Jianjun (Jan) Shi, Carolyn J. Stewart Chair and professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, has been selected for the Society of Manufacturing Engineering’s (SME) 2021 College of Fellows. This is an honor given to individuals “who have made outstanding contributions to the social, technological, and educational aspects of the manufacturing profession,” with 20 or more years of dedication and service to the field.

In the letter nominating Shi for this honor, it was noted that he pioneered data-enabled manufacturing – an accomplishment for which he was also elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2018. He has developed quality improvement algorithms implemented in over 40 steel plants globally, with hundreds of millions of dollars saved and over one billion KWh in saved energy, as well as tens of thousands of CO₂ emissions reduced.

Shi’s selection as an SME Fellow is the latest in a series of signal distinctions conferred in 2021: He received the Walter Shewhart Medal from the American Society for Quality, an award given “to individuals who have made outstanding technical contributions and leadership in the field of modern quality control and improvement.” He was also awarded the S.M. Wu Research Implementation Award, which “honors outstanding original research … that, upon implementation, has had a significant commercial/societal impact.”

Previously, Shi has also been named a Fellow of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineering, a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineering, a Fellow of INFORMS, an Elected Member of the International Statistical Institute, and an Academician of the International Academy for Quality. His work has also been honored with, among others, 11 best paper awards and nine international research awards.

Shi said, “I am honored to receive this recognition, and I greatly appreciate all my students, colleagues, and sponsors for their support throughout my many years of research in and implementation of complex manufacturing systems.”

1. What is your field of expertise and at what point in your life did you first become interested in this area?

I work at the intersection of mechanics, metallurgy, machine learning, and manufacturing. I became interested in engineering as a small child – my grandfather was an engineer, and when I would spend time with my grandparents in the summer, I would go to work with him, and I was fascinated with drawing boards, alligator clips, circuits, and more. In high school, I started interning at the business he had built that primarily developed automation and test equipment for circuit breaker manufacturing (he had passed and my uncle then ran it). I started in the stock room, worked through the machine shop, assembly, and into quality control in my first years there. Then I became an engineering assistant as I went into my undergraduate studies. I had thought that I wanted to be electrical engineer (like my grandfather), but after 6 – 8 months of assisting EE, I realized that my true passion was in mechanical engineering, and I moved over to ME – so that foundation instilled in me that I had a passion for ME, manufacturing, and automation. The metallurgy came years later, when I won a graduate fellowship to work at NASA Glenn while earning my Master’s degree. I worked with metallurgists there who were developing new shape memory alloys, which fascinated me. I resisted materials science and metallurgy for many years, insisting that should be someone else’s job, and I should stick to manufacturing and ME. However, it became evident that you can’t engineer with shape memory alloys or develop their manufacturing unless you deeply understood their metallurgy – that resonated with me when I attended a conference in 2008 while working for a startup company that was commercializing some of the new shape memory alloys the group I’d worked with at NASA had developed. When I returned from that conference, I signed up for my PhD program the next week and dove deep into the intersection of metallurgy, manufacturing, and mechanics. The machine learning came years later, several years into my faculty career. We were working with several companies and the state Office of Economic Development in Colorado (I started my faculty career at Colorado School of Mines) to develop an R&D center and technology incubator to support the growing metals 3D printing industry. When I asked the industry people why they needed a center/consortium at Mines in this area – what were they not getting at other additive manufacturing centers at that time (this was 2014/2015), they said “no one is helping us with our data problems.” So, that became our mission – data informatics innovations in metals additive manufacturing. Here at GT, I’m thrilled by the opportunities, colleagues, and infrastructure available to bring it all together – our big vision for this IMat initiative is to develop R&D test beds and technology incubators for AI materials manufacturing.

2. Why is your theme area important to the development of Georgia Tech’s Materials research strategy?

Largely, our materials research laboratories (nation-wide and globally, not just at Georgia Tech) have been designed and built to support human operators. However, AI cannot independently function in the same way and in the same environments – or, at least, we will never realize its full potential if we make it play by our rules. Re-thinking and designing new materials laboratories that can operate autonomously and semi-autonomously is critical to be at the forefront of future innovations.

3. What are the broader global and social benefits of the research you and your team conduct?

Lowering barriers and times for the discovery and development of new materials and manufacturing – lower costs, faster times to deployment, increased sustainability, and finding better solutions. Also, with AI engines, the ability to distribute manufacturing to local/underserved parts of the globe and our nation – we saw this at the onset of COVID – when our corporate supply chain was unprepared to meet the demand, people were able to contribute respirators, masks, and more using the 3D printers in their garages, libraries, schools, universities, and hospitals and serve their community. However, people in their garages are rarely equipped to qualify/certify/ensure safety of critical parts and widgets on their own – the data infrastructure + AI enables qualification/certification to happen through statistics, and then rapid dissemination of the manufacturing “how to”. One could even imagine a future where the burden of qualification and certification could be shared across everyone participating in the supply chain – that will take a lot of policy and economic reform and rethinking as well, but as we gain confidence in our understanding of statistical models and data management infrastructure and software, it becomes more and more feasible.

4. What are your plans on engaging a wider GT faculty pool with IMat research?

I think the group of involved faculty now spans 7 or 8 schools and 3 colleges, at least – I’ve stopped counting, to be honest – the interest and support of colleagues here at GT is tremendous. On our larger proposals, there are anywhere from 20 – 30 faculty involved – I think this next one we may exceed 40. I welcome anyone who has ideas for how they can contribute or wants to learn more about the vision for AI materials + manufacturing test beds to email me anytime, and we’ll setup a time to meet and discuss. I also intend to hold some workshops and conferences – we received funding to start a consortium that will hold quarterly meetings for any interested business or faculty, and newsletters will also be sent, starting in 2022.

In the last few years, mechanically assistive exosuits, long depicted in works of popular science fiction and film, have finally started to see commercial deployment, according to Aaron Young, professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech. Most of these exosuits have a so-called passive design, assisting the wearer with unpowered elements like springs. 

Active exosuits that incorporate electronics and powered motors are yet to be broadly applied. They tend to be big and heavy, and rely on rigid exoskeletons to transfer weight from body to ground. Exoskeletons add a great deal of stiffness, as well, Young said. Putting on most active exosuits is a little like becoming one with a forklift, restricting a wearer to lifting weights in a vertical plane.

For all these reasons, Young’s Asymmetric Back eXosuit (ABX) described in the October 5 issue of IEEE Transactions on Robotics is highly non-standard. There’s no exoskeleton, no rigid structure, nothing that makes contact with the floor. If the wearer is just standing there, it does nothing except for adding 14 pounds to their legs. But if they raise their body from a leaning over position, it makes a somewhat frantic noise: that is the sound of the ABX helping them rotate their torso, helping them twist. 

Although most active exosuits support vertical lifts, rotating and twisting movements are also ubiquitous, especially in certain fields of manual labor like garbage collection and baggage handling. In many cases, these motions can be awkward and strenuous, leading to work-related injuries as well as back pain, according to Young. Back pain, in turn, is directly correlated with the strength of compressive forces and shear forces that are applied to the spine.

In designing their exosuit, the researchers sought a way to reduce these loads on the spinal joints. Putting it on looks a little like donning a futuristic backpack. Two motors are first strapped onto the back of each upper thigh. These motors are then connected to the back of the opposite shoulders, each with their own cable, making for two cables that diagonally overlap. The exosuit provides assistance by applying tension to the cables when it detects a wearer rise from a bending posture.

“It's definitely a different sensation than a sort of standard exoskeleton. It's not your standard design,” said Young. 

Because the diagonal cables have a component of motion that is horizontal, they exert a pull on the torso that can aid in twisting it from side to side. In tests, the researchers showed that when a wearer of the ABX swung a weight from the ground to one side, the exosuit reduced their back muscle activations by an average of 16%, as measured by electromyography (EMG) sensors. The exosuit also provided a 37% reduction in back muscle exertion when a wearer lifted weights symmetrically, straight off the ground – an assistance level comparable to more rigid designs. 

“People definitely felt like the technology is assisting them, which is great. And we did see the concurrent EMG reduction,” said Young. “I think it’s a great first step.”

In a sense, wearing the exosuit is almost like strapping two additional muscles onto the body – unconventional muscles, which run directly from back to leg. Interestingly, it is the positioning of these muscles rather than their brute strength that makes them functional, said Young.

The motors pull the cables with much less power than the muscles in the body. However, the cables are positioned much further away from the joints. Through this positioning, the cables obtain greater leverage and mechanical advantage, allowing the wearer to reduce their overall muscular output and hence the load that they place on their spine. (Spinal loading was not directly measured in the study.)

Aside from its overall performance, it is the flexible, asymmetric nature of the suit that really makes it unique, Young said. There are currently no other active exosuits that provide assistance for twisting and rotating through a comparable range of motion. While other exosuits also use cables, none have arranged them along diagonal lines.

Young is currently seeking collaborations with industry partners to further develop the exosuit. In future work, he sees its control system as a point to improve. Currently, when a person raises their torso from a lowered position, the cables simply pull with constant tension. But it should be possible to make the system detect different actions of the wearer and adjust its pull in response.

References

J. M. Li, D. D. Molinaro, A. S. King, A. Mazumdar and A. J. Young, "Design and Validation of a Cable-Driven Asymmetric Back Exosuit," in IEEE Transactions on Robotics, doi: 10.1109/TRO.2021.3112280.

About Georgia Tech

The Georgia Institute of Technology, or Georgia Tech, is a top 10 public research university developing leaders who advance technology and improve the human condition. The Institute offers business, computing, design, engineering, liberal arts, and sciences degrees. Its nearly 40,000 students representing 50 states and 149 countries, study at the main campus in Atlanta, at campuses in France and China, and through distance and online learning. As a leading technological university, Georgia Tech is an engine of economic development for Georgia, the Southeast, and the nation, conducting more than $1 billion in research annually for government, industry, and society.

Claude Bernier has been with South Shore Furniture since 1994 and currently serves as VP of Information Technology. South Shore Furniture, founded in 1940 and incorporated in Quebec, sells ready-to-assemble and fully assembled furniture in Canada, Mexico, and the United States. In 2005, South Shore began selling its products online and adopted the dropship business model. It now has two manufacturing plants in Quebec, Canada, one in Juarez, Mexico and three distribution centers in the United States. During his 27 years with South Shore, Claude has led two major transformations to support business growth and now is in charge of the organization's digital transformation.

Claude brings 37 years of experience and leadership in information technology, process automation, enterprise architecture, and software implementation. His expertise includes building and leading successful teams focused on results, improving business processes based on business strategy and long-term company vision and goals, and delivering value-added to internal and external customers. Prior to South Shore Furniture, Claude was an information technology consultant specializing in the wood and paper industry. 

Mr. Bernier lives in Quebec City, Canada. When he his not working he enjoys hiking and camping in National Parks across North America.

The Georgia Tech Supply Chain and Logistics Institute is honored to have Claude join us to help determine SCL's future direction.

A total of eight students, including three military veterans, graduated from the Research Experience for Student Veterans in Advanced Manufacturing and Entrepreneurship (REVAMP) 2021 summer program. This veteran-focused program is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and hosted each summer by the Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute (GTMI)--officially serving as a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) site for NSF.

The coordinator of this education and work force development (EWD) program is Billyde Brown, Ph.D., a senior research faculty and EWD director at GTMI. Brown's role is to create strong partnerships among industry, government, and academia in manufacturing research, development, and deployment, while acquiring and managing sponsored research programs.  

Current and past students have performed fundamental research projects in advanced manufacturing topic areas such as additive and hybrid manufacturing, composite joining and repair, cell therapy manufacturing, robotic machining, integrated computational materials engineering, Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, and data analytics for adaptive manufacturing, and nanoscale 3D printing.

REVAMP’s major program activities include a seminar series on a broad array of manufacturing-related topics by Georgia Tech faculty and graduate students, external manufacturing plant tours (e.g. Kia Motors, Hyundai Mobis, Lockheed Martin, Textron Specialized Vehicles), experiential learning classes on the fundamentals of evidence-based entrepreneurship provided by Georgia Tech’s VentureLab and Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC), a panel discussion from successful minority business enterprise clients of the Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) Center in Atlanta, and three oral presentations delivered by students to demonstrate their research progress.

A new program element started in 2019 that offered a student veteran orientation, panel discussions, luncheon events, and tours of Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) facilities both on the main campus and Marietta locations that were facilitated together with GTRI veteran faculty and the Georgia Tech Veterans Resource Center director. REVAMP is one of the premier REU programs in the nation for advanced manufacturing research and entrepreneurship training for undergraduate student veterans.

This year’s REVAMP-REU 10-week summer program was held from May 18 – July 24 at GTMI located on the Georgia Tech main campus. Students worked under the supervision of different faculty mentors to complete a research project centered on cutting-edge manufacturing science and technology. They also received entrepreneurship training by conducting customer discovery interviews to support a hypothetical product related to their research. As a bonus, eligible students received on-campus housing, $500 towards travel, and a $5,000 stipend.

Congratulations to these student graduates (in bold text) of the summer 2021 REVAMP-REU program and their faculty mentors:

Elizabeth Spahn         
Faculty mentor: Tequila Harris, associate professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering        
Project: “Formation of Gradient Thin Film using Scalable Coating Method”

Jabari Acre     
Faculty mentor: Sourabh Saha, assistant professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering                     
Project: “Two Photon Additive Manufacturing”

Anthony Whylie        
Faculty mentor: Aaron Stebner, associate professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering       
Project: “Optimization of Process Parameters for Additively Manufacturing Nickel Titanium (NiTi)”

Pedro Alcolea
Faculty mentor: Krishnendu Roy, professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering                
Project: “Advanced Mesenchymal Stromal Cell Manufacturing

Allison Jung   
Faculty mentor: Yan Wang, professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering                  
Project: “Optimization of 3D Printing Head

Jacob Totri     
Faculty mentors: Keat Ghee Ong & Bob Guldberg, professors at the University of Oregon
Project 1: “Magnetoelastic Sensors for Real-Time Tracking of Cell Growth”

Faculty mentor: Chuck Zhang, professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Project 2: “Printed Sensors for In-situ Structural Health Monitoring of Composite Aircraft Structures”

Nathan Janda
Faculty mentor: Shreyes Melkote, professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering       
Project: “Robotics and Hybrid Manufacturing”

Devon Phelps
Faculty mentor: Raghu Pucha, Ph.D., principal lecturer in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering  
Project: “Modeling of Hybrid Composites with Nanofillers

More information about the Research Experience for Student Veterans in Advanced Manufacturing and Entrepreneurship (REVAMP) summer program can be found here.

Based at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta), the Center for Composite and Hybrid Materials Interfacing (CHMI) intends to dramatically improve how composite and hybrid structures are joined and repaired. The Center is one of four active National Science Foundation (NSF) Industry/University Cooperative Research Centers (IUCRCs) at Georgia Tech. Funded for five years with an NSF IUCRC grant, the Center will reportedly work closely with an industry consortium of leading manufacturers and government organizations that will underwrite research projects.

Housed in the Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute (GTMI), the Center incorporates three university research teams from Georgia Tech, Oakland University (Detroit, Mich., U.S.) and University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UT). Each research and development partner are said to bring decades of composite and hybrid materials research focus in specific industries: Georgia Tech in aerospace, Oakland University in automotive composite systems and UT in infrastructure and medical devices.

“The study of the interface between composite, metallic and other electronic materials is really the future of manufacturing,” says Ben Wang, executive director of GTMI. “The Center amplifies the thought leadership of Georgia Tech advancement in composites. It also puts us in the nexus of three areas: advanced manufacturing, innovative materials and data analytics.”

Center director Chuck Zhang, Harold E. Smalley Professor in Georgia Tech’s H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE), will drive CHMI’s vision to transform the current labor-intensive, experience-based joining and repair practice into fast, automated and reliable processes.

“Using advanced computation, experimental, data analytics and digital techniques and tools, we hope to reduce by 50% the overall cost, cycle time and variation of these processes in the next 10 years,” Zhang says.

Read the full article in CompositesWorld, August 2021.

Complete article also posted at Georgia Tech - written by Anne Sargent

Jason DeLoach has been with Americold since 2013 and currently serves as VP of Supply Chain Solutions. Americold is the largest publicly traded cold storage logistics company in the world with 242 facilities in 14 countries across 4 continents. During his 8 years with Americold, Jason has led the development of the Supply Chain Strategy, Design, and Development functions – as well as the comprehensive portfolio of Customer Supply Chain Solutions for Americold’s go-to-market strategy. With a cross-functional approach to customer value creation, Jason leads end-to-end supply chain solutions development for many of the largest food manufacturers and distributors in the world.

Jason brings 27 years of experience and leadership in Supply Chain Strategy, Analytics, Design, Engineering, and Implementation. Prior to Americold – Jason held strategic Supply Chain roles with Fortna, Ross Stores, and The Gap.

Jason lives in Roswell with his wife Shelley and his two children. When he’s not working, he enjoys boating on the lake and touring microbreweries.

The Georgia Tech Supply Chain and Logistics Institute is honored to have Jason join us to help determine SCL's future direction.

From Washington D.C., the Brookings Institute recently convened a virtual panel of manufacturing experts that included Ben Wang, executive director of the Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute. Wang holds the Gwaltney Chair in Manufacturing Systems and is a professor both in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering and the School of Materials Science and Engineering. He served as the previous chair of the National Materials and Manufacturing Board.

The panel’s topic: “Can the Biden Administration Improve the Manufacturing Sector?”

Other panelists included: David Cicilline, member of the U.S. House of Representatives; Monica Gorman, deputy assistant secretary, manufacturing industry & analysis, U.S. Department of Commerce; Elisabeth Reynolds, special assistant to the President for manufacturing and economic development, National Economic Council, the White House; Darrell West, vice president and director governance studies, the Brookings Institution; and John Hazen White, Jr., executive chairman, Taco Family of Companies Trustee, the Brookings Institution.

During the panel’s second session, Wang emphasized, “advanced manufacturing is foundational to our [nation’s] economic prosperity, resilience and the national security.” He was previously involved with President Obama administration’s advanced manufacturing partnership from 2011 to 2013.

“Building a strong manufacturing base in the U.S. is a national imperative,” said Wang. “We know that technology-based innovation is the dominant driver of economic growth in the 21st century. Our national security, standard of living, and rebuilding the middle class in our society all depends on a strong globally competitive manufacturing base.”

Wang stressed the need to have a vibrant innovation value chain tightly coupled with a strong manufacturing ecosystem. “We cannot separate innovation from manufacturing,” said Wang.
“Some policymakers believed that we could continue to innovate and leave manufacturing to other nations. As it turned out, not only did we lose our ability to produce high tech products, we began to lose our ability to innovate.”

“If we want to compete well globally, we must maintain both the technological innovation leadership and advance manufacturing leadership [in the United States],” said Wang.

The need was also stressed to support small and medium-sized manufacturers who contribute to the nation’s supply chain and overall GDP in a significant way, but lack resources to evaluate and adopt new, state of the art manufacturing technologies.

National and state Manufacturing Extension Partnerships (MEP) can play a critical role in helping these smaller entities with technology adoption.

According to Wang, regional ecosystem actors must work together to identify common manufacturing challenges and common opportunities. And then co-innovate around those common challenges and opportunities. This type of regional approach will push local companies to rethink how they should interact with one another and help ensure that benefits are shared by all.

Wang’s entire presentation and the full panel discussion which was sponsored and moderated by the Brookings Institution can be found here.

From Washington D.C., the Brookings Institute recently convened a virtual panel of manufacturing experts that included Ben Wang, executive director of the Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute. Wang holds the Gwaltney Chair in Manufacturing Systems and is a professor both in the Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering, and School of Materials Science and Engineering. He served as the previous chair of the National Materials and Manufacturing Board.

The panel’s topic: “Can the Biden Administration Improve the Manufacturing Sector?”

Other panelists included: David Cicilline, member of the U.S. House of Representatives; Monica Gorman, deputy assistant secretary, manufacturing industry & analysis, U.S. Department of Commerce; Elisabeth Reynolds, special assistant to the President for manufacturing and economic development, National Economic Council, the White House; Darrell West, vice president and director governance studies, the Brookings Institution; and John Hazen White, Jr., executive chairman, Taco Family of Companies Trustee, the Brookings Institution.

During the panel’s second session, Wang emphasized, “advanced manufacturing is foundational to our [nation’s] economic prosperity, resilience and the national security.” He was previously involved with President Obama administration’s advanced manufacturing partnership from 2011 to 2013.

“Building a strong manufacturing base in the U.S. is a national imperative,” said Wang. “We know that technology-based innovation is the dominant driver of economic growth in the 21st century. Our national security, standard of living, and rebuilding the middle class in our society all depends on a strong globally competitive manufacturing base.”

Wang stressed the need to have a vibrant innovation value chain tightly coupled with a strong manufacturing ecosystem. “We cannot separate innovation from manufacturing,” said Wang.
“Some policymakers believed that we could continue to innovate and leave manufacturing to other nations. As it turned out, not only did we lose our ability to produce high tech products, we began to lose our ability to innovate.”

“If we want to compete well globally, we must maintain both the technological innovation leadership and advance manufacturing leadership [in the United States],” said Wang.

The need was also stressed to support small and medium-sized manufacturers who contribute to the nation’s supply chain and overall GDP in a significant way, but lack resources to evaluate and adopt new, state of the art manufacturing technologies.

National and state Manufacturing Extension Partnerships (MEP) can play a critical role in helping these smaller entities with technology adoption.

According to Wang, regional ecosystem actors must work together to identify common manufacturing challenges and common opportunities. And then co-innovate around those common challenges and opportunities. This type of regional approach will push local companies to rethink how they should interact with one another and help ensure that benefits are shared by all.

Ben Wang’s entire presentation and the full panel discussion which was sponsored and moderated by the Brookings Institution can be found here.