The Department of Industrial Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering strengthens its ties with industry

Over the past two years the Department of Industrial Engineering has increased the number of student tours in industrial corporations, which are required in various undergraduate courses. Tours were planned and undertaken in the following courses: Introduction to Industrial Engineering and Factory Content?? taught by Prof. Yossi Bukchin, Prof. Irad Ben-Gal's Method Engineering, and the course Analyzing Events in Industrial Engineering. Each tour takes about four hours, and includes a meeting with the management, a tour of the production and assembly lines, and a concluding Q&A session.

Last year about 180 students and faculty members participated in the tours. This year the tour program was expanded to include about 300 students. Tours were conducted in several large Israeli corporations, market leaders in their respective fields:  Tempo Beverages, Electra Air Conditioning, Haargaz Transportation, the Port of Ashdod and Israel Ports – who together employ over 3,000 people and attain annual sales of about 3 billion NIS. The managements of all organizations were glad for the opportunity to host our students and contribute to their knowledge. In most cases, the tour included a meeting with the CEO and a talk by the Plant Manager.

During the tours students were able to directly observe the various technological and engineering aspects, problems and terminologies they had encountered in class, and experience how organizations operate in the day-to-day reality. In all tours, senior managers accompanied the students through the operation, production and assembly lines, explaining principles of production and operations, and expanding upon additional aspects related to the specific course into which the tour had been incorporated.