Georgia Tech announced that Jianjun (Jan) Shi, Carolyn J. Stewart Chair and Professor in the Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering (ISyE) has been awarded the prestigious Institute of Industrial and System Engineers (IISE) David F. Baker Distinguished Research Award. The award is given to a single awardee each year in recognition of a career of accomplishments that has broadly benefited practitioners, organizations, or other researchers. Shi has also received the IISE’s Albert G. Holzman Distinguished Educator Award in 2011. In its entire history, only six people (including four NAE members) have received both the Baker Award and the Holzman Award.

About the Baker award, Edwin Romeijn, ISyE H. Milton and Carolyn J. Stewart School Chair and Professor, said, “This is an incredible, very well-deserved honor. We are very glad to have Jan here at ISyE, with everything he contributes to the school.”

Shi received the award for his scholarly contribution and achievements in the area of quality science and engineering for multistage manufacturing systems. In his research, he created a set of foundational mathematical models and associated tools to integrate system theory with advanced data analytics to support modeling, design optimization, operation monitoring, root cause diagnosis, and adaptive control of quality in multistage manufacturing systems.  Due to the nature of interdisciplinary research, his work has won numerous best paper awards from several professional societies, including IIE, ASME, SME/NAMRI, and INFORMS. He is also a Fellow of INFORMS, ASME, IIE, and an Academician of IAQ (International Academy for Quality). 

The implementations of Shi’s methodologies have made significant impacts in industrial practice. As an example, his methodologies for multistage system has been adopted by Ford, GM, and Daimler-Chrysler in their vehicle programs and led to significant variation reduction in more than 20 assembly plants. The implementation in Chrysler Jefferson North Assembly Plant led it to 2mm six sigma body assembly variation, which was the first North American plant to have achieved this world-class dimensional quality.  His data fusion research, via collaboration with OG Technologies Company, led to early detection or prevention of defects in steel mills. Those algorithms has been implemented in OGT’s HotEye®/PRii™/PPS™ systems, which are in use by over 40 plants in 14 countries including the U.S., Canada, China, France, Germany, and Japan. The implementation of the technology has resulted in over 100 million dollars in cost savings, 1.2 billion KWh in energy savings, and 50,000 tons of CO2 emission reduction per year.

In addition to his research achievements, Shi has been successful in advising graduate students into independent and mature academic researchers. Twenty former Ph.D. students of his have become a faculty member in an industrial engineering program; among them, seven have received the NSF CAREER Award and one received the NSF PECASE Award.