Department Level Reform Of Undergraduate Industrial Engineering Education: A New Paradigm For Engineering Curriculum Renewal

The Roy Report serves as the basis for today's typical industrial engineering curriculum. That report documents a 1966-1967 study led by Robert Roy, Dean of Engineering Science at Johns Hopkins University, supported by NSF and sponsored by ASEE. Unfortunately, few major changes have been made to the core baccalaureate-level industrial engineering curriculum shared by most American universities since the dissemination of the Roy Report and initial implementations based on its findings. This paper describes the work of a project team from the Department of Industrial Engineering at Clemson University, sponsored by NSF. The team has been working since September 2002 to develop a new scalable and deployable industrial engineering baccalaureate-degree model. This model is designed to permit scaling up from an information technology kernel of coursework to a fully integrated industrial engineering undergraduate curriculum. Three aspects of the new curriculum plan are described in this paper. Overview During the mid 1960s, a study group sponsored by NSF and ASEE developed the prototype for today's typical industrial engineering curriculum, with its emphasis on operations research tools of analysis. Industrial engineering academic professionals from across the United States participated in the study led by Robert Roy, Dean of Engineering Science at Johns Hopkins University. The rapid and almost universal adoption of the Roy model for the industrial engineering curriculum speaks to the willingness of industrial engineers to implement sound academic models. The study led by Roy was based on the following mutually agreed upon definition of industrial engineering, as officially adopted by the American Institute of Industrial Engineers (AIIE) in 1955: Industrial Engineering is concerned with the design, improvement, and installation of integrated systems of men, materials, and equipment. It draws upon specialized knowledge and skill in the mathematical, physical, and social sciences together with the principles and methods of engineering analysis and design, to specify, predict, and evaluate the results to be obtained from such systems. Roy observed, "We have interpreted the primary objective of this study as consonant with that [AIIE] definition." Given the emphasis on uniformity of academic programs induced by the process-oriented accreditation standards of the Engineers' Council for Professional Development (the predecessor of the ABET, Inc.), the approach to curriculum model development that Roy and his colleagues used was especially effective. Roy's efforts led to the development of a curriculum model based P ge 861.1 Proceedings of the 2003 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2003, American Society for Engineering Education on carefully considered input from a wide variety of recognized leaders in industrial engineering education and professional practice. At the time of the distribution of the report, and in the decade that followed, the results of the study were widely respected and generally agreed to by the industrial engineering academic and professional practice communities. Nearly a decade and a half later, John Buzacott, a professor in the Department of Management Sciences at the University of Waterloo, expressed the frustrations he believed to be shared by many industrial engineering academicians. In a 1984 article (Buzacott 1984), Buzacott stated that the AIIE definition of industrial engineering was too broad. He commented that the complement of faculty that must be assembled to teach the Roy report curriculum is certain to be poorly integrated. This, Buzacott stated, insures discord because the research methods, techniques and skills of the assembled faculty do not match, and faculty have no common forum for scientific communications. Buzacott also claimed that the focus of industrial engineering was outdated in terms of the current needs of innovative industries. He expressed the opinion that students enrolled in Roy report curricula did not acquire significant engineering training. Buzacott suggested some possible avenues of reform/reconstruction of industrial engineering academic programs, including (1) reduction in theoretical research and focus on applications, (2) rapid response to innovation, and (3) faculties consisting of more smaller cohesive groups of specialists. Even with the soul-searching discussions precipitated by the Buzacott article, and many subsequent years of rapid technological advance in the design of production and service delivery systems and engineering pedagogy, the industrial engineering academic community continues to structure almost all of the bachelor's degree industrial engineering curricula consistent with the Roy report recommendations. But now, after more than thirty-five years, it is certainly appropriate to revisit the structure and the content of the industrial engineering curriculum, at least at the level of the academic department in a particular university. An article by Way Kuo and Bryan Deuermeyer provides an excellent summary of important issues to be considered in IE curriculum redesign (Kuo and Deuermeyer 1998). Specifically, Kuo and Deuermeyer observe that the traditional industrial engineering curriculum (1) is characterized by an emphasis on tools rather than on engineering problems, (2) is characterized by poor vertical integration of fundamental concepts, i.e., that tools courses typically fail to support upper-level coursework, (3) is focused on the sub-disciplines of industrial engineering rather than on the problems that industrial engineers are expected to solve, (4) fails to address the needs of today's industry, and (5) places a gap between undergraduate education and graduate programs. The Kuo and Deuermeyer list of limitations for the traditional industrial engineering curriculum is remarkably similar to the set of issues given as limitations of almost all current engineering curricula taught in the United States, as described by NSF in its Program Solicitation NSF-02091, the program which is funding the curriculum model being developed by the authors. Thus, the authors believe that a planning process for reform of a traditional IE curriculum can be expected to address current concerns about the appropriateness of curricula for many other engineering disciplines. P ge 861.2 Proceedings of the 2003 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2003, American Society for Engineering Education Curriculum Model What has been missing for over thirty years is the opportunity to go back to the drawing board with a clean sheet of paper and carefully review all phases of industrial engineering education. This paper examines three aspects of the authors' efforts to develop a planning model to reform industrial engineering education: a focus on problems solved by industrial engineers, the identification of appropriate educational-delivery methods for industrial engineering tools, and a master-teacher course-offering paradigm. Focus on Problems: Traditionally, a curriculum is built up from the knowledge and skills areas, and the tools used, in the practice of the discipline. As Buzacott observed, industrial engineering academic programs have typically included topical coverage from a wide variety of relatively diverse areas in the physical, biological, and social sciences. Rather than building the curriculum from an initial choice of knowledge, skills, and tools, the authors' curriculum planning model begins with a choice of problems that the curriculum will prepare program graduates to solve. Currently, the curriculum renewal project team is working with the following set of industrial engineering problems: • Production and Service Systems Operations Problems are concerned with the development and application of deterministic and stochastic tools for modeling and optimization of production and service systems operations (e.g., logistics, supply chain management, facilities design and material handling, production planning and control, scheduling, health care delivery). • Human Factors Problems are defined as the problems associated with the application and use of information on human behavior, abilities, limitations and other characteristics in the design of systems, equipment, processes and environment for efficient, effective, safe and comfortable human use (e.g., human –machine systems design, human computer systems, ergonomics, macro ergonomics, safety). • Engineering Design Problems are broadly defined to include problems related to the conception and description of engineered products, systems, processes and services, including comparative analysis of alternatives and selection of a preferred alternative (e.g., design methodologies, systems design, concurrent engineering, rapid prototyping, information systems design, collaborative design). • Cost Problems are broadly defined as class of problems related to the development and application of costing techniques to engineering domains (e.g., engineering economic analysis, financial engineering, retailing, cost accounting). • Manufacturing Processes PSroblems are broadly defined to include problems related to manufacturing process technology and systems development (e.g., cutting tool design, process planning, equipment design, computer integrated manufacturing, robotics). • Quality Problems are concerned with the development and application of tools for evaluating system performance and improving quality and reliability of components, products, and P ge 861.3 Proceedings of the 2003 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2003, American Society for Engineering Education systems (e.g., quality control, quality engineering, quality and reliability testing, software reliability, risk assessment). Thus, with the new curriculum-planning model, curriculum renewal for a part