Overview
We don't see the trees or the forest; we see an ecosystem. Industrial engineers look at the big picture, searching for patterns in chaos, examining how all the pieces fit together, and scanning for inefficiencies. In short, we love improving systems.
As you might expect, collaboration is a major part of what we do in Industrial Engineering. Our students partner with other departments as well as international and regional organizations and industries to fine-tune processes, making people and operations more effective and speeding the flow of information and goods to destinations around the world.
Working closely with industrial engineers from the Boeing Company, doctoral student Berkin Toktas has been evaluating ways to incorporate unexpected weather changes into flight schedules, while fellow Ph. D. student, Yanto Prasetio, assists a Boeing team in the development of a national air space simulator. Both of these students presented at the May, 2003 Industrial Engineering Research Conference (IERC) in Portland, Oregon.
Student researchers Steve Kotleba from Industrial Engineering and Kate Hulpke from Technical Communications have paired up with students from the Evans School of Public Affairs to help humanitarian relief organizations in East Africa overcome critical supply chain management issues. By researching the distribution problems faced by relief groups like CARE, World Vision and Mercy Corps, Kotleba hopes to be able to improve on their processes and speed the delivery of food and medical supplies to troubled regions in times of crises.
Closer to home, our students and faculty are working on projects ranging from determining the best use and placement of Starbucks retail employees to developing systems to manage international shipping in Puget Sound more efficiently. We even helped UPS to make their automated package reading system run more smoothly.
Hands on experience with Seattle area businesses and organizations, gives our students a unique view of the complex logistical issues that confront large scale organizations. Using mathematical and statistical tools our students extract meaning from a sea of data, finding the keys to unlocking a system's true potential.
