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Stephen Bathurst, PhD Researcher, Mechanical Engineering Department, MIT

Stephen Bathurst received his B.S. and M. S. degrees from MIT and is currently a PhD Researcher for Prof. Sang-Gook Kim in the Mechanical Engineering Department. Mr. Bathurst studied under Prof. Nam P. Suh from 2002–2005 where he had the opportunity to apply Axiomatic Design in a variety of academic, industrial, and commercial settings. His current research is focused on the application of Axiomatic Design principles to the design of micro and nano scale systems including: thermal ink jet printing of MEMS and nanopatterned electrodes for organic photovoltaics.  return to top

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Julie Carignan, Axiomatic Design Solutions Inc.

Julie Carignan is currently a Director at Axiomatic Design Solutions Inc. (ADSI), an MIT spin-off that offers training, consulting and software for practitioners of Axiomatic Design (AD) and Design for Six Sigma (DFSS).
Julie primarily establishes and maintains relationships with ADSI customers and channel partners, including training the latter, typically Six Sigma Black Belts who teach DFSS around the world. She also manages operations and technical documentation and contributes to sales and ADSI's strategic plans.
Managing challenging programs, improving processes and bridging functional disciplines have been common activities throughout Julie's engineering career.  Prior to ADSI Julie was a Senior IT/Business Alignment Consultant to Polaroid Sr. Managers.  She was accountable for meeting current and strategic IT needs for her internal client base of international development leaders and four plant managers.  Earlier, as Director of Development Programs at Trexel Inc., Julie directed seven international programs in the process of helping to grow a negative net worth start-up technology firm into a high value firm with more than $10 million in committed contracts. 
Since earning a Masters Degree in Plastics Engineering and a B.S. in Biological Science, Julie has played other management roles at Computervision, Data General, and Parker Brothers.  She is a certified Green Belt and has also met all requirements for a Six Sigma Black Belt short of project completion.   return to top

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Dr. David S. Cochran, Founder and Managing Partner
System Design, LLC. 

Dr. Cochran is one of the world’s authorities on production and enterprise systems engineering and supply chain techniques and technologies. 

As a member of the MIT Mechanical Engineering faculty (1995-2003), he established the Production System Design (PSD) Laboratory at MIT (1995).   He is a two-time recipient of the prestigious Shingo Prize (1989 and 2002) for manufacturing excellence for his work in the design of effective “lean” systems.  He also received the Dudley Prize for best paper from the International Journal of Production Research in 2000.  A special issue of the Journal of Manufacturing Systems (v. 20, No. 6 2001/2002) highlights his work with Automotive and Aerospace industries.   Dr. Cochran teaches as adjunct faculty at Meijo University in Nagoya, Japan -- School of Business management.  He is a member of the Meijo Process Management Institute, an international collaborative consultancy and is an adjunct member of the Systems Engineering faculty at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas.

Through his company, System Design, LLC, which he founded in 2003, Dr. Cochran has consulted with both small and large companies who want to improve their cost and quality.  These include:  Revenge Advanced Composites (a specialty boat manufacturer), Lockheed Martin (F-22, JSF, Space Systems, Missiles and Fire Control: PAC-3), NASA, Visteon Automotive, Robert Bosch Corp., Ford Motor Company, Dell Computer, SAP, HP and Kinetic Systems.

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Al Dickinson 

Al has 25 years of experience in application and management of engineering.  His current assignment is Design for Manufacturing Engineering Manager at UTC Power.  Prior to this Al was the Innovation & Continuous Improvement Methodologies Deployment Champion at Nexteer Automotive (formerly of Delphi Automotive, presently a subsidiary of General Motors).  Al's 20 years in the automotive industry also included specializations in steering systems hydraulics and NVH.  Al has an MS in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a BS in Naval Architecture & Marine Engineering from the University of Michigan.  He is a certified Design for Six Sigma Master Black Belt.
http://www.linkedin.com/in/aldickinson

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Rick Howell, Howell Product Development, Inc., Stowe, Vermont

Rick Howell is the inventor, developer and market launcher of five #1-selling high-end, patented, sports products, including alpine ski-bindings for Salomon and Geze;  the world’s first hands-off clipless bicycle pedal system, CycleBinding (created the category);  and Tubbs high-tech snowshoes, which expanded the category of snowshoeing 50X and which brand commands an 85% market-share.  Two of these product-lines are #1-selling today and have sustained this position over the past 20-years.  Axiomatic design has been central to Howell’s consumer product success formula.  Rick Howell holds a BS in Engineering Management from New England College and received eight years of corporate mentoring from marketing expert, Andrew B. Callen;  Stuttgart-mittlestand engineering director, Dr-Eng. Peter Biermann;  and banking CEO, Timothy J. Jamieson.  In 2003, Rick Howell was the recipient of the George E. Schillinger New England College Outstanding Alumnus Award—and his products have generated over $1.7-billion in wholesale turnover.

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Matt Pallaver
pallaverm@axiod.com
(617) 746-9222  x201

Matt Pallaver is an expert in functional requirements analysis and risk mitigation.  He has particular skills in the synthesis and validation of conceptual solution quality.   Recent work has focused on software, process and product efforts in the mil-aerospace, automotive and health care industries including complex systems such as the Orbital Space Plane and the Abrams M1 tank.  Matt has over 20 years of technology development experience. Prior to ADSI, Matt was Executive Vice President of Trexel, Inc., where he was part of the team that launched MuCell plastic technology into the global marketplace. Prior to that, Matt was a development manager for Siemens AG where he led rapid product development teams in multimedia solutions development. He has held engineering positions with Control Data and Sperry Flight Systems. Matt has a BSME from IIT, an MBA from the University of Oklahoma, and post grad work in decision analysis at MIT.

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Jim Richard

Jim is a 25 year veteran of new product and process development having worked at Polaroid, 3M and Becton Dickinson in several smaller companies in various roles mostly in the area of new product development.  He is a Design for Six Sigma Master Black Belt and had led the deployment of Six Sigma methodologies in Marketing, R&D and Operations to hundreds of Green Belts and BlackBelts. He has particular expertise in processing Voice of Customer information into innovative products and services and has taught marketing and sales staff globally on these techniques.

Jim has an MS in Manufacturing Engineering and a BS in Mechanical Engineering both from WPI and will complete his MBA at Babson Olin School of Business in 2010.

Jim is currently consulting in the medical device and Bioscience fields.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/jimrichardmbb

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Hrishikesh Deo, Ph.D.

Dr. Hrishikesh Deo is a research engineer at GE Global Research in Niskayuna, NY, where he is working on advanced turbo-machinery sealing technologies and subsea multiphase boosting technologies. Dr. Deo completed his B.Tech. (Mechanical Engineering) from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, where he was awarded the President’s Silver Medal for being the most outstanding graduating student in Mechanical Engineering.  Dr. Deo holds a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from MIT. His doctoral thesis was in the area of Axiomatic Design of Customizable Automotive Suspension Systems, under the supervision of Prof. Nam Suh. Dr. Deo has authored over 10 peer-reviewed publications and applied for over 15 U.S. patents. Dr. Deo’s doctoral research on Axiomatic Design has received several national and international awards, including the F W Taylor Medal of the CIRP, ASME Student Mechanism Design Award, and the SAE Excellence Award.  

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Wally Towner

Wally is an Instructor at WPI in the management and manufacturing engineering departments. He has 20 years of laser based metal fabrication experience and extensive financial background.  Wally is currently consulting on lean applications in the health care environment. Wally has a BSME from WPI an, MBA from Babson College, A MS in Information Technology from WPI and an MS in Manufacturing Engineering from WPI. Wally teaches axiomatic design theory in the manufacturing engineering program.  Professor Towner is also an alumnus of the Owner/President Management program at Harvard Business School.

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Chris Brown  (instructor and workshop director)

Professor Christopher Brown, PhD, PE, has been teaching axiomatic design at WPI and in industry since 1990. Students in his evening graduate course typically report that they start using axiomatic design at work within the first few hours of the course. Chris has spoken at conferences and published papers on his special approach to teaching axiomatic design. Chris started using axiomatic design as a graduate student in the early 1980s at the University of Vermont after meeting Nam Suh. He used axiomatic design as a senior research engineer designing products for Atlas Copco at their research center in Switzerland before coming to WPI. In the past few years Chris has been pleased to have had the opportunity to consult with Nam Suh on design problems. Chris is the founder and director of WPI's Surface Metrology Laboratory and WPI's Haas Technical Center for Computer-controlled machining.

Professor Brown's approach decomposes the application of axiomatic design into three elements: the axioms, the structure, and the process. Chris cites the axioms as being the key to teaching engineering design like a science. Suh’s axioms are a few simple rules that can be used to understand complex design problems, just as Newton's laws are simple rules can be used to understand complex problems in engineering mechanics. The structure formulates the design so that the axioms can be applied. The structure also provides traceability for the design decisions. The processes of decomposition and integration used to create the design have been divided into clear steps to keep the design process on track and productive.

Chris Brown

www.me.wpi.edu/People/Brown/ Chris Brown is the author of several articles on how to teach Axiomatic Design. He has worked as a consultant applying axiomatic design to space travel and ski bindings. He also teaches a course on the technology of skiing. He is founder and director of the Surface Metrology Lab at WPI, and former director of Manufacturing Engineering at WPI. He was previously with Atlas Copco European Research Center and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. Chris Brown's Curriculum Vitae - Chris Brown's full publication list

Work in Progress:

1. article: Axiomatic Design and the Evolution of Conventional Alpine Ski Bindings
2. book: Elements of Axiomatic Design - a simple and practical approach to engineering design
3. paper: C.A.Brown, "Knowledge Management and Axiomatic Design," Submitted to SAE World Congress, Detroit 2007"

Papers on application and teaching of axiomatic design:

1. C.A. Brown, "Axiomatic Design of Chaotic Components of Surface Textures," ICAD2000, Institute for Axiomatic Design, Cambridge, Derrick Tate, ed., (2000) 106-111.
   http://www.axiomaticdesign.com/technology/icad/icad2000/icad2000_008.pdf
2. E. Odom, S. Beyerlein, C. A. Brown, D.Drew, L.Gallup, S.Zimmerman, J.Olberding, "Role of Axiomatic Design in Teaching Capstone Courses," Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual conference & Exposition 2005 ASEE, http://www.asee.org/acPapers/2005-1866_Final.pdf.
3. C.A. Brown, "Lessons in Teaching Axiomatic Design to Engineers" SAE 2005 World Congress Detroit April 13 2005, SAE paper SP 1956, Reliability and Robust Design in Automotive Engineering 2005-01-1523. http://www.sae.org/servlets/productDetail?PROD_CD=2005-01-1523&PROD_TYP=PAPER
4. C.A.Brown, Teaching Axiomatic Design to Engineers: Theory, Applications, and Software, Looking Forward: Innovations in Manufacturing Engineering Education, CIMEC (CIRP International Manufacturing Education Conference) 2005 and 3rd SME International Conference on Manufacturing Education, 2005, pp. 41-51. http://axiomaticdesign.org/teachingaxiomaticdesign.pdf 

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