Engineering and services

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to show the role that engineering and engineering schools can play in the service sector, identify some of the major challenges and present the experience of Polytechnic University's involvement in the areas of finance and supply chains, merchandising and retail. The service sector is very large and in an advanced economy like the United States constitutes the largest portion of the Gross National Product. Services are ever more dependent on technology and are being revolutionized by it. However, engineering schools have focused to a much lesser extent on services than on manufacturing, and virtually not at all on the areas of retail and finance that dominate the service sector. The very large role and scope of technology in services present major engineering challenges, ranging from systems architecture to a focus on the customer that is unprecedented in engineering curricula. Graduate curricula, in financial engineering and in supply chain and retail, as well as targeted undergraduate internship programs in the retail industry at Polytechnic University exemplify a response to these challenges.