Professor Jan Shi: A Focus on Quality
Jan Shi
Professor Jianjun (Jan) Shi wears many hats, all of them related to quality. After earning his bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering at the Beijing Institute of Technology, Shi came to U-M and completed his doctoral studies in Mechanical Engineering in 1992. His dissertation addressed generalized forecasting compensation control and on-line direct digital synthesis modeling. Professor Shien-Ming Wu, for whom the ME department's S. M. Wu Manufacturing Research Center is named, served as Shi's mentor and advisor.
In 2006 Shi assumed the directorship of the Program In Manufacturing, for which he had served as a council member since the program's inception. He also assumed the co-directorship of the Global Automotive and Manufacturing Engineering program. Currently, Shi also chairs the Content Committee of the GAME program and has been instrumental in developing its curriculum.
Shi's own research focuses on in-process quality improvement methodologies that use distributed and sensing networks to monitor, diagnose and control complex manufacturing systems. He has conducted stream of variation research for multi-stage manufacturing systems for several years. Sponsors of his research have included the U-M Engineering Research Center for Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems, the GM Collaborative Research Laboratory for Advanced Vehicle Manufacturing and private companies.
His fundamental work has led not only to numerous best paper awards but to methodologies that GM, Ford and DaimlerChrysler have implemented in their plants. His work has led to a book as well, to be released in October, 2006, entitled Stream of Variation Modeling and Analysis for Multi-Stage Manufacturing Processes (CRC Press).
Shi also investigates signature analysis and process control with a focus on stamping, forging and rolling applications. He has developed modeling and data fusion techniques for on-line distributed sensing systems, and expended causal probability network methodology into process control applications. This work has been funded by the National Institute of Standards and Technology Advanced Technology Program, the U.S. Department of Energy and several steel manufacturers. Recently, Shi led a team with 5 Michigan-based companies and won the Michigan 21st Century Job Fund for a three year grant with aim to making great impacts to the Michigan jobs and economic developments.
Aside his research, Shi is also a remarkable mentor to his graduate students. Since joined faculty at UM, he has graduated 19 Ph.D. students, 13 of them have taken faculty positions in various IE departments; 5 of them were landed in top 10 IE departments in the US. One significant measure of his student quality is that five of his former Ph.D. students received the NSF CAREER Award in the last six years, and one received the NSF PECASE Award. This not only reflects the outstanding mentoring and tutelage that his Ph.D. graduates receive from him, but also the importance and the fundamental nature of the research that Prof. Shi is conducting.
