Christopher Nachtsheim

Christopher Nachtsheim

Professor and Frank A. Donaldson Chair in Operations Management

Supply Chain and Operations

Education

BA 1973
Mathematics and Quantitative Methods College of St. Thomas

MS 1974
Operations Research and Statistics Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

PhD 1979
Operations Research University of Minnesota

Expertise

Design of experiments

Regression analysis and analysis of variance

Six sigma quality improvement methods

Business analytics, predictive modeling and machine learning

Christopher J. Nachtsheim is the Frank A. Donaldson Chair of Operations Management in the Supply Chain and Operations Department of the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota.  Dr. Nachtsheim received and his Ph.D. in Operations Research from the University of Minnesota, served as staff member in the Statistics Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory from 19781981, and as Senior Statistician at General Mills from 19821984. In 1984 he joined the University, serving as Chair in the Department of Operations and Management Science (now Supply Chain and Operations) from 19931996 and from 20022014, and as Associate Dean of Faculty and Research from 19962000.  

Dr. Nachtsheim''s teaching and research interests center on statistics and business analytics, optimal design of industrial product and process improvement experiments, regression and predictive analytics, and quality management. In addition to his regular teaching duties at the University of Minnesota, Dr. Nachtsheim conducts workshops regularly for industry and has taught business statistics at the Warsaw School of Economics, the Vienna School of Business and Economics, and Lingnan College at Sun Yet Sen University regularly since 1993.  Among his major publications are two texts: Applied Linear Statistical Models, 5thEdition, 2005, Richard D. Irwin, and Applied Linear Regression Models, 4th Edition, 2004, Richard D. Irwin (both with John Neter, Michael Kutner, and William Li).  He is codiscoverer, along with Brad Jones (SAS Institute) of Definitive Screening Designs, and is the inventor of the coordinate exchange algorithm for constructing exact optimal experimental designs.  

Dr. Nachtsheim is the recipient of the Teacher of the Year Award for the Vienna Executive MBA program in 2017, and the Curtis Cup Award for CEMBA Faculty of the Year in the Carlson Executive MBA program in 2018.  Professor Nachtsheim has published over 70 articles in the statistics literature and has served as associate editor for many of the top journals in his field, including Journal of the American Statistical Association, Technometrics, Journal of Quality Technology, Statistics and Computing, _and _Journal of Statistical Computation & Simulation.  He is currently Associate Editor for the Journal of Quality Technology.  He served as Examiner, Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in 1996.  He is a fourtime recipient (1991, 2009, 2011, and 2014) of the Brumbaugh Award of the ASQ for best paper published in the area of industrial quality control, twotime recipient of the Lloyd S. Nelson Award of the ASQ for the published paper having the greatest impact on practitioners (2010 and 2012), a twotime recipient of the Jack Youden Prize for the best expository paper published in Technometrics(2011 and 2013), and the recipient of the 1992 ASME (CAE/CAD/CAM) National Best Paper Award.  Dr. Nachtsheim is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association. 

Selected Works

Applied Linear Statistical Models, 5th ed., C. J. Nachtsheim, J. Neter, M. Kutner, and W. Li (Richard D. Irwin, 2006).

Applied Linear Regression Models, 4th ed., C. J. Nachtsheim, J. Neter, M. Kutner, and W. Wasserman (Richard D. Irwin, 2005).

"A Comparison of Algorithms for Constructing Exact Doptimal Designs," R. D. Cook and C. J. Nachtsheim, Technometrics, Vol. 22, No. 3, August 1980), pp. 315324.

"The Coordinate Exchange Algorithm for Constructing Exact Optimal Experimental Designs," R. K. Meyer and C. J. Nachtsheim, Technometrics, Vol. 37, No. 1, (Feb 1995), pp. 6060.

"Sparse Sliced Inverse Regression," L. Li and C. J. Nachtsheim, Technometrics, Vol. 48, No. 4, (November 2006), pp. 503510.

"Splitplot designs: What, Why, and How.," B. Jones and C. J. Nachtsheim, Journal of Quality Technology, Vol. 41, No. 4, (October 2009), pp. 340361.

"When is R2 Appropriate for Comparing Customer and Supplier Measurement Systems?," C. J. Nachtsheim and K. E. Becker, Quality and Reliability Engineering International, Volume 27, Issue 8, (April 2011), pp. 10251031.

"Efficient Designs with Minimal Aliasing," B. Jones and C. J. Nachtsheim, Technometrics, Vol. 53, No. 1, (February 2011), pp. 6261.

"A Class of ThreeLevel Designs for Definitive Screening in the Presence of SecondOrder Effects," B. Jones and C. J. Nachtsheim, Journal of Quality Technology, Vol. 43, No. 1, (2011), pp. 215.

"Experimental Design for Engineering Dimensional Analysis," M. Albrecht, C. J. Nachtsheim, T. Albrecht, and R. D. Cook, Technometrics, tentatively accepted.

Definitive screening designs with added twolevel categorical factors," Jones, B., and Nachtsheim, C. J. (2013), Journal of Quality Technology , Vol. 46, No. 2, pp. 121129

Dimensional analysis and its applications in statistics," Shen, W., Davis, T., Lin, D. and Nachtsheim, C. (2013), Journal of Quality Technology , Vol. 46, No. 3, pp. 185198

“Blocking Schemes for Definitive Screening Designs," Jones, B., and Nachtsheim, C. J. (2016) Technometrics , Vol. 58, No. 1, pp 7483. doi: 10.1080/00401706.2015.1013777

“Benefits and Fast Construction of Efficient TwoLevel FoldOver Designs," Errore, A., Jones, B., Li, W. and Nachtsheim, C., Technometrics , in press.

“Using Definitive Screening Designs to Identify Active Firstand SecondOrder Factor Effects," Errore, A., Jones, B., Li, W. and Nachtsheim, C., Journal of Quality Technology, in press.

“Effective DesignBased Model Selection for Definitive Screening Designs," Jones, B. and Nachtsheim, C. J., Technometrics , in press.

Current Activities

Current Research

Optimal experiment design, business analytics, predictive modeling, machine learning, conjoint analysis and the design of discrete choice experiments

Scholarly Service

Member of Editorial Board, Journal of Quality Technology