The Monkey with a Typewriter Seminar

Date: Sept. 15
Place: Dunstan 202 
Time: 1:00 p.m.

Thom HodgsonThom J. Hodgson
James T. Ryan Professor & Director of Integrated Manufacturing Systems Engineering Institute

Education
University of Michigan: B.S.E., Science Engineering, 1961; M.B.A., Quantitative Methods, 1965; Ph.D., Industrial Engineering, 1970

Areas of Interest
Scheduling, logistics, production and inventory control; manufacturing systems; and applied and military operations research.

Biography
Hodgson is the James T. Ryan Professor, a Distinguished University Professor, and the Director of the Integrated Manufacturing Systems Engineering Institute at North Carolina State University. He served as Head of the Industrial Engineering Department at NCSU ('83-'90); Director of the Division of Design and Manufacturing Systems at the National Science Foundation ('91-'93); Professor of Industrial & Systems Engineering at the University of Florida ('70-'83); Operations Research Analyst at Ford Motor Company ('66-'70); and an Officer in the US Army ('61-'63). He is a Fellow of IIE and INFORMS, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He is the author or co-author of over 70 journal articles and book chapters. He served as Associate Editor, Departmental Editor ('81-'84; '88-'91), and Editor-in-Chief ('84-'88) of IIE Transactions. He also served as a member of the US Army Science Board ('94-'00).

ABSTRACT

The Monkey with a Typewriter Seminar
There is an old adage that says, if you give a monkey a typewriter and let it type long enough; it will eventually produce the Encyclopedia Britannica.  Well, we've got a pretty smart monkey (your basic industrial engineer), and a really fast typewriter (a multi-gigahertz PC). 

This seminar is about how we can use analysis, and the concept of randomization to solve real combinatoric problems.  We review a number industrial of problems, and their real solutions.  A key issue is to keep the technology low enough that fundamental analysis of the problem (and good coding skills) will be sufficient for success.

Video
Thom Hodgson: The Monkey with a Typewriter