Program Structure
Students in this program must complete an ABET-accredited undergraduate engineering degree at Michigan State University before entering the master's program. They are required to take certain prerequisite classes as part of their engineering coursework, and they must enter the masters program in the fall semester following completion of their undergraduate engineering degree.
Overall, during the first four years of the five-year program, students:
- Become rooted in engineering fundamentals - mathematics, physical and life sciences, and information technology during years one and two.
- Focus on a particular engineering major during the last two years, including the required nine-credit manufacturing engineering course sequence and nine credits in economics and accounting.
- Spend two semesters taking cooperative education, in which students work full-time in an industrial setting, improving hands-on learning.
- Complete 128 credit hours.
The final year of the five-year program is devoted to graduate business coursework.
- Topics such as design-for-manufacture, agile manufacturing, new communication and information networks, and the effects of automation on human and physical resources are an integral part of the program.
- Students learn to analyze manufacturing systems for overall technical performance such as through-put time, defect and/or scrap rates, and economic and environmental performance.
- Graduates are able to quantify trade-offs between competing technologies utilized in the manufacturing systems.
- An additional 30 credit hours are completed during this final year.