniques for making better decisions and for understanding how decisions are related to each other.

Courses Taught

ENES 100 Introduction to Engineering Design
ENME 201 Engineering Design Project
ENME 371 Product Engineering and Manufacturing
ENME 472 Integrated Product and Process Development
ENME 489J Production Management
ENME 489X Human Powered Vehicle (with Dr. Linda Schmidt). Please see the stories about the students' success: Diamondback story and a news release.
ENME 601, Manufacturing Systems Design and Control.
ENME 614, Advanced Production Control Techniques
ENSE 621 and ENPM 641, Systems Engineering Principles
ENSE 622 and ENPM 642, Systems Modeling and Analysis
ENSE 623 Systems Engineering Design Project (with Dr. Linda Schmidt)
ENME 808X Engineering Decision Making

Last updated on September 25, 2008.