April 18, 2002
InnerWorkings: Industrial Engineering
Department chair’s name: Tony C. Woo
Department’s location: Mechanical Engineering Building
Number of faculty: Eight faculty, half of whom are women, fifteen adjunct and affiliate professors from Management Science, Technical Communication, Mathematics, and Mechanical Engineering, as well as numerous national and international visiting scholars.
Number of students: Eighty-four undergraduates, 21 master’s students, and 24 doctoral students.
Briefly describe the field of study: Industrial engineers focus on the integration of humans, machines, materials, and information to achieve optimum performance of operating systems. This focus on the “big picture” makes industrial engineering one of the most people and customer oriented of the engineering disciplines. IE prepares students to serve as efficiency experts and agents of change. Students are trained in optimization: maximizing returns or minimizing losses, as well as in stochastics: risk assessment under uncertainty and changing conditions. More importantly, students are encouraged to take a systems view when solving problems, recognize the organizational and societal impact of technical decisions, develop good oral and written communication skills, participate in teams, and take initiative.
Typical jobs for graduates: Industries recognize the value of IE graduates in their ability to improve on quality, cost and delivery time of products and processes (such as service). For example, recent IE graduates working at Intel and Micron are not singularly engaged in the lithography process, but are improving the yield of the entire production. Likewise, students joining telecommunication and transportation industries are enhancing quality of service via queuing theory and routing algorithms.
Special aspects of the department: The State of Washington is home to numerous information, service and manufacturing companies, meaning that internship and co-op opportunities abound. Also, IE’s Senior Design Projects course is a unique and significant opportunity for students and companies. Student teams are assigned to investigate selected company-proposed problems. The goals of the course are to educate students in professional practice, team work, and undergraduate research while disseminating innovations to local industry.
Insider’s comment: “Our people make things work in the background, like the cooks in the kitchen. When the food is good, the waiter gets the tip, so it’s less rewarding in some ways. But we are the ones who make the entire industry work.” — Tony Woo, IE chair
Inner Workings is an occasional feature profiling the work of departments — both academic and non-academic — at the University. If you’d like to see your unit profiled, e-mail uweek@u.washington.edu u and request a submission form.
