The Industrial and Management Engineering Department nurtures industry leaders with scientific analysis and engineering problem-solving abilities based on the understanding of modern/future industries and management principles.

The core competence of the future industry leader is the ability to systematically understand the industry, abstractly model the management-related problems that the company would face, and develop creative and comprehensive problem-solving skills that could come up with the optimized solutions by applying scientific analysis and engineering methodologies.

Industrial and Management Engineering improves the efficiency and productivity of work processes. It uses science and technology to properly manage all kinds of resources including human resources, and analyzes and designs complex systems of economy and society. Industrial and Management Engineering includes various types of knowledge such as optimization, economics, business administration, statistics, and computer and science engineering, and is applied to information, logistics, manufacturing, production and quality management, and economic, management, and financial systems. Graduates may choose to pursue their career in business management, investment banking, government agencies, consulting, and business creation, or select to be academic scholars in the related fields.

The undergraduate curriculum provides the engineering system analysis training needed to plan, design, and implement complex economic or technical management systems that require scientific and engineering background knowledge. Also the curriculum allows students to have a deeper level of professional understanding in the area by choosing one of the two key areas: industrial engineering and management engineering. Based on basic courses of engineering Mathematics, engineering foundation, general physics and chemistry, the curriculum mainly deals with product engineering, computer and science engineering, information systems, human factor engineering, quality engineering, production management, optimization, probability, statistics, and finance. Through these curriculum, students will be able to learn a variety of areas, and after the junior year, they will be able to select areas of interest and concentrate on them.

In order to achieve the above educational objectives, Department of Industrial and Management Engineering provides a curriculum along with five key education areas as shown below:

• Operations Management

Operations management is an activity that creates value in the form of product and service from raw materials and labor through efficient management of the operational processes within the organization. Therefore, operations management is a series of activities related to product planning and design, production, transportation, and post-management required by a company. The main contents of education include Demand Forecasting, Project Management, and Inventory Management. In the past, production management began to take place mainly in the production of goods, but since there was no boundary between the service industry and the manufacturing industry, these two industries were combined as Operations Management to manage the product and service at the same time. Although the industry itself overlaps with that of business administration, industrial engineering has strengths for making a decision using the mathematical model. In a broad sense, supply chain management and quality management fall under operations management.

• Operations Research

Operations Research is a discipline that deals with various analytical tools and its application methods that support decision makers to make the best decisions for the operation of organizations such as government and industry. Sometimes the term is defined as Management Science or Analytics. This study deals with the methodologies that leads to the optimal solution or similar with optimal solution to complex decision-making problems by using mathematical analysis tools such as mathematical programming, search method, simulation, stochastic process, queueing theory, reliability theory, and statistical analysis. It is one of the core fields of Industrial Engineering and also as an independent field, it is deeply related to management fields such as Operations Management and Financial Engineering so it provides a methodology for solving optimization problems (minimizing costs, maximizing profits…etc) to be solved in such fields. Since operation science deals with methodologies in general, the process of establishing mathematical models that accurately describe various types of analysis target systems is also very important.

• Information Systems Engineering

There is an increasing need for the development of information technology required to effectively cope with the rapid development of information and globalization, and a method to strategically utilize a large amount of data along with the trend of informationization. To prepare for the future information age, information systems engineering provides various fields: the role and strategic utilization of information technology, management innovation strategy, various types of information systems (MIS, DSS, EIS, SIS), information system analysis and design method, data processing, and data mining and decision-making methods. Major training contents are: information system technology, management information system (MIS), system analysis & design, database, and business analytics. The main research contents are: strategic application of information system, informationization and streamlining of business process management, process-based organization design, decision-making solution based on data analysis, and industry application of the latest IT technology such as Big Data, AI, and IoT.

• Human Factor Engineering

Human factor engineering aims to improve safety, efficiency, and convenience by designing products, tasks, and environments that considered human’s physical, cognitive, emotional, and socio-cultural characteristics and to enhance user’s satisfaction and value of experience. Major training contents include cognitive engineering, emotional engineering, human dynamics, psychophysics, human-computer interaction, usability engineering, service design, user interface design, user experience design process, ergonomics experimental methodology, and other various types of theoretical and application topics required for user-oriented product development. In recent years, we have focused on designing and evaluating multi-device experience of smart products with enhanced connectivity such as smart phones, wearables, and smart appliances, modeling of user driving experience of smart vehicles, and conducting researches on residential / living environment designs based on IoT.

• Financial Engineering

Financial engineering is a field of analysis of financial markets, financial companies, and financial products using mathematical and engineering analysis tools, and can be defined as a study integrated with business administration (finance), industrial engineering, mathematics, statistics, and computer science and engineering. Financial engineering identifies risks of financial market caused by changes in stock prices, exchange rates, and interest rates, explores the changes in the value of financial products, and studies how individuals and businesses can reasonably invest in financial markets. The main contents of education include the rational allocation of financial assets, the main topic of investment theory, which is one of the major fields of business finance, and the theories and application topics related to the valuation of financial assets (including bonds and derivatives). The research topic of the initial financial engineering was mainly limited to the valuation of complex financial products like derivatives. Recently, however, the topic is extended to various fields of finance such as the methods of managing individual asset and allocating asset including insurance and pension funds, the development of various financial risks modeling and its management techniques, and the method of composition of the advanced financial market.

• Emerging Technology & Innovation

The ability to identify and proactively cope with trends in industry and new technology is essential for industrial and management engineering to pursue better decision making, as well as a competitiveness that must be directed and utilized for a lifetime after graduation. In this educational field, we learn how to learn and utilize new technologies that affect the future of industry and society in order to cultivate these abilities. The courses include product process design I, II, III, and Emerging Technologies, which are based on team teaching with several professors. In the case of product production process design I, II, and III, vertical integration is taught by participating in classes in grades 2, 3, and 4. POSTECH Industrial and Management Engineering’s Emerging Technologies is taught by both students and professors, and is the only course of its kind in the world.