By Bo Min Zhou
Professor Michael Pinedo from the Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research (IEOR) held an information session for prospective IEOR majors on Thursday, March 2 at John Jay Lounge as part of the Engineering Weeks.
According to the Professor Pinedo, industrial engineers are the efficiency experts. They are concerned with optimal use of resources. For example, the airline industry would try to schedule flights that would maximize the occupancy rate, and thus maximize the profit.
The recession of the early nineties was a wake-up call for American businesses as they faced greater global competition. Business leaders realized that post-war prosperity cannot be maintained by doing business by traditional methods. Third-world countries such as the Philippines and Thailand are competing not only with inexpensive labor but also with hi-tech products like VCRs and auto parts. In order for American businesses to maintain an edge, they had to change. These changes lead to corporate restructuring, reengineering, and downsizing. It all comes down to increasing efficiency and doing more with less. Industrial engineering also places on a great emphasis on stochastic design, or a logical, step-by-step way to approach a problem. Whereas real-life problems might not exactly resemble the problem sets in college, the approach learned is nevertheless invaluable.
There are three majors from which a student can choose in the IEOR department: industrial engineering, operations research, and engineering management systems. While many courses are common for all three majors, each has its own specialization. While industrial engineering focuses on manufacturing and inventory routing operations research deals with data processing, simulation, model building, and forecasting. Both are ideal for people who are interested in the financial industry. Engineering management systems emphasizes the management aspect of running a technology firm. It is the most business-oriented of the three majors. IEOR graduates are hired by the manufacturing companies as well as financial firms. Many graduates go on to pursue a MBA.