SAE Official is Elected as Member of Two Prestigious Russian Academies
19 February 1998
SAE Official is Elected as Member of Two Prestigious Russian Academies
WARRENDALE, Pa., Feb. 19 -- Max E. Rumbaugh, Jr., Executive
Vice President & General Manager of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE)
International, has been elected as an academician member of the International
Academy of Engineering (IAE) and also as a member of the Russian Academy of
Quality Problems.
Rumbaugh received his honors in Moscow February 3 at the Central
Automobile and Automobile Engine Scientific Research Center. He is one of two
U.S. citizens elected to the IAE in 1997. Only nine Americans overall have
been elected to membership. The academician grade is the higher of two
membership grades in the Academy.
The IAE is a non-government, self-governing creative organization,
composed primarily of members of national academies in Russia and a number of
former Russian states. Founded in 1992, the IAE has 983 members who represent
engineering, academia, and industry.
The Russian Academy of Quality Problems is a Russian organization that
works to bring state-of-the-art quality processes into Russian manufacturing.
Rambaugh was elected to this body, in part, because the Academy of Quality
Problems believes that recognition and adoption of SAE standards is integral
to the quality process.
As the chief staff officer of SAE, Rumbaugh guides the day-to-day
operations of the organization with more than 75,000 members worldwide who
work in engineering disciplines of the mobility industry, which includes all
self-propelled land, sea, air and space vehicles.
SAE has been an international organization almost since its founding in
1905. It has members from 92 countries, with more than 1,000 members in
Russia who belong to four sections.
"I am certainly honored by my election to this distinguished body,"
Rumbaugh said. "I believe my selection reflects SAE's Vision to have capable
practitioners worldwide."
Rumbaugh said his mission is to assure that automotive engineers, no
matter where in the world they are located, can interface with other
automotive engineers and have resources available to them for becoming even
better engineers.
As a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Rumbaugh was on
active duty during the Berlin Wall and Cuban Missile crises. He became a
member of SAE in 1972. In September 1986, SAE's Board of Directors elected
him as Executive Vice President of SAE. Shortly after the change of
government in Russia, Rumbaugh began developing engineering and professional
relationships between engineers in Russia and China with other engineers
around the world.
In the last decade, Rumbaugh has become a global champion in SAE's effort
to improve the capability of automotive engineers and advance engineering
processes for the betterment of society at large.
"Russian mobility engineers are particularly eager to improve the quality
of their vehicles and components," said Rumbaugh. "We have seen an explosion
of membership in SAE in that country as well as a number of Asian countries
including India."
Rambaugh began the automotive phase of his career at Schwitzer, a globally
respected manufacturer of turbochargers and vehicle cooling fans. He
demonstrated his engineering leadership as manager of advanced technology and
as research director. Rumbaugh led Schwitzer's efforts to apply plastic
cooling fans on U.S. produced automobiles and directed the transformation of
Schwitzer from an empirically based to a more analytical and computer capable
organization.
Rumbaugh also led the effort to gain industry and government acceptance of
fan drives for reducing noise and increasing fuel efficiency of heavy-duty
trucks.
A graduate of Purdue University with master's degrees in business and
engineering, Rumbaugh is a member of the Board and Executive Committee of the
American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and is past president of the
Council of Engineering Scientific Society Executives (CESSE). In Pittsburgh,
he belongs to the North Boroughs Rotary and Junior Achievement Board of
Directors.
SAE's World Headquarters is located in Warrendale, a northern suburb of
Pittsburgh, PA.
SOURCE Society of Automotive Engineers