Industrial Engineering -
Furniture Manufacturing Track

The wholesale value of residential furniture sold in the US exceeds $20 billion annually with North Carolina manufacturers producing 25 percent of the total. Furniture manufacturing directly employs 80,000 North Carolinians and has an annual payroll of $1.5 billion. The International Home Furnishings Market, with showroom space exceeding 7 million square feet, is located in High Point, North Carolina. Collectively, this is the largest concentration of furniture manufacturing and merchandising in the world, making the economic condition of the State and the furniture industry closely related.

To serve this important industry, the Department of Industrial Engineering offers a Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Engineering with a Furniture Manufacturing track. Students in the track gain specialized knowledge of furniture manufacturing by taking a set of five cohesive courses that provide a concentrated study of the products, processes, and materials used in this industry. This core subject matter is augmented by other industrial engineering courses such as computer-aided graphics, work measurement, production and inventory control, quality management, economic analysis, computer simulation, industrial ergonomics, and others.

The track comprises a five-course sequence that distinguishes the BSIE, Furniture Manufacturing from the standard BSIE degree. These courses are:

IE 330 - Furniture Product Engineering
IE 331 - Furniture Manufacturing Processes I
WPS 205 – Wood Products Practicum
IE 430 - Furniture Manufacturing Processes II
IE 431 - Furniture Manufacturing Facilities Design

The program has as its educational objectives:

• To actively recruit and retain qualified students and to prepare those students for entry into successful employment as industrial engineers in industry, service, consulting, and/or government organizations or for advanced study at leading graduate schools in engineering, business, management, or other technical or non-technical fields.
• To educate students in a broad range of areas related to effective and established engineering practice, including engineering design, physical as well as engineering sciences, mathematics, information technology and analytical problem solving.
• To encourage students to pursue meaningful work experiences through cooperative education and internships and through course practicum/project experiences and to provide students the tools of systems and management engineering, preparing them for the professional and ethical management of people, processes, systems and products in a wide variety of settings.
• To encourage teamwork skills, particularly the ability to work with people from other fields in integrated engineering teams and the leadership skills for maximizing the performance of those teams.
• To offer a curriculum that encourages students to become broadly educated engineers and life-long learners, with an understanding and appreciation of the arts, humanities, and social sciences, an ability to communicate effectively with various audiences and purposes, and a desire to seek out further educational opportunities.
• To expose students to advances in engineering practice and research as preparation for opportunities in graduate education.
• To obtain resources necessary to recruit, develop, and retain faculty, laboratory, teaching and research assistants and other support staff who are committed to the educational mission of the department and to acquire, maintain, and operate facilities and laboratory equipment appropriate to our engineering program.

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