the CHAIR

Summing Up and Looking Forward


by William B. Rouse

This issue marks the completion of the first year of Engineering Enterprise. This year has featured special issues on education, security, and enterprise systems. Articles on these themes and others have highlighted initiatives by faculty, alumni, and other leaders from academia, industry, and government.

I have received quite a bit of feedback on Engineering Enterprise. Many alumni — and other folks also — have been very positive about the orientation and content of the magazine. People also like the name, especially the term "enterprise." My article in this issue outlines why an enterprise orientation makes great sense for our engineering discipline.

Plans for the next year of Engineering Enterprise are well along. The Spring issue will focus on Natural Systems. In this issue, we will consider what can be learned from nature that can guide the design and deployment of engineered systems. One example will address how the new carpet in my office at Georgia Tech was designed on the basis of how nature designs floor covering in a forest.

The Summer issue will focus on Health Systems. Several of our faculty are leading research on improved clinical practices, consumer and medical decision making, health care informatics, quality assessment and management in health care, and evaluation of medical technologies. The articles in this issue will illustrate how our programs in these areas are thriving.

Knowledge Mining will be the focus of our Fall issue. This will include reviews of research on how best to address the increasing wealth of information available in corporate and transactions databases, as well as the immense flow of e-mail information. The issue will explore the nature of knowledge mining and how our statistics faculty are on the leading edge of these pursuits.

Our second year will conclude with a Winter issue on Supply Chain Management. This will include a discussion of the emergence and maturation of this area over the past couple of decades. The formation, accomplishments, and future directions of The Logistics Institute (TLI) will be reviewed. We will also feature interviews with several illustrious alumni whose companies are viewed as innovators in logistics and supply chain management.

You can see that we have quite a year planned for Engineering Enterprise. Our goal is to keep you apprised of leading-edge trends and developments in the many areas of Industrial and Systems Engineering. We will often highlight our own faculty, students, and alumni. In addition, as recent issues have exemplified, we intend to quite frequently showcase invention and innovation by others. Please let us know how you think we are doing.

William B. Rouse is the H. Milton and Carolyn J. Stewart Chair and Professor of the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology.



• Winter 2003 Engineering Enterprise Table of Contents
• Engineering Enterprise Home Page



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