Programs

Program Intro & History

Introduction

The Industrial and Systems Engineering Department offers Industrial and Systems Engineering program (ISE). ISE program focuses on the design, improvement, and installation of integrated systems. The integrated systems typically consist of people, material, information, equipment, and energy. Therefore, the program emphasizes using mathematical, analytical, physical, and social science skills to obtain such systems. Particular attention is devoted to principles and methods of engineering analysis and design, which considers adherence to specifications, methods of evaluation, and impact on the environment and society.

The program offers two options: the summer training option or the internship option. In the internship option, the student leaves the school for one non-summer semester and joins a relevant industry. Likewise, the student leaves the school for one summer semester in the summer training option and joins a relevant industry. Such options are implemented in many technical universities worldwide. The goal of these options is to expose the students to real-life applications of the topics learned in the major. This exposure provides the student with a more mature outlook and significantly affects his understanding of his role as a practicing engineer.

Vision

Regional: To be the leader in the Arab region in the areas of industrial & systems engineering

Global: To become a well-recognized worldwide center of excellence in education and research in the areas of industrial & systems engineering

Employment Opportunities

Industrial and Systems Engineering graduates are essential to any country embarked on an ambitious industrialization plan. Indeed, the effectiveness of an enterprise is heavily influenced by the physical arrangement of people, equipment, and material. The ISE graduates design many types of systems, from material handling systems to the layout of factories and offices; they determine storage needs and space requirements for manufacturing systems, provide work measurement services, calculate labor requirements, estimate the performance of proposed systems, apply quality control methods, build systems maintenance plans, analyze, and interpret data, and measure and improve the effectiveness of existing systems.

Graduates of the Industrial and Systems Engineering program are trained to use engineering principles to solve problems encountered in environments and situations where a quantitative basis for decision making is desirable.

Program History

The Systems Engineering program was revised in 1984. At that time, two options were created namely the Automation and Control (A/C) option, and the Industrial Engineering and Operations Research (IE/OR) option. In 1996, a revised program for both options was first developed. The main feature of the 1996 revision was the reduction of the total number of credit hours from 141 to 133. The program was granted the status of being substantially equivalent to similar United States programs by ABET, in 1993 and 2001. The Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISE) Program was implemented in the spring semester of 2009 (Program-133). In 2009, the EAC of ABET accredited Program-133 through 2016. In 2016, the EAC of ABET accredited Program-133 through 2021. Program-133 was revised, and the implementation of the revised program (Program-132) started in Spring 2020. Program-132 is built on local industry needs, along with rigorous international benchmarking. Key highlights of Program-132 (the changes since the last ABET visit in 2016) are presented here:

  1. New Graduation requirements: The number of credit hours required to graduate has been changed from 133 to 132.
  2. Compulsory Design Project: Every ISE student must take ISE 482, the senior design course.
  3. The cooperative work is reduced from 9 credit hours to 6 credit hours.
  4. The number of credit hours of ISE 323 work study course has been reduced to 2 credit hours, and the course number is updated to ISE 324.

To be in line with Saudi Arabia’s vision 2030, Program-132, approved in 2019-2020, has

undergone a further revision. The revised program is called Program-128. Program-128 is implemented from Fall 2020. Program-128 has the following key features:

  1. It has three digital literacy courses that are taken by all university students.
  2. The student can take, if he wishes, a set of four courses in lieu of elective courses that cover a specific area of knowledge and concentration.

Restructuring of the Systems Engineering Department

In 2021, following the transformation of the University, the Systems Engineering department was split into two departments ISE & CIE. The name of the Systems Engineering Department has been changed to Industrial & Systems Engineering Department, while the CISE has become a new academic department under the College of Engineering and Sciences.

The ISE program provides the preparation necessary for admission to graduate programs in highly respected universities. Details of the ISE program is given below.