Academic Credentials
  • M.S., Engineering Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), 2001
  • Ph.D., Mathematics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1991
  • B.S., Mathematics, Brigham Young University, 1986
Licenses & Certifications
  • ASQ Certified Reliability Engineer (CRE)
  • Six Sigma Black Belt Certification (CSSBB)
Professional Honors
  • President, Detroit Section of the American Statistical Association, 2016
  • Outstanding Oral Presentation Award, SAE World Congress, April 13-15, 2010
  • U.S. Department of Education Graduate Fellowship, 1989-1991
  • Guest Researcher, University of Helsinki, sponsored by National Science Foundation, 1989
  • Phi Kappa Phi
  • Spencer W. Kimball Presidential Scholarship, BYU, 1981-1986
  • National Merit Scholarship Finalist, 1981
Professional Affiliations
  • American Society for Quality—ASQ (senior member)
  • American Statistical Association—ASA
  • Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics—SIAM
  • Society of Automotive Engineers—SAE

Dr. Soderborg provides consulting services related to quality, statistics, risk analysis, process improvement, reliability engineering, and mathematical modeling. His experience spans product development, testing, manufacturing, data analytics, and operations across a variety of industries. 

Dr. Soderborg works with organizations proactively to assess existing practices and instill systems that improve product and process quality. He provides analysis for quality defense and the demonstration of due diligence in management of product and process risk. He uses statistics and data science to quantify risks and investigate and solve manufacturing and operational problems.

His work in statistics includes analysis of field, warranty, and survey data, reliability and hazard analysis, sampling plans, regression, response surface modeling (RSM), statistical process control (SPC), and design of experiments (DOE) — with a special emphasis on design and analysis of computer experiments (DACE). He has an extensive background in process improvement and failure mode avoidance methods, including Six Sigma, Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA), Robust Design, and Design for Reliability.

As a Six Sigma Master Black Belt at Ford Motor Company, Dr. Soderborg was a primary architect of the company's Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) methodology and deployment. DFSS helps organizations respond to the voice of the customer (VOC), analyze product risks, and prevent failure modes through application of state-of-the art engineering and statistical methods. At Ford, Dr. Soderborg led teams of certified Black Belts in solving problems related to current and future vehicle programs. He trained engineers, mentored management, conducted design reviews, and institutionalized lessons learned across the company. He served as technical chair of the committee that championed analytic reliability and robustness methods and supervised development of software for design and analysis of computer experiments as well as variation simulation analysis based on Monte Carlo simulation.

Dr. Soderborg is an experienced developer of statistical engineering training and has taught multiple courses related to product quality and reliability improvement methods. The American Society for Quality included Dr. Soderborg as a principal author and developer in the team that produced the Society's 5-day DFSS training course. His research has focused on how to make practical improvements in product development through the effective use of checklists, system engineering, lean failure mode avoidance, and robustness optimization.