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It might be the logical way his engineering mind works
or perhaps it’s the wisdom gained from more than 30
years of professional experience, but choosing to make
his latest book, Beyond Lean: Simulation in Practice,
available in ScholarWorks@GVSU service was an
easy decision for Grand Valley engineering professor
Charlie Standridge. “The library is perfectly set up
to do this through ScholarWorks,” he said. “It keeps
students’ costs down by not having to pay for an extra
book or allows me to teach more by having them read
another book.”
Standridge, who also is assistant dean of the Seymour
and Esther Padnos College of Engineering and
Computing, has authored more than 75 publications
including three books, more than 20 refereed journal
articles, and more than 40 conference papers. He has
almost as many reasons to publish on ScholarWorks as
he does publications on his resume and he’s happy to
share them.
“I can control the content and update it easily,” said
Standridge, who earned his master’s and Ph.D. degrees
in industrial engineering from Purdue University and
teaches courses in production operations and material
handling, as well as engineering data analysis and
computer programming. “By the next time I teach this
class I’ll have another version of the book out there.”
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Beyond Lean: Simulation in Practice is the first book
Standridge has made available through ScholarWorks.
“I knew other faculty members who were using it and
got to thinking of the philosophy of making it available
through an open access platform,” he said. “I didn’t
want to manage it myself, so ScholarWorks was the
easy choice.”
Standridge also knows that his book, which focuses on
showing how discrete event simulation can be used in
addition to lean thinking to achieve greater benefits
in system improvement than with lean alone, probably
enjoys a wider audience than if he published it
traditionally. He notes that between publication on
ScholarWorks in April 2012 and the end of that year,
there had been 178 downloads from ScholarWorks — a
significant number considering only 10 students were
required to download it. Standridge says university
libraries, scholars, and industry users most likely
account for the other users and that doesn’t bother
him at all: “It’s a matter of philosophy and making
info freely available,” he said.
As much as anything, Standridge is happy with the
way publishing on ScholarWorks helps him be a better
professor. “Students aren’t complaining and they’re
learning the material from it,” he said matter-of-factly.
“It’s the way students want to learn.”
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