Gloria Bender will present at the Seminar Monday November 13 at 1:15pm in Room 114 of the W. A. Baker Chemistry Research Building (CRB). Ms. Bender’s presentation title, abstract, and biographical sketch are below.
Title: Decision Support in the Real World: QED Never Is! 
Author: Gloria Bender
Location: W. A. Baker Chemistry Research Building (CRB) Room 114
Date: Monday, November 13
Time: 1:15pm – 2:15pm
Abstract: Advanced analytics, stochastic modeling, operations research tools are all very powerful and can provide elegant solutions to complex problems. However, many of the problems working IEs face involve getting good data for use in our models to produce elegant solutions. And, once we have our elegant solution, how do we promote the value to skeptical decision makers. Ms. Bender will discuss some of these challenges and how her consulting company addresses them. She will look forward to an open discussion of potential ways IE’s can leverage new technologies to address these practical problems.
Biographical Sketch: Ms. Bender is an industrial engineer with over 30 years of experience in operations and facility capacity analyses, conceptual design, and expansion planning. She is co-founder and co-owner of TransSolutions, a 25-person transportation and aviation consulting firm based in Fort Worth, with offices in Washington DC and Atlanta. She is responsible for establishment of TransSolutions’ landside planning consulting practice, including development of processes, protocols and systems to serve passengers, their ground transportation vehicles, and their luggage in their journey through airports. She championed development of the Operational Excellence Consulting practice in 2009, using TransSolutions’ strong advanced analytics and modeling capabilities coupled with the principals of Lean to improve the effectiveness of various enterprises worldwide. Ms. Bender currently serves most projects as the Principal-in-charge (PIC), responsible for overall project quality and client satisfaction, and she occasionally serves projects as the working project manager. In addition to her work at hundreds of airports worldwide, her projects also include supporting the redevelopment of the New York World Trade Center, estimating viewership for CNN Airport Network, and recommending enhancements to the computerized maintenance management system used by the US Navy. Ms. Bender actively supports the Airport Cooperative Research Program (ACRP), a program funded through the FAA and administered by the Transportation Research Board. She has served as a research panel chair, a research contributor on four projects, and was the Principal Investigator for Report 55: Passenger Level of Service and Spatial Planning for Airport Terminals. In January 2016, Ms. Bender was appointed by the Secretary of the Department of Transportation to serve on the ACRP Oversight Committee. Ms. Bender holds both an M.S. and B.S. in Industrial Engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington. She is a Fellow in the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers, a Member of the Council of Industrial and Systems Engineers, former Chair of the Airports Council International – North American World Business Partners Board and lectures at the UC Berkeley Airport Planning Conference. Since 2013, Ms. Bender has also been a member of the Transportation Security Administration Planning Guidelines and Planning Standards (PGDS) Industry Working Group (IWG).
-Posted by Jay Rosenberger