Industrial engineering involves the design and analysis of systems that include people, equipment, and materials and their interactions and performance in the workplace. An industrial engineer collects this information and evaluates alternatives to make decisions that best advance the goals of the enterprise. The program in industrial engineering offers students a base of traditional engineering courses, such as work design, human-machine systems, probability, statistics, and engineering economy, while emphasizing such contemporary areas as simulation modeling, engineering database systems, quality assurance, logistics and supply chain management, operations research, and facilities planning. Students integrate the knowledge acquired in these courses in a two-semester capstone design project.<br>Industrial engineers work in manufacturing firms, hospitals, banks, public utilities, transportation, government agencies, insurance companies, and construction firms. Among the projects they undertake are design and implementation of a computer-integrated supply chain or manufacturing system, facilities planning for a variety of industries, design of a robotics system in a manufacturing environment, long-range corporate planning, development and implementation of a quality-control system, simulation analyses to improve processes and make operational decisions, design of healthcare operations to enhance patient safety, and improve efficiency, productivity, and development of computer systems for information control.<br><br>More than 90% of department undergraduate students take advantage of the cooperative education program. Cooperative education assignments generally increase in level of responsibility as students gain theoretical and technical knowledge through their academic work. A sophomore might begin as a computer/data analyst evaluating the performance of a manufacturing system and progress to designing manufacturing engineering workstations by the senior year.