Seminar_Series_Summary

For recent years, a concern over infectious diseases and biochemical threats which may endanger a nation’s security has been spreading rapidly in the United States. No matter what those treats are natural or unnatural, the concern has become a big issue in the nation since the treats are sometimes unknown and propagate quickly. Emergencies over Swine Flu and the infiltration into a U.K.’s biomedical lab will be exemplars of the threats. To cope out this serious concern, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has invested astronomical amounts of money into many research institutes. The Texas A&M Center for Innovation in Advanced Development and Manufacturing (CIADM) is one of those research institutes. The CIADM in Texas A&M started with abundant supports from the U.S. government and this partnership remains well until recently. The main mission of CIADM is to improve the nation’s emergency preparedness against any risk from diseases, influenzas, bio-chemical attacks, and also from nuclear threats. And there are four sub objectives to accomplish the mission. The first objective is to secure a sufficient supply of vaccines within a short time specified by the government. Next, the second objective is that the CIADM will provide an aid to entire fields for developing advanced bio-manufacturing processes. Third, the CIADM will be in charge of facilitating developments of medical products. And lastly, the CIADM will play an important role in cultivating professionals for the future. In the viewpoint of Industrial Engineering, managing the manufacturing process, controlling the risk for the facilities and supply chain will become our main interests. To be specific, automation and system integration are considered to improve the efficiency of the manufacturing process. And also, optimization techniques can be applied to several areas such as improving the waste collection system, reducing the cost of product packaging, and Quality control. In particular, there is much to be desired for the improvement of quality level, and now the new paradigm for quality control is required. However, although there is expected to be more opportunities in such areas for industrial engineers, there are some big challenges: (1) Complex and costly regulatory requirements; (2) Inadequate government funding; (3) Economic and political structure which hinder cooperation and collaboration; (4) and the increasing world-wide demand. To sum up, the serious epidemics of diseases, terrorist attack, and biochemical accidents has awakened people to the danger of biological and chemical threats. Especially, since the declaration of Public Health Emergency over swine flu from the United States government in 2009, people have seen the necessity of investing the society’s resources to deal with the problems. For such purpose, the Texas A&M Center for Innovation in Advanced Development and Manufacturing (CIADM) was established, and the CIADM has contributed greatly to the advanced development and manufacturing for biomedical products. Since the complex nature of biomedical products development and manufacturing, we might need expertise in a variety of areas. And it follows that our society requires industrial engineers to provide answers for many challenging questions and problems in analytical thought. Of course, there are some critical barriers to stop the progress going forward. Nevertheless, the need of professionals in finding optimized solutions to the complex development and manufacturing system will be increasing.