Manufacturing Systems Research Group Professor Paul Braiden

Professor P.M. Braiden  FREng., B.Eng., M.Eng., Ph.D.,  F.I.Mech.E., F.I.E.E., C.Phys.,  M.Inst.P.
Telephone: 0044 (0) 191 222 6210 Fax: 0044 (0) 191 222 8600 EMail: P.M.Braiden@newcastle.ac.uk

Paul Braiden holds the Sir James Woodeson Chair of Manufacturing Engineering. He graduated in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Sheffield, and holds the degrees of  Master of Engineering and Doctor of Philosophy from that University. He has worked in the automobile and cutting tool industries and in the United States as an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh where he also held a Ford Foundation Fellowship. He returned to the UK to a senior post at the Atomic Energy Authority, and was a Senior Lecturer in Engineering at the University of Durham before being appointed to his present post.

He is an Associate Director of the Engineering Design Centre, a member of the Newcastle University Business Process Research Group, the proposer and chairman of the HESIN IGDS and played a leading role in the development of the Three Rivers Strategy for the North East.

He has been a member of the Engineering Board and the Council of the SERC, for whom he has also served on a number of Committees including the Innovative Manufacturing Initiative, the Electro-Mechanical Engineering Committee, the review of the joint SERC/ESRC Committee and, as Chairman, on the Engineering Design Committee. Through the Engineering Professors Conference he proposed the EPSRC Engineering Doctorate. He was elected to Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineers in 1994, and served as Honorary Secretary of the Academy for Mechanical Subjects from 1997-2000. He is a Chartered Engineer, a Fellow of both the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and the Institution of Electrical Engineers, and a Member of the Institute of Physics.

Research interests:
The development and performance of manufacturing systems
Manufacturing technology, including the performance of metal and rock cutting tools.
Business processes, their analysis and improvement.
Particular interest in the control of manufacture, and the resultant complications in the integration of design and manufacture, in products where the product structure is deep and complex.

Current research programmes include:
The application of just in time, lean and agile manufacturing techniques in an engineer to order product environment.
Genetic algorithms for the scheduling of complex products.
The efficiency and effectiveness of installed computer programs.
Appropriate methodologies for business process re-engineering.