Leon F. McGinnis
Georgia Tech Professor Leon McGinnis has been interested in interdisciplinary research for decades, but he didn't suspect his interest would lead to sustainable manufacturing. The Eugene C. Gwaltney Chair in Manufacturing Systems in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering, McGinnis joined Tech in 1975 after graduating with a PhD from North Carolina State University. The founding director of the Keck Virtual Factory Lab and the associate director of the Manufacturing Research Center, he helped establish Tech's Material Handling Research Center in 1982 and the Computer Integrated Manufacturing Systems Program in 1983.
It wasn't until other faculty members became interested in environmentally conscious design and manufacturing research ten years ago that McGinnis got "caught up" in sustainability. "I got involved," he says, "and it's sort of grown from there."
Today, Georgia Tech's work in environmentally conscious design and manufacturing involves experts from across the campus, netting more than one million dollars a year in sponsored research. Current research includes work in a variety of areas, from new materials design to McGinnis' specialty of sustainable decision-making and logistics, which focuses on material transportation methods resulting in the smallest environmental footprint.
"My point of view is that companies would be willing to have a smaller environmental footprint if they knew how to do that," says McGinnis. "You have to demonstrate to them that a new method is a) cost-effective, and b) has a smaller environmental footprint." To do so, he forges relationships with company executives to understand their pressing needs, and then blends traditional decision-making methods with newer ones to help them make more environmentally friendly decisions, such as choosing packaging that can be recycled into other materials.
Interdisciplinary collaborations are the key to success. "Sustainability is by its nature interdisciplinary," says McGinnis. "It doesn't make sense that someone would be doing research on sustainability but not in an interdisciplinary way." He works with other experts through entities like Georgia Tech's Institute for Sustainable Technology and Development to create the collaborative solutions that make manufacturing more sustainable and help protect the environment.
McGinnis feels fortunate to be part of Georgia Tech, which has a core of students and faculty members involved in sustainable manufacturing. "Tech's been better every year for the last thirty-two years—better people, better facilities, better students," he says. "There's no question that Georgia Tech is a leader in sustainability and manufacturing."
Links
Leon F. McGinnis' Web page at the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering