Professor of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering
Director of the Design Engineering Center
University of Missouri-Rolla
Rolla, Missouri
kenneth@ragsdell.com

Professor Ragsdell received his BS and MS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Missouri-Rolla and his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. Prior to his current appointment he served ten years on the design faculty in Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University, and later as Professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering and Director of the Design Optimization Laboratory at the University of Arizona in Tucson. He was Chairman of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Huber O. Croft Professor of Engineering and Director of the Design Productivity Center at the University of Missouri in Columbia prior to his current appointment on the Rolla campus. He was Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs / Extension with responsibility for all academic outreach programs from July, 1989 until his return to full time teaching and research in September, 1992. Dr. Ragsdell is a graduate of the General Motors Quality College, and a founding member of the Board of Directors of the Missouri Quality Award. He later served on the Board of Overseers of the Missouri Quality Award.

Prior to his teaching career, he worked in industry as a mechanical designer for Moog Industries, Inc. in St. Louis, Missouri; and International Business Machines Corporation / Office Products Division in Austin, Texas. He has spent several summers on industrial assignments involving engineering design, analysis, modelling, instrumentation and optimization with particular emphasis on high-speed machines, such as direct impact printing devices. He has served as consultant to a number of companies including IBM, Xerox, General Motors, John Deere, Procter and Gamble, Whirlpool, Honeywell, Argonne National Laboratory, and Ford; and as President of a small consulting company, CAD Services, Inc. He is a registered professional engineer in Texas.

Dr. Ragsdell’s major area of expertise (in teaching, research and practice) is the engineering design process with a specialty in computer-aided design, optimization and quality engineering. He is the author of over 100 technical publications and a significant number of technical reports. He is co-author of the textbook, Engineering Optimization: Methods and Applications; author of the textbook, Applied Numerical Methods (in three volumes); co-editor of the book, New Directions in Optimum Structural Design; co-editor of the book, Progress in Engineering Optimization 1981; and editor of the books, CAD/CAM, Robotics and Automation International Conference and Institute Proceedings. He has been active in the development and presentation of shortcourses and conferences for practicing engineers and managers. He was the originator of the ASME course, Computer Aided Design and Manufacturing Technology, and has taught numerous courses in-plant and on various university campuses on engineering design optimization, numerical methods, computer aided design and quality engineering. Dr. Ragsdell was editor of an ASME Press book series entitled International Advances in Design Productivity, which includes a book by Dr. Genichi Taguchi on Robust Design.

Dr. Ragsdell has received numerous awards and honors including the Halliburton Outstanding Teacher Award at the University of Arizona in 1982; Tau Beta Pi Eminent Engineer Award in 1986, elected to membership on the Xerox Corporation Design Institute Board of Directors in 1986 and the General Motors Product and Manufacturing Functional Plan Task Force (the only external member) in 1987. Dr. Ragsdell has been elected to numerous honor societies. He is past chairman and co-founder of the ASME Design Automation Committee, and has been active in ASME at the local, regional and national level since 1968. Dr. Ragsdell is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and won the ASME Design Automation Award in 1993. Dr. Ragsdell was elected a Senior Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and spent the month of December, 1995 lecturing throughout Japan on Quality, Engineering and Management.