Jim Ritchie BSc, MSc, CEng, MIMechE, MIEE, MHEA

Photo of Jim Ritchie

Jim Ritchie is a Senior Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering at Heriot-Watt University. Before taking up an academic appointment in 1987 he worked as a Teaching Company Associate, Design Engineer and Senior Production Engineer in the avionics and oil industries. Grant support has included six Teaching Company Programmes, five annual phases of an EU TEMPUS Joint European Project in collaboration with research institutions in France and Romania, industry support for an investigation into laser machining, EPSRC/Industry support for work on the application of Virtual Reality in design and manufacture and involvement in two EU-funded FP5/FP6 research support projects for Romania. He has also recently been involved in a project investigating methods for formally evaluating the capability of the mechanical engineering design process with a major avionics company. As Academic Director of the School of Engineering and Physical Sciences’ Advanced Manufacturing Unit this has been expanded to include a new CNC C-axis lathe and upgraded 2.7kW laser machining centre. He is also the co-author of two teaching textbooks on fundamental mechanical engineering design and manufacture and is author/co-author of over 100 conference, journal and other publications.

Current EPSRC/IMRC-funded grant involvement includes research into haptic machining and assembly, virtual conduit design and the ‘Immortal Information and Through-life Knowledge Management’ Grand Challenge project as leader of Task 1.3. He is also currently a co-grant holder in a Knowledge Transfer Partnership with Caledonian Alloys Ltd in the area of logistics and supply chain management.

His current areas of research interest include product design and manufacture, manufacturing systems management, digital tools in engineering, virtual reality applications in product engineering and design process capability measurement.

His main teaching interests are in design, manufacture and manufacturing management.

Recent Papers

  • "An Innovative Approach to Facilities Management in the Workplace Design Brief: Virtual Reality in Design"

    M. Pitt, M., S. Goyal, , P. Holt, J.M. Ritchie, P.N. Day, J.E.L. Simmons, G. Robinson, G.T. Russell, Facilities (2005) v.23(7/8), 343-355 ISSN 0263-2772.

  • "Edge-based identification of DP-features on freeform solids"

    T. Lim, H. Medellin, C. Torres-Sanchez, J.R. Corney, J.M. Ritchie and J.B.C. Davies, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Matching and Machine Intelligence (2005), v.27(6), pp835-858, ISSN 0162-8828/05.

  • "Algorithms for the Physical Rendering and Assembly of Octree Models"

    H. Medellin, J.R. Corney, J.B.C. Davies, T. Lim, J.M. Ritchie, Journal of Computer Aided Design (2005), v38, iss1, pp 69-85, ISSN 0010-4485.

  • "Measuring Performance Change in the Mechanical Design Arena"

    I.Egan, J.M. Ritchie, P.D. Gardiner, Journal of Engineering Manufacture, Proc. IMechE Part B, (2005) v219, pp851-863, ISSN 1811-8992.

  • "The Novel Combination of Taguchi Methods and Texture Profile Analysis Applied to the Optimisation of Laboratory-Based Biscuit Manufacturing"

    R.B. Blackhall, J.M. Ritchie, L.F. Baxter, I. Black, Journal of Engineering Manufacture, (to be published 2006) ISSN 1811-8992.