42 ISE Magazine | www.iise.org/ISEmagazine

Problem Solved: The IISE Podcast provides a forum for industrial and systems engineers to describe their work and ideas in

their own voices. Now in its third season, it features 70 regular and bonus episodes and some 25,000 total downloads in

more than 100 countries.

“Our venture into podcasting began early in 2019. I remember it well as I sat down with then IISE President-elect

David Poirier, now immediate past president, for our ﬁrst episode of ‘Problem Solved: The IISE Podcast’ to talk broadly

about David’s career as an IE, our Institute’s international mission and trends in the profession,” IISE Fellow and CEO

Don Greene said. “IISE podcasts help promote the profession worldwide, provide ISEs a popular medium to explain to listeners

how they help make the world a better place and increasingly attract sponsors to support this important initiative. I’m excited to

see where our podcast journey continues to take us and encourage you to tune in wherever you download your favorite podcasts.”

Episodes are available via the iise.org website; at podcast.iise.org; and on the IISE YouTube channel, youtube.com/iisechannel. It is

regularly streamed on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and other apps.

“One of the things I’ve enjoyed about producing the podcast for IISE is our ability to spotlight the work of ISEs across a wide

array of industries as well as discussing how ISE can be applied in one’s own life,” said David Brandt, IISE senior manager of digital

strategy and production and senior podcast producer. “That’s why we touched on topics like mindfulness and essentialism early

on. What engineers do to improve processes and outcomes for a business can accomplish similarly positive results for one’s own

personal development.”

IISE’s podcast production team of Brandt, Michael Hughes and Keith Albertson chose the following as 10 of the top episodes

from the ﬁrst three seasons. And a thank you to the podcast sponsors, the University of Louisville and LSU Online; anyone inter-

ested in a sponsorship can contact Trent Sexton at tsexton@iise.org.

Diversity in ISE

June 14, 2019, link.iise.org/podcast_s1e4

Sneha Sinha from Oregon

State University and Carlos

Garza from the University of

Texas at Arlington are two of

four panelists who led a session

on diversity challenges at the

May 2019 IISE Annual Con-

ference & Expo. They con-

tinue their discussion in this

thought-provoking episode.

Sneha Sinha: “I don’t think diversity is a single-faceted kind

of pillar; it has two sidekicks which are equity and inclusion.

Without those three together, they don’t really mean anything.

I like to think of it as diversity is ‘what,’ inclusion is ‘how’ and

equity is ‘why.’”

Carlos Garza: “A lot of friends tell me, ‘You don’t even seem

like you’re Hispanic at all.’ And I’m like, ‘But what does that

mean? Is that because I have things where I’m able to be relat-

able with you?’ That’s because we’re both raised with the same

culture. If you come in with the mentality that this person is just

another person, I’m going to get to know who this person is. I

feel then you start building a relationship.”

Engineering at Chick-ﬁl-A

July 15, 2019, link.iise.org/podcast_s1ep5

Chick-ﬁl-A Inc. manager of

production design, David B.

Reid, PE, tells how the popu-

lar American fast food company

uses industrial engineering to

keep the company’s priority on

the customer.

“We can’t afford to roll out

Lean training to everyone, but

what we do is ﬁnd operators

who run the restaurants and

let them pull for Lean training.

They become so inﬂuential with

the improvements they make

and with the excitement they generate, and that creates more

pull for Lean training. We have thousands of people who work

in the process every day giving us their best ideas, and we then

have some oversight to say, ‘That one is out of bounds, let’s not

do that.’ But then there’s a lot where we say, ‘Don’t do it that

way, but that idea has such merit let’s see if we can ﬁgure that

out.’ That’s IE 101: Go study the process, walk the gemba and

see from the people who do the work where the problems are.”

An earful of ideas:

3 seasons of Problem Solved

IISE podcast has continued to grow worldwide since 2019 launch

Sneha Sinha, second from left,

and Carlos Garza, speaking.

David B. Reid

December 2021 | ISE Magazine 43

Engineering mindfulness

Jan. 23, 2020, link.iise.org/podcast_s1e15

“Take one breath” is the advice from

healthcare process engineer Ash-

ley Benedict. She describes her self-

discovery journey and strategies for

incorporating mindfulness into daily

work and life.

“Just imagine going from your pres-

ent state to your future state – what’s

one thing that’s really a frustration and

have a conversation with that frustra-

tion. It sounds silly, but it really is en-

lightening. It’s almost like doing a ‘ﬁve whys.’ You’re kind of

talking to this frustration and saying, ‘Why are you here? Why

am I having to deal with you?’ Of course, you’re answering for

the frustration, and you’re kind of diving deeper into why that’s

occurring and what’s causing that. Then you normally get to a

place where you say, ‘You know what, I can solve this. I can try

something different and do something new that I’m not doing

currently to alleviate this frustration.’”

Tapping the potential of autistic workers

April 9, 2020, link.

iise.org/podcast_s1ep19

Georgia Tech gradu-

ates Conner Reinhardt

and Jhillika Kumar

founded a startup com-

pany called Mentra and

designed an app to help

autistic individuals con-

nect with jobs and men-

tors. The effort was in-

spired by Kumar’s older

brother and her desire

to create more opportunities for people like him.

Jhillika Kumar: “I was very passionate about all of the ex-

periences that my brother has ingrained in me and all of the

lessons that he’s taught me. One of the biggest ones was how

to be a voice for the voiceless because I was so grateful to

even have a voice when he unfortunately is very limited in

his ability to communicate. I knew that I wanted to share

the lessons that he had taught me, especially when it came

to technology and how it could be used to really empower

people who are often honestly neglected and trapped in their

own bodies.”

Conner Reinhardt: “Jhillika’s message really resonated

with me, sharing her personal story of her brother and how

technology was able to help him. And I realized her call to

action for more people to join in the movement of helping

people with disabilities through technology.”

Election cybersecurity

April 23, 2020, link.iise.org/podcast_s1e20

Natalie Scala, an associate professor at Tow-

son University, has conducted research in

decision analysis in areas that include elec-

tion ofﬁces in Maryland, the energy indus-

try and the U.S. military. She talks about the

principles that apply to each and the human

factors involved.

“We don’t see lot of models and analysis

in cybersecurity where IEs can step in and look at what the po-

tential elements of risk are and continuous improvement ideas.

Or, how does the model actually ﬁt with the organization and

their goals and their needs? So that’s the approach I like to bring

to research I do in this area: How do we make it customized

for the company? ... Computer scientists are great at coming

up with algorithms and metrics and things like that but the hu-

man component needs to be considered and the organizational

component as well.”

Engineers in battle against COVID-19

June 11, 2020, link.iise.org/podcast_s1e21

Healthcare engineers Amanda Mew-

born, Ali Hobbs and Aaron Kanne of-

fer insights about how health systems are

managing and operating through the

COVID-19 crisis, the SHS Think Tank

webinars and experiences on the front

lines of patient care.

Amanda Mewborn: “We are proba-

bly using just about every tool in the ISE

toolbox. ... A lot of people were asking

me about changing from an engineer to

being a clinician or vice versa. My re-

sponse to this never wavers: We always

achieve the best outcomes through mul-

tidisciplinary cooperation. We all bring

various strengths and information in our

perspectives though our processes are

different.”

Ali Hobbs: “I think it’s shed a lot of

light on what industrial engineers can

do at a very fast pace. I’m really looking

forward to being able to get back on-site

and show how we can really help ... at

hopefully a much faster pace than what

we had been in the past.”

Aaron Kanne: “My job speciﬁcally has changed from one

where I would have been on-site to support a customer that

went live, to how can we support remotely, to how can we train

people remotely and effectively. And also getting them highly

focused on data and analytics on a daily basis.”

Ashley Benedict

Conner Reinhardt and

Jhillika Kumar

Natalie Scala

Aaron Kanne

Ali Hobbs

Amanda Mewborn

44 ISE Magazine | www.iise.org/ISEmagazine

• Innovating Personal Healthcare, with HSPI keynote speaker

Tandice Urban, co-founder of The Lanby primary care service, and

Valerie Boelman, Society for Health Systems board member.

• Engineering a Supply Chain to the Moon, with Shaun Butts of

Gateway Logistics Services at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

• 3D Printing for a Better Smile, with SprintRay CEO Amir

Mansouri and Director of Operations Kaz Takeda.

Recent episodes

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Modeling reality, COVID and Ebola style

Aug. 13, 2020, link.iise.org/podcast_s2ep1

IE Michael Washington of the U.S.

Centers for Disease Control and Pre-

vention discusses his team’s statistical

models that help health systems moni-

tor resources for dealing with COVID

cases, and how his team’s models of the

2014 Ebola epidemic informed their

current work.

“Models are an approximation of reality. There are people

who think that models are going to give you an exact answer.

Models are just a simpliﬁed version of reality and a tool to help

manage possible future outcomes. It’s not going to tell you ex-

actly what you should do or exactly what should happen. That

rarely occurs. It’s just a tool to help you prepare for what could

happen, what could not happen.”

NASA industrial engineer sets sights on Mars

Nov. 13, 2020, link.iise.org/podcast_s2e7

Angie Jackman, an industrial engineer

with NASA and project manager for

the Mars Ascent Vehicle mission at the

Marshall Space Flight Center, discusses

the role of industrial and systems engi-

neers at the space agency with Purdue

University professor Barrett Caldwell

as guest host.

Angie Jackman: “When I go to talk

to schools about industrial engineering,

a lot of them don’t really realize what

industrial engineering at NASA does.

It’s very different from a lot of how

we’re trained in that we produce very

few but very specialized and complex

things. You know, we’re not about

efﬁciency, we’re not about streamlining a process to make it

cheaper or produce it faster, we’re more about optimization.

These pieces of hardware or analysis all have to come together

and you can’t optimize just for your particular area, you have to

look across the system and make sure everything is in balance.”

ISEs review a year of resilience and rebirth

Dec. 10, 2020, link.iise.org/podcast_s2e9

Ergonomist Bobbie Watts, university

professor Gretchen Macht and health-

care process expert Ali Hobbs discuss

the “good, bad and ugly” lessons of

2020 – the struggle, successes and the

heightened role and need for industrial

and systems engineers in the wake of the

global COVID-19 pandemic.

Ali Hobbs: “I’m looking for the rebirth

of the industrial engineer. I think this

year was a test and we all rose to the occa-

sion of, ‘You’ve got a problem and it’s sys-

tems related, we’re on it. Let’s take all the

pieces of this system and put it together

like a puzzle and make it better.’... Any-

thing that there was an issue with, we’ve

risen to that challenge.”

Gretchen Macht: “We have so much

strength and opportunity; I am just totally

inspired by that. With that comes this re-

birth, this knowledge. We will overcome

a hurdle that we’ve had professionally

since its inception 100 years ago. People

are just in awe now, and I really love that.

Bobbie Watts: “We are very resilient; it doesn’t matter what

comes at us, we will make it work. We as industrial and systems

engineers are primed to be leaders in this pandemic. 2020 wasn’t

just the year of the pandemic, it was the year of everything that

could possibly go wrong, but this was an opportunity for us.”

The global pandemic:

Supply chain’s ﬁnest hour

Sept. 28, 2021, link.iise.org/podcast_s3e5

Bublu Thakur-Weigold, director of pro-

grams at ETH Zurich, tells how COVID-19

disrupted global supply chains but maintains

that manufacturers and supply chain man-

agers heroically responded to massive, over-

night changes in supply and demand.

“The fact that we had a disruption itself is

not evidence that the supply chains did not

work. In general, we do not set up our sup-

ply chains so that they are constantly functioning under every

form of duress. ... What we’re trying to do as supply chain man-

agers is to have enough inventory in the chain so we have the

maximum amount of availability that our business model needs

and can tolerate, and that will be different for different types of

supply chains.”

Angie Jackman

Barrett Caldwell

Bobbie Watts

Ali Hobbs

Gretchen Macht

Bublu Thakur-

Weigold

Michael Washington