Undergraduate academic teaching and manufacturing industry requirements: A comparative analysis

The United States has been losing its manufacturing base because of severe international competition. One way to help improve the US economy is to revitalize its manufacturing sector. Training workers and equipping managers with the necessray tools and competencies to help organizations improve production and operations will be vital in this effort. The authors conducted a study with two purposes: (1) to obtain a list of required and elective courses in operations management and industrial management programs offered by US universities at the undergraduate level, and (2) to rank these courses in order of importance in different programs and for five proposed concentrations.