Meaning, Quality, and Integrity
in the Manufacturing Engineering Program
May 2014
Meaning: What are your expectations for your entering students? For what future are you
preparing your graduates? What skills and knowledge should they have when they leave as
a Cal Poly Pomona graduate? If you have both undergraduate and graduate programs, do
you have heightened expectations for the graduate students?
The IME Department has spent a lot of time working with our stakeholders to identify the qualities
we desire from our MFE students at the time of graduation (a.k.a. Student Outcomes) and also
looking past that about 3-5 years (a.k.a. Program Educational Objectives). The resulting outcomes
and objectives consider multiple stakeholders (students, employers, taxpayers, educational
administrators, accrediting agencies, professional organizations, etc.)
Our undergraduate program objectives can be divided into two sets of skills for discussion
purposes: Hard skills and soft skills. Hard skills refer to knowledge, skills, and abilities directly
related to engineering and the tools that engineers use to design and solve problems. Soft skills
refer to the ability to communicate, work productively with others, and understand the world in
which we operate both at the local and global levels. Both hard and soft skills require critical
thinking and systems thinking. The manufacturing engineering learning outcomes align with the
university learning outcomes.
Hard skills include the ability to apply knowledge of foundational material in the sciences and
communication arts as well as apply advanced material in the discipline. Graduates should know
how to design and conduct an experiment and interpret statistical and qualitative information to
improve a system or process. They should understand system design concepts and approaches and
how to assess the interaction between sub-systems as well as the impact on the overall system.
They should have the ability to identify problems and determine their root causes and apply
engineering approaches and current methodologies to problem solving. The ability to choose and
use engineering tools is important. Graduates should know how to effectively use software and
other tools to design and solve problems.
Soft skills include the ability to successfully function on an interdisciplinary team and, if needed,
lead an interdisciplinary team. Graduates should know what constitutes professional and ethical
behavior and understand methods for resolving moral dilemmas. They should exhibit professional
behavior in all work and conduct. The ability to communicate is essential. Communication ability
includes the ability to develop a mathematical model and disseminate it so others can understand
it. They should be able to prepare, interpret and communicate via graphical models and prepare
concise written material and present it in a professional manner.
Additionally, soft skills require the ability to add context to situations. This ability includes
understanding of diversity between cultures, countries, and groups, and the understanding of the
global dimensions and trends of technological, societal, economic, and environmental issues. Our
graduates should recognize the need for and be able to pursue lifelong learning including the ability
to adapt to changing professional requirements. They should have an awareness and understanding
organizations and resources that could be used for further enrichment. Graduates should also have
an understanding and appreciation of how contemporary issues interact with each other and the
profession. Manufacturing engineers should particularly understand financial aspects of business
organizations and know how to make viable recommendations to management.
Three to five years after graduation our educational objective is to see evidence of graduates
experiencing successful careers in industry, research, or academia while continuing to pursue
knowledge and professional growth. Many should already be performing leadership roles and
enhancing collaboration between engineers, scientists, professional, and business people. They
should be contributing as professionally, ethically, and globally aware members of society. In the
workplace they should be actively engaged in design and integration of production, quality
management, and information systems to provide optimal solutions and understanding and
positively influencing the fiscal aspects of their business or company.
At the undergraduate level the emphasis is on developing basic skills and abilities. The goal is to
provide students with experiences that bring them to a level of proficiency that will allow the
function productively upon graduation. At the graduate level the emphasis is on deeper knowledge
and systems thinking and the ability to lead and manage engineering organizations.
Quality: How are you preparing your students to be the graduates you want? Do the learning
outcomes, the pedagogical techniques, and other learning experiences align with your
expectations? If you have both undergraduate and graduate programs, do the learning
outcomes clearly differentiate between the two programs?
The manufacturing engineering curriculum scaffolds the curriculum so that students build on basic
knowledge, develop skills, learn how to apply the skills to basic problems and design situations, and
graduate with the ability to apply their knowledge to open-ended and new situations.
The fundamental pedagogical approach is “learn by doing” and employs many high impact
practices. Besides the traditional classroom learning and homework problems, our students
experience many laboratory courses which focus on discovery (constructivism) and understanding
the theories that underlie the discipline. From the very beginning students are expected to look at
real companies and operations and begin to apply what they are learning. For example, in the
introductory course IME 112 Introduction to Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering students are
assigned two companies to visit and compare with respect to product cost, quality, efficiency,
productivity, energy use, customer satisfaction, and customer wait times. The discipline becomes
real and student report they learn about themselves in addition to what the discipline entails. First
year students in IME 224 Work Measurement and Design students are taught about work
measurement and design by going into a real company and analyzing an existing work station for
efficiency, productivity, and process improvement. Almost all classes use teams and team projects
in some way. Guest speakers, field trips, student competitions, trade shows and other techniques
are used to develop the student’s ability to relate to and apply what they are learning in the current
business environment.
Finally, students take capstone courses using projects and case study method (e.g., MFE 476, IME
402) and a real manufacturing project (EGR 481, 482) to develop their ability to apply their
knowledge in open-ended situations. Some of the senior projects are service learning projects
which have been proven to be highly effective learning experiences.
Eighty percent of MFE students experience one or more internships during their undergraduate
years. Students are encouraged to participate in undergraduate research and can even work with a
faculty member on a research-based senior project. While these projects are not that frequent, the
number of such projects is increasing.
At the graduate level students are expected to apply their knowledge at a higher level and using
more advanced knowledge of the discipline. Projects also have a leadership component to them to
challenge the student to grow in that area.
Integrity: How do you know that this preparation is working? How do you know that the
students are achieving the learning outcomes at the appropriate level? What is the role of
assessment and program review?
The Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering Department has a highly refined assessment
program that shows us whether or not our attempts at improvement are working. The program
follows roughly a three-year cycle of assessment, improvement, and validation. Formative
assessment of lower division learning is assessed using a concept inventory administered at the
beginning of the 300 level coursework that has been tested for validity. Summative assessment (at
graduation) is assessed using multiple quantitative and qualitative surveys and rubrics. Graduating
seniors are given an exit survey about their ability to apply what they have learned from selected
courses and outcomes. They are also asked to write a reflective piece covering three soft skills. The
reflective piece and their senior project written report are assessed by an emeritus faculty using
rubrics. Senior project presentations are assessed by volunteer professionals from industry using a
ten-point rubric. The overall senior project process is assessed by attendees to Projects Symposium
Day each May using a survey administered by email. An analysis of the survey results is used to plan
for department and college-wide improvement initiatives. For example, the 2008 results produced
a three-year initiative in the college of engineering designed to improve communications,
teamwork, and problem solving skills.
As a result of these assessment efforts major changes have been made in our approach to teaching
statistical methods and in our senior project sequence. For example, to improve the quality of
senior projects we added three more presentations to the process: a proposal presentation, an
intermediate progress report presentation, and a qualifying presentation. These three added
requirement have improved the overall quality of the senior project experience significantly.
At the graduate level the assessment process is primarily summative in nature and directed at the
final project. The committee that reviews the final uses the results for both evaluation as well as
assessment of how well the program is working and where to make changes.
Every three years we conduct an alumni survey and find out to what degree the Program
Educational Objectives are being achieved. We are able to assess from the results if we are
improving for various ranges of years since graduation.
The IME Department Industrial Advisory Council has been very active over the past 30 years in
helping us review and modify our outcomes, objectives, and curriculum. The IAC members are
regularly involved in the ABET accreditation process and the assessment cycle.