Walton Hancock chaired the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Michigan from 1963 to 1968. He applied OR methods to problems such as patient scheduling and hospital staffing in the U-M Hospital. He also worked with Richard C. Wilson in the auto industry on facility layout, production planning, and scheduling problems, and conducted research on the "learning curve" in manual operations. Walton Hancock died in February, 2019, a few days after his 90th birthday.