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Healthcare Quality Partnerships: An Emerging Educational Frontier for Industrial Engineering Technology Programs Abstract

With the understanding that the industrial engineering profession has grown out of industrial/manufacturing organizations, it is important to note that the profession has gradually matured to the point where it is readily being accepted in service industries such as hospitals, retail stores, and banking. Today, this means that industrial engineers are one of the most versatile of the engineering professions, spanning various degrees of functions within various types of organizations. Therefore, educational institutions that offer Industrial Engineering (IE) and Industrial Engineering Technology (IET) curriculum must also offer a versatile curriculum that will allow their graduates to gain experience in various areas other than traditional manufacturing thereby allowing them greater opportunity to enter into these non-traditional areas.

This paper will focus on strategies that have been used at Purdue University regional campuses to develop successful on-going partnerships between their IE and IET faculty and one of the larger service industries, healthcare and hospitals. The partnerships that have been developing over the past few years have provided various engagement opportunities for faculty and students alike. This paper will discuss topics such as funding of faculty involvement in hospital projects, the integration of students into the on-going efforts, as well as adaptation of curriculum and further collaborative efforts that are being developed with medical/nursing programs within the various university campuses involved.

Introduction

Traditionally, Industrial Engineering (and subsequently Industrial Engineering Technology) has its roots in manufacturing. The first IE course offered at a college or university was titled Factory Economics at the University of Kansas for the 1901-1902 term with the first baccalaureate program being offered at Pennsylvania State in 1908. At that time, work design and measurement were the basic techniques behind industrial engineering which involve measuring work so that standards or expectations of work to be completed in a certain amount of time can be determined. The objectives of today’s IE and IET course offerings have not changed much from the early days with the exception of where the basic concepts of the profession are now being applied; in the service industries.1

Healthcare providers are one of the service industries that have recently identified the benefits of utilizing IE concepts within their organizations and have created a need for qualified practitioners to help them implement these fundamental ideas. These ideas are generally being taught today under the umbrella of continuous improvement and quality initiatives such as Six Sigma and Lean methodology programs. The existing healthcare quality systems function through the use of complex compliance indicators. Successful

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Scachitti, S., & Woodward-Hagg, H., & Mapa, L. (2006, June), Healthcare Quality Partnerships: An Emerging Educational Frontier For Industrial Engineering Technology Programs Paper presented at 2006 Annual Conference & Exposition, Chicago, Illinois. 10.18260/1-2--604