Benchmarking industrial engineering programs

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify the best practices of industrial engineering (IE) programs that could be learnt and used at other educational institutions. Design/methodology/approach: Nine IE programs in the USA are benchmarked using a conceptual framework that considers an educational program as a system consisting of a purpose, a curriculum, resources, and quality processes. The information used in benchmarking is collected from the program self-study reports, course catalogs, and websites which are available on the internet. Findings: It is found that in spite of their diversity in history, missions, sizes, and reputations, the studied programs are rather unified in terms of purpose definition, curriculum formation, resource selection, and quality process usage. From the analysis, a template of IE curriculum is proposed. Research limitations/implications: As the selection of the studied programs is based on the availability of the information, the findings may not be representative for IE programs in the USA. Future work can aim at comparing IE programs from various countries. Practical implications: The findings could be used as benchmarks by IE schools interested in the improvement of operations. Originality/value: A conceptual framework for benchmarking is proposed and proves useful for comparing educational programs. The findings represent the current best practices at IE schools in the USA.