Special duties at Kettering:

FREE STATISTICAL CONSULTING FOR STUDENTS, FACULTY AND STAFF at KETTERING UNIVERSITY via the STATISTICS CLINIC, open since Fall 1998.

Work in the Statistical Curriculum Committee

Work in the Calculus Curriculum Working Group.

Work in the Applied Mathematics Computer Laboratory Development Committee.

Faculty Supervisor of the Thesis Assignment of students.

Kettering students should be involved in the research process. It is difficult during the regular study period, due to the time limits, the co-op breakes, and the the overload in study process. Thesis work at the senior year provides an excellent opportunity to involve students in a real applied research. In this way the following students have been tasted the sense of such work:

Charles Young, How the Vulcanization of Rubber Compound Affect the Static Rates, Dynamic Rates, and the Fatigue Life of a Molded Rubber Part (for the Yale-South Haven, Inc.), Graduation date June 1999. He applied the methods of Design of Experiment, Statistical modeling and Statistical Data Analysis in his study what process components, and up to what degree influence the properties of the ruber parts, produced by his company.

Roy Thorcell, Quality and Production Rate Improvement of the PL2000 Headliner Assembly Line (for the United Technologies Automotive), Graduation date June 1999. Ne also applied the methods of Design of Experiment, and Statistical Data analysis to study the impact of some process characteristics on the creation of defects and other non-conformities of the car's headliner products.

Takesha M. Lyles, Statistical Engineering Problem Solving Techniques used to Improve Initial Customer Enthusiasm at Buick City Assembly Center, Graduation date June 1999. She did an excellent work for a complete statistical analysis of what causes the consumer's dissatisfacion from car performance, and found some technical details with supportive engineering solution, that really improved the assembly process, and removed the sources of defective production.

Darin William Witkowski, Initiate an automated test facility (for Case Corporation, Racine WI), Graduation date December 1998. He found a powerful system for test-searching defects in the computer-aided applications in trade-market business, by the means of simulations.

Douglas Neal Wright, Automatic Focus Station, (for Valeo-Sylvania Automotive Lightening), Graduation date December 1998. He worked on a new solution for bypassing the hand-opereted manipulation with the use of specific engineering solution, that might robotize it.

Brandi May Oldt, Characterization of office chair feature usage and structural response to usage loads (for Steelcase Inc., Grand Rapids MI), Graduating date December 1998. By the use of all statistical means she completed a complex field study to collect data for how many usage of specific tools (at least four), mounted on an office chair, may bring it to damage, or dissatisfaction. Than a standardized instruction was expected to come out of this study for the company.

Amy Lin Richards, Justification for building a new U.P.S. facility in Wixom, Michigan, with CO-advisor Dr. P. Richard, Graduation date June 1997. She used methods of statistical simulations of the calls, and times to response in order to determine where to build a new facility, and the number of vehicles to serve the needs.

David Thomas, Warranty Analysis of Statistical Data, with CO-advisor Dr. S. Chukova. Graduation date June, 1997. An attempt to statistically manipulate data from warranty claims for some Ford made cars, and to predict future warranty costs was made.

Impact on Curricula.

The research with Thesis students and of my own has been used in the Laboratory work and Problem solving process in the class work. This is important for classes like Math-226 (Statistics for Management students, Part I), Math-227 (Statistics for Management students, Part II), and Math-408, Probability and Statistics for Engineers. The thesis advising process also is using the results and experience from the past.