Globalization
Mission
To develop and provide innovative and integrated global research and education to prepare engineering managers to meet the challenges and solve the problems of global complexity in technical organizations. Our primary focus is the global automotive industry.
Background
Globalization is the dominant vision and driver of industry at the start of the new millennium. As fast as the changes have been in the last five years, this movement toward globalization can only accelerate. The information technology infrastructure needed to support globalization continues to grow and trade barriers are either falling, growing smaller or being negotiated away. Universities around the country and the world are rushing to develop research and education programs in their attempts to address this business need.
Despite this explosion in the growth of global research and education, we find that there is a major gap when it comes to managing the engineering and manufacturing functions in the global firm. The initial academic and business focus has been primarily strategic. However, today the focus is shifting to the implementation details of global strategies and this focus will become increasingly important in the future competitive success of global industry. Implementation is extremely complex in a global product development and manufacturing company as its products move along every step in the value chain from the lab to the customer; that is, from research to design to manufacturing to assembly to logistics and post-sales support for products in diverse markets. The automotive industry is the quintessential example of this complexity.
Multidisciplinary Approach
These challenges cannot be addressed within one academic discipline within one university setting. Our department has a proven track in building multi-disciplinary teams that include: industrial engineers, business anthropologists, business school faculty, labor relations and automotive executives. We are also leading Wayne State University’s efforts to develop formal partnerships with universities around the globe.
We have four primary objectives:
- Conduct leading edge research in partnership with global firms in the automotive industry to address global technical management and operations.
- Extend the EMMP to offer advanced degrees in global engineering management that will enable the working technical manager to make decisions and manage processes that involve the complex interplay of technology, work and organization that is global in scope.
- Develop an undergraduate specialization within industrial engineering to prepare our graduates to better function and contribute immediately to global teams.
- Secure and expand funding for applied, global research that is sponsored by both industry and government.