Industrial Engineering and Operations Research
313 S. W. Mudd, MC 4704,
212-854-2941
www.ieor.columbia.edu
Industrial engineering is the branch of the engineering profession that is
concerned with the design, analysis, and control of production and service systems.
Originally, an industrial engineer worked in a manufacturing plant and was involved only
with the operating efficiency of workers and machines. Today, industrial engineers are
more broadly concerned with productivity and all of the technical problems of production
management and control. They may be found in every kind of organization: manufacturing,
distribution, transportation, mercantile, and service. Their responsibilities range from
the design of unit operations to that of controlling complete production and service
systems. Their jobs involve the integration of the physical, financial, economic,
computer, and human components of such systems to attain specified goals. Industrial
engineering includes activities such as production planning and control; quality
control; inventory, equipment, warehouse, and materials management; plant layout; and
workstation design.
Operations research is concerned
with quantitative decision problems, generally involving the allocation and control of
limited resources. Such problems arise, for example, in the operations of industrial
firms, financial institutions, health care organizations, transportation systems, and
government. The operations research analyst develops and uses mathematical and
statistical models to help solve these decision problems. Like engineers, they are
problem formulators and solvers. Their work requires the formation of a mathematical
model of a system and the analysis and prediction of the consequences of alternate modes
of operating the system. The analysis may involve mathematical optimization techniques,
probabilistic and statistical methods, experiments, and computer simulations.
Engineering management systems is
a multidisciplinary field in industrial engineering, operations research, contemporary
technology, business, economics, and management. It provides a foundation for decision
making and managing risks in complex systems.
Financial engineering is a
multidisciplinary field integrating financial theory with economics, methods of
engineering, tools of mathematics, and practice of programming. The field provides
training in the application of engineering methodologies and quantitative methods to
finance.
Current Research Activities
In industrial engineering,
research is conducted in the area of logistics, routing, scheduling, production and
supply chain management, inventory control, revenue management, and quality control.
In operations research, new
developments are being explored in mathematical programming, combinatorial optimization,
stochastic modeling, computational and mathematical finance, queueing theory,
reliability, simulation, and both deterministic and stochastic network flows.
In engineering and management
systems, research is conducted in the areas of logistics, supply chain optimization, and
revenue and risk management.
In financial engineering, research
is being carried out in portfolio management; option pricing, including exotic and real
options; computational finance, such as Monte Carlo simulation and numerical methods; as
well as data mining and risk management.
Projects are sponsored and
supported by leading private firms and government agencies. In addition, our students
and faculty are involved in the work of two research and educational centers: the Center
for Applied Probability (CAP) and the Computational and Optimization Research Center
(CORC). Both of these centers are supported principally by grants from the National
Science Foundation.
CAP is a cooperative center
involving the School of Engineering and Applied Science, several departments in the
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and the Graduate School of Business. Its interests
are in four applied areas: mathematical and computational finance, stochastic networks,
logistics and distribution, and population dynamics.
Computational Optimization
Research Center (CORC) at Columbia University is an interdisciplinary group of
researchers from a variety of departments on the Columbia campus. Its permanent members
are Professors Daniel Bienstock, Don Goldfarb, Garud Iyengar, Jay Sethuraman, and Cliff
Stein, from the Indstrial Engineering and Operations Research Department, and Professor
David Bayer, from the Department of Mathematics at Barnard College. Researchers at CORC
specialize in the design and implementation of state-of-the-art algorithms for the
solution of large-scale optimization problems arising from a wide variety of industrial
and commercial applications.