David Wheeler is an analyst with Plant Floor Systems at Ford Motor Company, in Ypsilanti, Michigan, where he is primarily responsible for the analysis of operations on the floor of the assembly plant. The entire group is responsible for all systems, from printers to data collection on assembly machines, within the Rawsonville Plant of the Electrical and Fuel Handling Division. It is their responsibility to collect data and perform analysis which will result in the improvement of the production process. As part of his job, David updates and maintains computer software that collects process control data used to monitor the operation of the machines on the floor.
He recognizes that many of the mathematical concepts he studied carry over into his programming and analysis. For instance, data is collected on how often and how long a system on the floor of the assembly plant is down. It is his job to deliver systems that perform analysis on this data and determine its statistical significance. He also writes applications that take the data collected on the machine and converts it into a format which is accepted by the tools used to perform the analysis. The data and analysis is stored in a database and it is David's responsibility to output the data in a manner which is useful for making decisions and producing reports.
David thinks working in industry was a good choice for him. He enjoys interacting with other people and likes the possibilities and constant change that working for Ford offers him. Currently taking courses for an MBA at the University of Michigan, he believes that his degree in mathematics helps him understand the statistics and finance behind business, and that a hard science with an MBA is a good combination for the business world. He finds that statistics has much more impact in business then he had ever imagined, and that numerical and computational techniques, such as finite element methods and numerical approximation, are widely used. His advice to a mathematics student interested in industry is to develop proficiency in an area where mathematics is applied, such as engineering or business, by taking a minor in that area.
David has an M.S. from Carnegie Mellon University in applied mathematics, and a B.S. in mathematics from Worcester Polytechnic Institute. He joined Ford three and a half years ago as the result of recruitment efforts by Ford on the Carnegie Mellon campus. As an undergraduate he had an internship with Aetna Life and Casualty and, as a graduate student, an internship with the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The internships not only helped him define what areas of industry interested him, but he also believes they made him a more attractive job candidate when he looked for a permanent position.
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