Industrial and Systems Engineers apply analytics and critical decision-making skills to optimize complex processes, systems, networks, investments, and organizations in nearly all sectors of activity, including energy, finance, healthcare, logistics, manufacturing, production, telecommunication, and transportation.
Lehigh's Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISE) Department has a worldwide reputation and a long tradition in the field. We are a department that has been constantly adapting to the high-tech data revolution, has a small student-to-faculty ratio, and provides an inspiring environment in which to study and discover. One of the nation's earliest systems engineering programs, the department explores and teaches data-driven analytics, optimization, and high-performance computing to give students the tools to solve a number of complex industrial challenges in areas such as manufacturing, production, healthcare, and financial services.
In a competitive global marketplace where continuous improvement and cost containment are key considerations, ISE faculty and graduates play an extremely critical role in the design, improvement, and optimization of processes and systems. They use problem-solving and analytical skills to find ways to make processes better, easier, cheaper or safer, and devise new ways to address issues such as minimizing financial risk, supporting next generation electricity distribution, and optimizing operating room procedures.
Recent graduates have gone on to work for PwC, Ernst & Young, Goldman Sachs, IBM, Amazon, GlaxoSmithKline, Lutron Electronics, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and more!
Here are just a few of the challenges an ISE may have to solve:
- Justify spending $3 billion on a next-generation semiconductor fabrication (wafer fab) facility.
- Schedule the showing times of the new Avengers movie to maximize profit.
- Build a portfolio of stocks, bonds, and options to minimize the downside risk caused by rising oil prices.
- Shorten the wait lines at Disney World.
- Design a transportation system, including warehouse locations and truck routes, in order to improve on-time deliveries at lower cost.
- Lead a project team to develop the next Presidential helicopter.
- Shape the future growth of a company by allocating funding to research and development projects.
- Improve the quality of healthcare by studying and re-designing the flow of patients through a hospital and the scheduling of nurses.
- Automate a production line to improve capacity and throughput while reducing worker injuries.