The First 50 Years of the Department of Industrial and Operations Engineering at the University of Michigan: 1955-2005

The University of Michigan Department of Industrial and Operations Engineering has been ranked as the first, second, or third best department (of about 100) in Industrial Engineering since such rankings became available in the 1980s. The primary goal of this book is to explain how and why the subjects that now comprise an industrial engineering academic program were developed at Michigan, and how the faculty achieved such preeminence in the field. The story includes the evolution of labor planning methods in the early part of the 20th century, analytical methods developed during the Second World War for improving the operation of complex systems, and the importance of the modern digital computer to solving a variety of IE problems. It finishes with an examination of the growth of the department in the 1980s through 2000s, with instructional and research programs beginning to emphasize Healthcare Systems Engineering and Robotics and Autonomous Vehicles.