Chris 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

Biography

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 1978-1981, and as Senior Statistician at General Mills from 1982-1984. In 1984 he joined the University, serving as Chair in the Department of Operations and Management Science (now Supply Chain and Operations) from 1993-1996 and from 2002-2014, and as Associate Dean of Faculty and Research from 1996-2000.  

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 co-discoverer, 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 four-time recipient (1991, 2009, 2011, and 2014) of the Brumbaugh Award of the ASQ for best paper published in the area of industrial quality control, two-time recipient of the Lloyd S. Nelson Award of the ASQ for the published paper having the greatest impact on practitioners (2010 and 2012), a two-time 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 & Activities

  • Whole Books
    Applied Linear Statistical Models, 5th ed., C. J. Nachtsheim, J. Neter, M. Kutner, and W. Li (Richard D. Irwin, 2006).
  • Whole Books
    Applied Linear Regression Models, 4th ed., C. J. Nachtsheim, J. Neter, M. Kutner, and W. Wasserman (Richard D. Irwin, 2005).
  • Journal Articles
    "A Comparison of Algorithms for Constructing Exact D-optimal Designs," R. D. Cook and C. J. Nachtsheim, Technometrics, Vol. 22, No. 3, August 1980), pp. 315-324.
  • Journal Articles
    "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. 60-60.
  • Journal Articles
    "Sparse Sliced Inverse Regression," L. Li and C. J. Nachtsheim, Technometrics, Vol. 48, No. 4, (November 2006), pp. 503-510.
  • Journal Articles
    "Split-plot designs: What, Why, and How.," B. Jones and C. J. Nachtsheim, Journal of Quality Technology, Vol. 41, No. 4, (October 2009), pp. 340-361.
  • Journal Articles
    "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. 1025-1031.
  • Journal Articles
    "Efficient Designs with Minimal Aliasing," B. Jones and C. J. Nachtsheim, Technometrics, Vol. 53, No. 1, (February 2011), pp. 62-61.
  • Journal Articles
    "A Class of Three-Level Designs for Definitive Screening in the Presence of Second-Order Effects," B. Jones and C. J. Nachtsheim, Journal of Quality Technology, Vol. 43, No. 1, (2011), pp. 2-15.
  • Journal Articles
    "Experimental Design for Engineering Dimensional Analysis," M. Albrecht, C. J. Nachtsheim, T. Albrecht, and R. D. Cook, Technometrics, tentatively accepted.
  • Journal Articles
    Definitive screening designs with added two-level categorical factors," Jones, B., and Nachtsheim, C. J. (2013), Journal of Quality Technology , Vol. 46, No. 2, pp. 121-129
  • 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. 185-198
  • Journal Articles
    “Blocking Schemes for Definitive Screening Designs," Jones, B., and Nachtsheim, C. J. (2016) Technometrics , Vol. 58, No. 1, pp 74--83. doi: 10.1080/00401706.2015.1013777
  • Journal Articles
    “Benefits and Fast Construction of Efficient Two-Level Fold-Over Designs," Errore, A., Jones, B., Li, W. and Nachtsheim, C., Technometrics , in press.
  • Journal Articles
    “Using Definitive Screening Designs to Identify Active First-and Second-Order Factor Effects," Errore, A., Jones, B., Li, W. and Nachtsheim, C., Journal of Quality Technology, in press.
  • Journal Articles
    “Effective Design-Based Model Selection for Definitive Screening Designs," Jones, B. and Nachtsheim, C. J., Technometrics , in press.
  • Optimal experiment design, business analytics, predictive modeling, machine learning, conjoint analysis and the design of discrete choice experiments

  • Member of Editorial Board, Journal of Quality Technology

Edit This Page

Edit Profile