Education

Professional Experience

2006 - present
Adjunct Professor
School of Engineering Science
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, BC Canada

2002 – 2006
Principal Officer and Group Co-Leader
Systems Integration, Testing & Evaluation
Innovation Centre - Fuel Cell Institute
National Research Council
Vancouver, BC Canada

Developed strategic vision for the SITE program with three key platforms:

• Testing & evaluation of PEM and Solid Oxide Fuel Cell cells, stacks and systems;
• Hydrogen and energy infrastructure systems
• Integrated energy systems including distributed generation
  

Initiated project within the HMS Consortium focused on the application of holonic systems to distributed generation.

1987 – 2002 
Group Leader 
Manufacturing Systems Engineering
Innovation Centre 
National Research Council 
Vancouver, BC Canada 

• Created the Manufacturing Systems Engineering group with a research focus on Multi-Criteria, Adaptive and Distributed Decision Systems
• International Work Package Manager within the Holonic Manufacturing Systems consortium (HMS)
• Application focus on the Fuel Cells, Aerospace, Wood Products, and General Manufacturing sectors

1987 – 1995  
Group Leader – Symbiotic Systems  
National Research Council 
Vancouver, BC Canada

• Responsible for creation and development of Symbiotic Systems Program at NRC with emphasis on symbiotic systems, object oriented programming (OOPS), layered systems architecture.
• Development of visually-interactive decision support systems for the resource (Forestry, Mining) and transportation industries (Airports, Ferries, Ports).

1982 – 1987 
Senior Project Manager - DATAP Systems 
Sandwell Engineering 
Vancouver, BC Canada 

• Supervisory monitoring and control projects for bulk material handling terminals (coal and grain)
• Maintenance and operations management systems
• Operational simulation systems

1967 – 1982  
Planning Manager, Operations  
Wood Products Manufacturing Group  
CANFOR Corporation 
Vancouver, BC Canada 

• Development and implementation of planning and scheduling systems
• Development of long term strategic plans for primary woods product manufacturing facilities for the manufacture of lumber, panel products, shingle and shake products, and log harvesting and transportation
• Application of industrial engineering, management science, operations research and mathematical modeling techniques

Research Interests

• Adaptive and Distributed Decision Systems
• Holonic Manufacturing Systems
• Multi-Criteria Optimization
• Manufacturing of Defect Sensitive Products

Professional Memberships  

• Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society
• Holonic Manufacturing Systems Consortium (HMS), a major international project of the Intelligent Manufacturing Systems Program

O. Uncu, W. A. Gruver, D. B. Kotak, and D. Sabaz, GRIDBSCAN: GRId Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise, Proc. of the 2006 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Taipei, Taiwan, October 2006.

O. Uncu, E. Elghomeimy, W. A. Gruver, D. B. Kotak, and M. Fleetwood, “A Model for Identifying Aggregation Operator Weights Using a Fuzzy Rulebase and Genetic Algorithms: Application to the Wood Products Manufacturing Industry,” Proc. of the Berkeley Initiative in Soft Computing (BISC’05) Symposium, University of California, Berkeley, CA, November 2005.

R. Lum, D. B. Kotak, and W. A. Gruver, “Multi-Agent Coordination of Distributed Energy Systems.” Proc. of the 2005 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Big Island, Hawaii, USA, October 2005.

O. Uncu, E. Elghoneimy, W. A. Gruver, D. B. Kotak, and M. Fleetwood, “Jag Sequencing in Rough Mill Operations,” Proc. of the 2005 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Big Island, Hawaii, USA, October 2005.

E. Elghoneimy, O. Uncu, W. A. Gruver, and D. B. Kotak, “Simulation and Decision Support Models for Rough Mills: A Multi-Agent Perspective,” Proc. of the 2005 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Big Island, Hawaii, USA, October 2005.

N. Siu, E. Elghoneimy, Yunli Wang, W. A. Gruver, M. Fleetwood, and D. Kotak, “Rough mill component scheduling using genetic algorithms,” Proc. of the 2004 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, The Hague, Netherlands, October 2004.

Z. Alibhai, W. A. Gruver, D. B. Kotak, and D. Sabaz, “Distributed coordination of micro-grids using bilateral contracts,” Proc. of the 2004 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, The Hague, Netherlands, October 2004.

D. Kotak and W. A. Gruver, “System architecture for fuel cell based intelligent and distributed energy applications,” Proc. of the 2004 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, The Hague, Netherlands, October 2004.

Yunli Wang, E. Elghoneimy, W. A. Gruver, and D. B. Kotak, “Fuzzy multiple decision support for jag selection,” Proc. of the NAFIPS 2004 Conference, North American Fuzzy Information Processing Society, Banff, AB, Canada, June 2004.

Yunli Wang, D. Kotak, M. Fleetwood, and W. A. Gruver, “A distributed decision support system for lumber jag selection for a rough mill,” Proc. of the 2003 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Washington, DC USA, October 2003.

D. B. Kotak and W.A. Gruver, “Fuel Cell Based Integrated and Distributed Energy Applications: FC-IDEA,” Proc. of the IMS Forum 2004, Intelligent Manufacturing Systems Program, Como, Italy, May 2004.

W. A. Gruver, D. B. Kotak, E. H. van Leeuwen, and D. Norrie, “Holonic Manufacturing Systems-Phase 2,” Proc. of the International Conference on Industrial Applications of Holonic and Multi-Agent Systems (HoloMAS 2003), Prague, Czech Republic, September 2003.

D. Kotak, M. Fleetwood, and W. A. Gruver, “Operational scheduling for rough mills using a virtual manufacturing environment,” Proc. of the 2001 IEEE International Conference on System, Man, and Cybernetics, Tucson, AZ, October 2001.

G. Yeung, W. A. Gruver, and D. Kotak, “A multi-agent approach to achieve strong view consistency in operational data stores,” Proc. of the Joint International Fuzzy Systems Association World Congress and the Annual Conference of the North American Fuzzy Information Processing Society, Vancouver, Canada, July 2001.

S. Liu, W. A. Gruver, S. Bardi, and D. Kotak, “Holonic manufacturing system for distributed control of automatic guided vehicles,” Proc. of the 2000 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics,” Nashville, TN, October 2000.

D. Kotak, S. Bardi, W. A. Gruver, and K. Zohrevand, “Comparison of hierarchical and holonic shop floor control using a virtual manufacturing environment,” Proc. of the 2000 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics,” Nashville, TN, October 2000.