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INTELLIGENCE: A word from the Student

Chapter
Network Design Decisions:
The values that should guide the AI revolution by Strengthening global supply
Joseph Byrum chains
Webinars
Advanced artificial intelligence algorithms have the ability to take
IISE Blogs: What Industries
over tasks traditionally reserved for skilled human operators, such
are most likely to change
as driving a truck or performing a medical diagnosis. What once
was the stuff of science fiction is now reality. This technology has manufacturing?
made tremendous leaps in the last decade, yet it remains
nowhere near its full potential.

It is still early, and we have the opportunity to guide AI’s

development in a rational way, following a set of clear principles.
Thinking through those principles provides insight into what a
fully developed, ethical AI system ought to look like.

A number of organizations, including the Association for

Computing Machinery (ACM) [1], Future of Life Institute (FLI) [2],
Institute for Electronics and Electrical Engineers (IEEE) [3] and
Google [4] have asked their experts to think through every
possible scenario, from avoiding Hollywood’s overused vision of
megalomaniacal AI to preventing a programmer’s implicit biases
from infecting algorithms that ought to be free from prejudice.

Reviewing these concepts is important in understanding how to

best take advantage of AI’s potential. Fortunately, a consensus is
emerging on the main principles that should be respected by
technology developers.

Human Control
"The first and most
The first and most important
important principle principle is that we must
is maintaining maintain human control of AI
systems. One example would
human control of be to have an easily
accessible “off” switch to
AI systems." ensure humans can intervene
and stop problems from
rapidly growing into crises
when AI steps out of line. In
Stanley Kubrick’s film “2001:
A Space Odyssey,” it was so
hard for the human crew to
unplug the uppity HAL 9000
system that the lip-reading
AI realized what was
happening and decided that,
“This mission is too important
for me to allow you to
jeopardize it.”
But it’s more than just an off
switch. The current state of
self-driving cars illustrates
the risk of making human
involvement an afterthought.
At the current level of
technology, human
intervention is essential for AI
systems that have yet to
master every aspect of the
OCTOBER 2018
chaotic road environment.
At the same time, however,
humans don’t really do
much while the car drives
itself; their barely engaged
attention lapses.
This scenario played out in a
tragic accident in March
2018 in Tempe, Ariz. [5]. A
self-driving Volvo struck and
killed a darkly clad
pedestrian who darted out
from the middle of a dark
road – something the
system’s designers had not
anticipated. The forward-
and side-mounted cameras,
radar and lidar sensors did
detect an unknown object,
but by the time the human
responded by hitting the
brakes, it was too late.
Pushing too many functions
off on the AI can create a
dangerous complacency,
which is why it’s important
to maintain human control.
 OCTOBER 2018

Human Safety
Ensuring human safety is another key principle. Isaac Asimov developed his three laws of
robotics, designed to protect humanity, as a defense against the cheap plot device.
Apparently, having robots turn on their creator in what had already become a cliché by the
1950s. While the laws served a fictional purpose initially, they remain an enduring
statement of programming safeguards that still make sense today:
A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come
to harm.
A robot must obey orders given by human beings except where such orders would conflict
with the First Law.
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with
the First or Second Law.

The basic concept is simple, but real-world issues tend to become more complicated at
the edges of implementation. Self-driving cars once again pose the classic dilemma. If a
robotic car rounds a corner and suddenly comes across a group of school children crossing
the road, does the car continue straight, endangering the children, or swerve into an
obstacle that risks the life of the owner? The right answer is fodder for endless discussion
and debate, but what matters most is that AI systems are developed to handle realistic
scenarios and the consequences of the choices made. AI should be better than humans at
making the right choice in terms of human safety.

Human Well-Being
“Human well-being” means the AI should work on humanity’s behalf, not the other way
around. Machines are supposed to be labor-saving devices, but often we find ourselves
spending endless hours supplying data to algorithms (which is the primary purpose of
social media, at least from the perspective of Facebook and Twitter), or spending long
hours working to be able to afford the latest expensive gadget.

AI systems must also be fed a never-ending stream of data to function effectively, and
this is an area that should require minimal human interaction. AI is best at maintaining
human well-being when such systems take over repetitive tasks with a level of accuracy
and precision only available to systems that are not susceptible to boredom and fatigue.
This is an area where AI can easily fill in for a human weakness.
 OCTOBER 2018

Human Freedom Transparency

The principle of “human freedom” means we must
be free to make our own choices. The temptation to
let AI take over and make every decision while
humans relax must be avoided. First, having AI take
over our decision-making would conflict with the
previous principle of maintaining human well-being
because it would be essentially enslaving mankind.
The primary problem with human judgment is that
there are so many variables involved in any
particular choice that we often rely on intuition or
luck in making a selection in the face of nearly
infinite options. We might decide what car to buy
because we like the color or make a stock pick
based on a small slice of information such as the
price-to-earnings ratio or a recent earnings report.
AI’s strength is its ability to process all available
data, sorting through what’s relevant so that the
algorithm can present options to the human based
on analysis rather than superstition. Operating
under this principle, AI doesn’t substitute its
judgment for human decisions. Rather, it augments
the power of human decisions by focusing human
effort.
The term AI covers a wide variety of technologies. It
can refer to deep-learning algorithms that draw
patterns out of data that the AI system then uses to
adjust its own programming. This can often lead to
situations where human programmers have no idea
why the AI did what it did.
Amazon used neural network algorithms of this sort
in its Reckognition facial recognition system [6],
which was designed to enable “immediate response
for public safety and security.” When a public
interest group put Reckognition to the test, it falsely
identified 28 members of Congress as criminals [7].
Such goofs are inevitable with deep-learning
algorithms that alter themselves in ways that can’t
actually be explained. Developing systems with
transparency as a primary principle can help reduce
embarrassing mistakes caused when strange inputs
yield even more odd output.
In some cases, government regulatory agencies
expect and demand accountability, making
transparency even more important.

Putting it All Together

AI is not a magic solution to all of life’s problems. It is best seen as a tool that, when developed in accordance with the
principles above, can enhance human-led projects. Augmented intelligence systems take advantage of AI’s strengths to fill
in for human weakness in accordance with the principles of good practice for AI.

Think of the Iron Man suit from the movies of the same name. The suit’s AI system feeds the most relevant information to
Tony Stark so that he can make the ultimate choice about the best course of action.

Combining the AI’s data processing abilities with human judgment is what gives the whole system the ability to perform
better than either AI alone or humans on their own. Such mutual dependence also ensures the AI will never judge human
beings to be obsolete, significantly reducing the chance of a reduction in human safety from a robot-triggered nuclear
holocaust. This approach leaves humans in control, respects human freedom, and leaves you with someone who can
explain the reasoning behind the decisions that were made at each critical step.

Following these principles in AI development will promote AI systems likely to enhance our lives, but at the cost of making
movies more boring.

Joseph Byrum is the chief data scientist at Principal Financial Group. Connect with him on Twitter @ByrumJoseph.

OSMAN KAGAN YAYLA
OPERATIONAL RESEARCH CLUB
IISE PROJECT LEADER
+90 531 843 41 84
kagan.yayla@ug.bilkent.edu.tr
OCTOBER 2018
A WORD FROM THE
STUDENT CHAPTER
We hope that you will enjoy and contribute valuable information
to yourself with this year's first newsletter. We are planning to make
the IISE Newsletter more informative, educational and diverse with
every issue. We are striving to create a space where every student
despite of their department can read and enjoy our publishing.
Since Industrial Engineerings scope of work is remarkably broad
and wide we hope that every student can take away something
useful and insightful from the newsletter.
In this issue, we are talking about AI, things that can influence
manufacturing and network design decisions. IE world is
transforming very rapidly and as students, we have to adapt to it,
therefore, knowing the recent changes, concepts and
phenomena are essential. Also, we included information about
IISE to help you, the reader, to understand the organization and
what an IE is. Another insertion is webinars. Webinars are online
courses which help you to gather and learn information on topics
you might be interested. Unfortunately, some IISE Webinars
requires subscriptions but don't worry webinars that we listed are
open to everybody. 
Another important thing regarding the newsletter is the
feedback survey. We are creating the IISE Newsletter for students
and your feedback is very important for the future and the
direction of the newsletter. Compared to last year we changed the
design and we are trying to improve it. Your feedback could help us
a lot in the development and transformation process. You can get
to the survey by clicking here.
If you want to get involved in the IISE Bilkent Student Chapter
and want to contribute to what we are doing, don't worry we also
have ideas and plans for that. In November we are planning to
establish a team of volunteers. Follow our mother associations
Instagram page (@orbilkent) and check your e-mails for updates on
that.
That's all from us in this issue. We are working to make the
newsletter a collaborative, multilateral and teamwork oriented
environment. This means that you and your feedback is highly
valuable for us. Don't hesitate to contact me for every question
you have. I wish you all a very happy and successful semester and
hope that you like this months newsletter.

MISSION
To provide knowledge, training,
networking opportunities and
recognition to enhance the skills
and effectiveness of the industrial
and systems engineering
profession and those individuals
involved with improving quality
and productivity.
VISION
To be the premier organization
that advances, promotes and
unites the industrial and systems
engineering profession
worldwide.
OCTOBER 2018
ABOUT IISE
Industrial and systems engineers make things better in any industry
— from automobile manufacturing and aerospace, to healthcare,
forestry, finance, leisure, and education. The Institute of Industrial
and Systems Engineers, founded in 1948, helps its members
improve complex organizations around the world and across
industries. Throughout their careers, members turn to IISE for tools
and connections that provide an integrated and systemic
perspective to business challenges. Solving complex problems is
our common objective.
IISE, the world's largest professional society dedicated solely to
the support of the profession, is an international, nonprofit
association that provides leadership for the application,
education, training, research, and development of industrial and
systems engineering.
What is industrial and systems
engineering? (IISE official definition)
Industrial and systems engineering is concerned with the design,
improvement and installation of integrated systems of people,
materials, information, equipment and energy. It draws upon
specialized knowledge and skill in the mathematical, physical,
and social sciences together with the principles and methods of
engineering analysis and design, to specify, predict, and evaluate
the results to be obtained from such systems.
IISE is recognized internationally as:
The leading provider of cutting-edge continuing education in
industrial engineering.
The acknowledged source of productivity improvement
information via the Internet, publications, and live events,
including an annual conference, topical conferences, and
technical seminars.
An invaluable source of member benefits that include a
magazine, professional development programs, an online career
center, networking communities, chapters, and affinity programs
that save members time and money.
The only association that supports the profession of industrial
engineering and promotes an increased awareness of the value
of industrial engineers.
The only association that supports accredited industrial
engineering programs through the ABET Inc.
 OCTOBER 2018

"Global supply
NETWORK DESIGN
chains: Resilience
DECISIONS
is the ability to
Strengthening global supply chains by Chris
withstand change. Gordon
Agility is the ability
Global supply chains are constantly at risk. Natural disasters,
to respond rapidly." political instability, labor shortages … the list goes on. Leading
companies are constantly evaluating how to respond to these
disruptions, but only a few are really prepared to deal with the
impact of trade warfare. With new import tariffs coming into
effect in the United States and retaliatory measures on the rise,
can companies sustain the competitiveness of their supply chain?
Using prescriptive analytics technology can help.

Agile, Resilient Supply Chain Networks

In a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal, supply chain
analyst Lora Cecere, founder and CEO of Supply Chain Insights,
recounts how she hasn’t seen “this level of nervousness in the
supply chain” in the past two decades. Bain & Co’s Peter Guarraia
echoes this feeling in a Reuters article: “We are all over the place …
A lot of our clients are asking, ‘How do we turn our supply chains
from a necessary evil into a competitive weapon?’” There is no
easy answer to that question, but building agility and
resilienceinto supply chain networks is key.
 OCTOBER 2018

Consider some examples:

What happens if import tariffs are reversed? Should you make changes to your supply chain
network based on the current reality of import tariffs? Or should you design your network to be
able to flex between different import tariff regimes?
What happens if one of your suppliers goes out of business? Are you prepared to find a new
one or manufacture in-house? How will the change impact your pricing and margins?
Can you gain a competitive edge during a disruption by having a plan in place to deal with
it ahead of your competitors?

A supply chain network design technology that incorporates prescriptive analytics makes it
easier to model the impact of these scenarios and create contingency plans. So what’s the
problem? Most companies are still using spreadsheets to model their network.

Network Design Process

Research carried out by Supply Chain
Insights and commissioned by AIMMS shows
that 72 percent of companies have a network
design process in place, with 35 percent of
them using in-house technologies. However,
only 19 percent of these respondents rate
their process as very effective, and 65 percent
of them are using spreadsheets to sustain the
process.

Using spreadsheets is convenient, as they

are inexpensive and familiar. But the more
complex the network, the harder it is to make
them work. Spreadsheets are practically never
integrated with other systems. They are not
updated automatically. The logic behind them
is often only clear to those who create them,
making collaboration difficult. Analyses are
often slow given that you can only work with a
certain amount of data and version control is
hard. Not the ideal set up if you’re aiming to
build agility and resilience.
 OCTOBER 2018

What about best of breed tools? Best of breed or “out of the box” technologies are next in line to spreadsheets,
but several of these technologies can be too cumbersome, too slow and too expensive, especially when they are
dependent on scarce and very specific resources. In many ways, these tools have not evolved much in the past
decades. There are new features and a big increase in computing power, yet network optimization is still just a
richer version of the 1990s experience. Out of the box often fails to accommodate the unique constraints faced
by the business and isn’t rapid and agile enough to actually get out ahead of business change. That’s probably
why 55 percent of respondents in the survey stated that they preferred configurability over standardization.
Pricing best of breed technologies leaves a lot to be desired as well. Some 84 percent of respondents in the
same survey stated that they wanted an affordable network design solution, but only 54 percent said available
tools meet their price expectation.
In other words, very few companies have the right tools to model the effect of trade risks and other
disruptions.

What to Look for in Analytics Technology

Companies need a technology that has a powerful analytics engine but is easy to use and easy to adapt to changing
business requirements. As a best practice, supply chain teams should look for tools that:

include prescriptive analytics capabilities which allow them to model their network, quickly and easily evaluate
scenarios, and make contingency plans when things change or go wrong;
provide access to the model logic, so they can understand what’s behind the answers;
allow for data clarity and data sharing for other supply chain needs;
do not require the constant intervention of specialists to run; and
provide a realistic path to train and self-enable end (business) users.

Supply chain network design decisions involve hefty investments. With trade risks on the rise, investments and costs will
only increase. Technology is only a piece of the puzzle, but it’s an important one. By embracing tools that help them
prepare for uncertainty and react swiftly to change, supply chain teams will be better positioned to survive this new era of
disruption.

Chris Gordon, vice president of product management at AIMMS, has worked in supply chain consulting and operations
across Europe, the United States and India for more than 25 years. He’s driven dozens of supply chain initiatives in retail,
consumer goods and manufacturing with a heavy focus on leveraging analytics to promote major business change.
 OCTOBER 2018

SPORT VS. INDUSTRY "ATHLETES":

"Webinars can help PHYSICAL DEMANDS AND INJURY
PREVENTION METHODOLOGIES
you to gather more
Presented by Applied Ergonomics Conference Committee
information on an Nov. 1, 2 p.m. Eastern time
Presenter: Brock Anderson, founder and principle consultant,
ergo-ology
interesting topic." Industrial professionals turned to Olympic competition and
professional sports to redefine the definition of front-line
associates. The phrase “industrial athletes” is a description born
out of similarities in human performance and the stress-
response generated by a physically demanding task. Yet, there
are still enormous differences between today’s finely tuned
athletes and the broad mix of employees who occupy the
workaday world. While athletic coaches and corporate health
professionals share a common goal, maximizing performance
and minimizing injury, they take two very different approaches
based on the similarities and differences in each athlete’s
environment and task requirements. This presentation will
compare and contrast these two settings and uncover best
practices to managing risk and improving performance, all
while pointing out several practices in one setting may not be
advantageous in the other.

THE ISE ROLE IN SERVICE SYSTEMS

ENGINEERING: SERVICE 4.0 OVERVIEW, DIGITAL
TRANSFORMATION IN HEALTHCARE, AND
ENTERPRISE SHARED SERVICES
Tuesday, Nov. 6, 12 p.m. Eastern time | Register now
Presenters: Vittal Prabhu, Penn State University; Michael Caesar,
University Health Network; David Poirier, The Poirier Group and CISE
Chair

Industry 4.0 is a concept that is becoming well socialized and

understood. The ISE roles in this ongoing transformation are fairly well
established. A similar transformation is occurring in Service Systems.
That transformation, which some are calling Service 4.0, is less well
understood and for sure the ISE role is much less well defined. The
Service Systems Engineering “Community” in IISE has joined forces with
Chapter No. 1 and created a series of webinars that will launch on the
Nov. 6 and continue into 2019.
 OCTOBER 2018

IISE Blogs offer WHAT TECHNOLOGIES

different ARE MOST AND LEAST
perspectives to LIKELY TO CHANGE 
todays IE problems MANUFACTURING?
Whether you’re watching “Shark Tank” or reading a crowdfunding
campaign, the term revolutionary gets tossed around quite a bit. I
like Peter Drucker’s definition of revolutionary; the true revolution is
when technology or processes from a totally different sector
overturn a market, such as genetics upending medicine or the
internet altering everything from social interactions to looking up
information.
There are four technologies often cited as certain to dramatically
alter manufacturing: the Internet of Things, machine learning,
artificial intelligence and 3D printing.

3D PRINTING
3D printing remains a technology for small lots and
unique items. Yes, 3D printers may be integrated into
CNC machines. However, they are a long way from
producing as many items as an injection molded
machine or extruder, much less at a comparable per-unit
price. Work to create 3D printed metal parts and printed
products from other materials is ongoing, but it will be
decades before it will replace mass-production lines for
most items.
 OCTOBER 2018

MACHINE LEARNING AND AI

Machine learning and Artificial Intelligence go hand in hand; machine
learning is how AI will advance and how we’ll train it for particular
applications. Analyzing data from consumers could lead to improvements
in product design, customer service and product delivery.
Optimization through data analysis becomes faster and more accurate as
we develop both better data analysis tools and faster systems to run them.
Conversely, we have to have faster computers and streamlined analysis
simply to keep up with the firehose of data being generated today and the
flood the IoT will generate tomorrow. This is where understanding the
difference between information and knowledge is essential, and that is
where industrial engineers will find their niche no matter how smart the AI
is. Ignore the need for human input, and you’ll have an advanced AI
generating its own equivalent of the Spurious Correlations website, spotting
trends that humans know are irrelevant. That’s aside from recommending
massive changes that aren’t worth the effort or simply aren’t practical.
AI will increasingly become a partner in the design process. I think
evolutionary design processes with human oversight has strong potential.
And the ability to model processes and products will improve as we gain
more empirical data on how systems and parts actually behave in various
situations.

INTERNET OF THINGS
The Internet of Things is simply a level up from the already high
level of automation in many factories. In some regards, the IoT only
extends the “factory” into the broader world, tracking items until
they reach their end use and monitoring them when they return for
rework.
Perhaps the greatest impact of the Internet of Things and masses of
data collected as a result of it will be what we and our creations can
glean from it.
 IISE NEWSLETTER OCTOBER ISSUE

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