Report Title: Industrial & Systems Engineering: From Practice to Theory
Reporter: Professor Tang Loon Ching
Report Time: December 17, 14:00
Report Venue: Room A507, School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering
Hosted by: School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering
Reporter’s Profile:
Tang Loon Ching earned his Ph.D. in Operations Research from Cornell University, USA, in 1992. He is a Professor in the Department of Industrial Systems Engineering and Management at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and a Fellow of the Singapore Academy of Engineering. He served as Head of the Department from 2008 to 2015 and as Dean of the Temasek Defence Systems Institute from 2014 to 2020.
He was elected Vice President for the Asia region of the International Association of Industrial and Systems Engineers from 2012 to 2015 and has been invited as a Fellow of the International Society of Engineering Asset Management.
His research focuses on system resilience engineering, quality and reliability engineering, logistics, and system optimization. He has published over a hundred articles in international journals. He is frequently invited to deliver keynote speeches at relevant international conferences, and has chaired multiple related international conferences. Currently, he serves as Editor-in-Chief of a well-known international academic journal and has received several international awards for best papers. His book on Six Sigma was awarded the inaugural Best Book Award by the International Quality Institute.
Professor Tang has provided consulting and training services for the Singapore Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Home Affairs, and numerous multinational corporations. He has trained thousands of professionals in quality and reliability engineering and management, as well as nearly a hundred Six Sigma Master Black Belts, across the Asia-Pacific region. He has been appointed as a member of advisory committees for the Singapore National Productivity and Innovation Office and the Defence Science and Technology Agency Training Institute. In recognition of his contributions, he was awarded the National Long Service Medal in 2019 and the Outstanding Educator Award in Industrial Engineering and Operations Management in 2014.
Report Overview：In this presentation, we shall present some of the actual industrial projects that I have been involved with over the past 30 years to illustrate the need to consider a few high-level concepts of operations (CONOPs); i.e. the key practical aspect of overall planning, from the systems design perspective, before any attempt to develop optimization techniques/theory for the existing systems. The approach demonstrates how to leverage on the latest technologies and to challenge the existing practice so as to achieve major system improvements. It highlights the need to integrate system engineering & management concepts and operations research methodologies in order to result in major breakthroughs. It also further reinforces the preferred research pathway that moves from practice to theory rather than “looking for the nail after arming with a hammer”.
