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The Annual
Charles L. Miller Lecture
Great
Leaps, Persistence, and Innovation: The Evolving Story of
Hyundai
By John
Krafcik
President and Chief Executive
Officer of Hyundai Motor America
Click
here
to view MIT World video.
About Lecture:
Krafcik will address the current circumstances of the U.S.
economy and the auto industry, including a look at how these
realities have affected Hyundai.
About John Krafcik:
 John
Krafcik is Acting President and Chief Executive Officer
of Hyundai Motor America. After graduating with a Mechanical
Engineering degree from Stanford, Krafcik was the first
American engineer hired by the GM/Toyota joint-venture partnership
NUMMI. Krafcik then received a Master of Science degree
in Management at MIT from the Sloan School. While a student
at MIT, Krafcik led the benchmarking study of over 80 automotive
final assembly plants in the world. The results of that
study which were reported in "The Machine That Changed
the World" introduced the concept of lean manufacturing.
After graduating from MIT, Krafcik spent 14 years at Ford
where he held various product development positions, including
Chief Engineer, Truck Chassis Engineering and Chief Engineer,
Large/Premium Utility Vehicles.
About the Series:
This lecture series is named for Charles L. Miller, who
joined the Civil Engineering faculty in 1955, and served
as head of the department from 1962-1969. Miller conceived
a problem-oriented computer language to support surveying
and highway design (COGO – Coordinate Geometry). He
generalized this new tool into ICES (Integrated Civil Engineering
Systems) with applications in structural engineering, highway
design, project management and many other fields. Remarkably,
this software concept, developed in the 1960s, is still
in active use around the world and has been a success as
a change agent for both the academic field of civil and
environmental engineering and its commercial applications.
Miller’s tenure as department head
in CEE is notable for the renewal of that department through
strategic faculty appointments, expanded research funding
and a host of new ideas. In addition to ICES, Miller founded
the Civil Engineering Systems Lab (CESL) which, in many
ways, was a precursor to the Engineering Systems Division.
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