This paper reports on the development of an engineering curriculum for a new industrial engineering programme at a medium-sized private university in the northeast United States. A systems engineering process has been followed to design and develop the new curriculum. Considering the programme curriculum as a system, first the stakeholders have…

The paper suggests that today's world is a VUCA (volatile-uncertain-complex-ambiguous) world, based on the Fourth Industrial Revolution in which machine intelligence and technology are transforming almost every field of human endeavor--all against a backdrop of climate change, social and political turmoil, and enormous and growing wealth inequity.…

This paper discusses the complementarity of human and cyber physical production systems (CPPS). The discourse of complementarity is elaborated by defining five criteria for comparing the characteristics of human and CPPS. Finally, a management portfolio matrix is proposed for examining the feasibility of optimal collaboration between them. The…

This paper describes the process of developing programme educational objectives (PEOs) for the Industrial and Management Systems Engineering programme at Kuwait University, and the process of deployment of these PEOs. Input of the four constituents of the programme, faculty, students, alumni, and employers, is incorporated in the development and…

Although geographically rooted in the Southern United States, the U.S. poultry industry is best understood in a transnational, or even global, perspective that can be difficult to address in regionally bounded courses. In intellectual terms, the topic straddles a number of historiographic subfields that have steadily grown in recent decades. These…

An industrial-type distillation column, including appropriate pumps, heat exchangers, and automation, was used as a unit operations experiment to provide a link between classroom teaching and real-world applications. Students were presented with an open-ended experiment where they defined the testing parameters to solve a generalized problem. The…

This paper describes the process employed by the Industrial and Management Systems Engineering programme at Kuwait University to continuously improve the programme. Using a continuous improvement framework, the paper demonstrates how various qualitative and quantitative analyses methods, such as hypothesis testing and control charts, have been…

The field of manufacturing typically conjures images of dimly lit dirty and dangerous factories crowded with workers, the kind seen in photos of New York City's garment district in the early 1900s and in some developing countries today. Because of advances in technology, however, the field of manufacturing--what is made, how it is made, where and…

Orchestrating a smooth training transition during a merger or acquisition is never easy. When Delta Air Lines absorbed Northwest Airlines Corp. in 2008, the Training function realized it was in for a bumpy ride. This article looks at the strategies used and progress made since the takeover was announced.

There are three "faces" of Technology Education. What is meant by this? It means that more emphasis should be given to the students who take industrial technology education (ITE) classes at the high school level with less emphasis given to standards, objectives, or outcomes developed by national organizations. Viewed in this light, three…

In recent years, bio-inspired approach to design has gained considerable interest between designers, engineers and end-users. However, there are difficulties in introducing bio-inspiration concepts in the university curriculum in that they involve multi-disciplinary work, which can only possibly be successfully delivered by a team with integrated…

In 2004, Central Community College (CCC) established the Mechatronics Education Center (MEC), a regional center of excellence, to help the state address the shortage of skilled technicians in the area of industrial automation. The MEC addresses the needs of the current and future workforce through the implementation of its three main components:…

Despite the growing interest of business executives, there is limited academic research on the contributions of virtual worlds to learning in organizations. We address this limitation by using a recently developed typology of virtual world capabilities to investigate the potential contributions of virtual worlds to learning in organizations.…

In response to the publication of the "Standards for Technological Literacy" by the International Technology Education Association (ITEA), technology education teachers have scrambled to add biotechnology-related components to the curriculum. This can present a particular challenge in terms of funding. In this article, the author details on a…

Most companies need a steady stream of talent to enter, then move up in, the organization. But at most companies, the care and feeding of that talent stream is often a bit fragmented; recruitment is largely an HR function, while succession planning--to the extent there is any--is left in the hands of executive leadership. Development of the…