About Us
What sets industrial engineering apart from other engineering disciplines? The breadth of its scope. Industrial engineers specialize in designing and operating systems that make optimal use of resources when labor, materials, capital, and technology are constrained. They look at the "big picture," dealing with people as well as things and bridging the gap between management and operations to find the right combination of human resources, natural resources, and human-made structures and equipment.
Industrial engineers are productivity specialists who integrate technology, provide leadership, and solve problems. That's why demand for industrial engineers has grown dramatically over the past two decades: Organizations need to raise productivity through thoughtful, systematic applications, and industrial engineers provide a unique, interdisciplinary skill set for integrating humans, machines, materials, energy, and information to achieve optimum system performance.
UW Industrial Engineering boasts top-ranked programs for both graduate and undergraduate programs, demonstrating a solid track record of preparing students to excel in an increasingly dynamic and competitive field. Our program gives students the skills to serve as organizational change agents and encourages them to take a systems view when solving problems so they can recognize the larger organizational and societal impact of technical decisions.
