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David S. Cochran is a Professor of Systems Engineering, and Director of the Purdue University Fort Wayne Center of Excellence in Systems Engineering. Dr. Cochran’s research is Collective System Design which is a methodology to design sustainable systems. He is the Purdue Fort Wayne faculty representative to the Purdue graduate school council. He served on the Lean Systems Board of IISE, the Orthoworx Advanced Manufacturing Council, and the MIT Lean Aerospace Initiative. He earned a Ph.D., from Auburn University, and M.S., Industrial Engineering, from The Pennsylvania State University. He served as Associate Professor with the Mechanical Engineering Dept. at MIT. Her served as adjunct Professor for the Meijo University School of Business, Nagoya, Japan, and the Southern Methodist University, Systems Engineering degree program in Dallas, TX.

Prof. Cochran teaches Systems Engineering and MBA program courses at Purdue Fort Wayne. He is a faculty member with the Purdue University Master of Science in Engineering Technology (MSET) program.

Dr. Cochran developed the Production System Design (PSD) laboratory at MIT during the time when lean was just emerging. The challenge is how to express lean as a consequence of an enterprise system design, instead of a set of tools to implement. He is a two-time recipient of the Shingo Prize for Manufacturing Excellence.

He is co-author with Joe Swartz of the 2015 IIE ISERC Best Track Paper in Lean Systems entitled, “Collective System Design of St. Francis Hospital ER.”