by Michael Mahaffey
Shivakumar Raman is an OU Gallogly College of Engineering faculty member and director of OU Online’s Master of Science in Industrial and Systems Engineering program. He Joined OU In 1988.
How long have you worked for OU?
I’ve been with the University of Oklahoma since 1988. I’ve been teaching and researching in the areas of manufacturing processes and systems for 36 years.
Tell us a little more about your education, professional background and experience.
I’m the David Ross Boyd Professor and Morris Pittman Professor here at the University of Oklahoma, and I’m the director of the Industrial and Systems Engineering program in the Gallogly College of Engineering. I earned my bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Shivaji University and a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington before earning my Ph.D. in industrial engineering at Pennsylvania State University. I have taught more than 5,000 students and over 120 classes in 36 years. I’ve brought in almost $25 million worth of research funding, and I’ve published more than 150 papers. I still teach undergraduate classes, and I really love it.
I’ve received many National Science Foundation (NSF) grants, as well as grants from other federal agencies. My work on NSF, NASA, U.S. Air Force and NIST grants has focused on manufacturing process optimization, machining tribological interface modeling and product and process metrology, which is the study and science of measurement. I was the project director of the Economic Development Generating Excellence grant from the State of Oklahoma that investigated shape engineering for advanced manufacturing. We used advanced sensors and measuring instruments for metrology, reverse engineering of aircraft parts and 3D digital manufacturing.
I’m also a fellow of the Industrial and Systems Engineers, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the Society of Manufacturing Engineers. It’s relatively unique to be a fellow of all three.
How would you describe what it means to be an industrial and systems engineer?
All industry relies on parts. Materials need to be selected, and products need to be manufactured and repaired or replaced. When do you make a decision to repair or replace? If it has to be repaired, who do you send it to? If it has to be replaced, who do you purchase from, and how do you establish those supply chains?
Making systems, processes and products better are the methods they teach you in industrial and systems engineering. We don’t just worry about the product. We worry about the process. We focus on statistics, optimization, reliability, risk analysis and supply chain engineering. How do bottlenecks happen? How do lot sizes get figured out? How do you do costing? How do you agree with shortages? How do you see whether your capacities are met? How do you do production planning? How do you do inventory management? All of these things have to be taken care of. That is the holistic, systemic view. If the process is good and efficient, then the product is going to be good. That’s industrial and systems engineering.
You recently received a grant from the Knudsen Institute in Chickasha. Can you tell me about that grant and how it contributes to the larger work of the ISE program?
They wanted to have aircraft parts reverse-engineered, and we were the only ones who could do it. At OU, we are unique in that we have scanners and measurement equipment that nobody else has. We can currently do additive and subtractive manufacturing. It’s what our research is. We are known for that.
We started doing a lot of that work with the state grant, with the United States Air Force and with a lot of support from industry, as well as an NSF grant. There are airplanes that have parts that need to be replaced. How do you maintain a supply of those parts, especially in niche industries or where parts created decades ago are no longer made or supported by the original equipment manufacturers? Larger companies like Boeing have the infrastructure to support these initiatives on their own; smaller companies have the same needs but much less access to the services required to keep their airplanes operational. Our whole point is to try to fill the gaps and do the reverse engineering for KC135s, 737s, commercial and military.
There are small equipment manufacturing businesses in Oklahoma with the expertise to make these parts. The problem is, how do you find them when they aren’t listed in state or industry directories? How do you match services someone offers, and how do you connect them to the people and companies who need them? That is where my research has been focused. How do we fill these gaps so that small businesses are empowered?
The search and discover paradigm is something we’re committed to. Empowering the small manufacturer is something we want. Creating regional ecosystems is a big part of it. How do you create supply chains that revolve around Oklahoma? I want the Oklahoma economy to look good. I want small manufacturers who have small advertising budgets to be found. The university provides us with the opportunity to directly do this. As a school of industrial and systems engineering, we can directly help a small company. We want to empower these businesses to be competitive nationally and internationally. We want to increase the footprint of OU and empower the small businesses of Oklahoma so they can do larger contracts with anyone.
If you need a plumber, you don’t call someone in China. You call someone local. Why not make that same kind of service available to the aerospace industry, so you don’t have lead times of 18 months and costs of $2.5 million to make a small part that goes into a door latch that closes the bathroom properly? You should be able to do that quite inexpensively and really fast because there are people here in Oklahoma who have the expertise to fill those gaps and those needs.
We are committed to empowering anything and everything in the state. We want to help all of the native nations in the state thrive, as well. What are their shortages, and how can we help them? How do we support U.S. defense and military? How do we support U.S. commercial aircraft and automobiles? How do you create enough business here for Oklahoma to become a hub? We have the infrastructure. We just have to create the ecosystem.
We have the equipment. We can find the expertise at OU. We have hundreds of faculty members. We can find one who does that research. And if we can’t find that expertise inside OU, we have sufficient partnerships with other universities that we can borrow upon their services as well.
What can students expect to learn in the online industrial and systems engineering master’s program offered through OU Online?
The online program focuses more on systems engineering, cost engineering, systems architecting, model-based systems engineering, project management and project leadership. We can’t really work with hardware, so the focus is less on manufacturing and more on the systems and control end of things. We want them to understand the whole notion of systems engineering as it applies to industrial engineering. Digital engineering and model-based systems engineering are big concepts.
What are the challenges of teaching ISE courses online?
The online folks are trying to get ahead in their jobs. They want to learn a skill set they missed out on in school, or they want to try and get a promotion. Some of them have worked in the industry for 15 years, so they’ve done a lot of the hands-on somewhere else or at their jobs. Most students are at least mid-level managers or higher, so these concepts aren’t entirely new to them. There are some senior engineers, too. The challenge of taking the courses online is greater because of the demands of time in their daily lives.
What advice do you have for adult students returning to school in the online ISE program?
Brush up on your statistics and basic math concepts. The students who fall short typically do so because there is some concept in statistics they don’t understand well. The math that we do, a lot of students have forgotten it. They’ve been in the industry for years. When they come in and suddenly see an integration they have to do, it takes a while to remember how to do things many of them haven’t done on a regular basis for years.
People who are reasonably good at statistics and have their college-level calculus back tend to be very successful. That is by far the toughest challenge that they have because it is conceptually very challenging. It’s the nature of the material.
I made my living doing differential equations for years. You show me a differential equation today; I’m going to say, “Hmmm?”
What is your favorite course to teach?
Mechanical engineering because you’re explaining concepts and context that the students have not experienced before.
What is your favorite thing about being an instructor at OU?
With teaching, you’re teaching students something they don’t know, and when it clicks and you see it happening in front of you, it’s fabulous. When the “a-ha” moment happens before you, that’s very gratifying.
What is your favorite thing about teaching adults?
The experience level and maturity of online students are much higher. We’re adding to their knowledge where it’s missing and giving them the foundation and terminology to talk about systems engineering in a broader context for the things they actually have experience with but that they may not have been exposed to in a formalized way. They may be struggling to implement systems engineering in their workplace. We provide them with the know-how for that. How do you cost things? How do you delegate project management and leadership? It’s not too different than an MBA in an engineering sense.
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