What is ABET Accreditation?
The Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) is a nonprofit organization whose responsibilities include “organizing and carrying out a comprehensive process of accreditation of pertinent programs leading to degrees, and assisting academic institutions in planning their educational programs”. The objective of this is to “promote the intellectual development of those interested in engineering and related professions, and provide technical assistance to agencies having engineering-related regulatory authority applicable to accreditation”.
ABET is thus the agency which reviews degree granting engineering and technology programs throughout this country, and indeed, much of the world. It has drawn up a set of criteria that specify the minimum standards degree programs must meet in order to be accredited. Clearly, accreditation of a program is of crucial importance to students, since the status of the program they graduate from as an ABET-accredited program gives their degree nationwide recognition, and is highly valued by employers. Indeed, employers and professional societies (in our case, the Institute of Industrial Engineers) play a significant role in developing the criteria used by ABET to accredit programs.

Accreditation Procedures
In order to receive ABET accreditation, a degree program must submit an extensive self-study document and submit to a three-day site visit by a trained assessor appointed by ABET. In the self-study document, the program must provide detailed information on all aspects of the program. These include the nature and content of both required and elective courses; the number and qualifications of the faculty; available buildings, laboratories and other physical facilities; and available support staff. Information on both the individual program and the college must be included. The self-study document is submitted to ABET several months in advance of the actual site visit, to allow the assessors ample time to review the material.
After reviewing the self-study document, the assessor will visit the program for a three-day period., During this period they may interview any faculty or students they request, as well as college and department administrators. They also require detailed documentation of all required and elective coursework related to the degree program being accredited. This includes all textbooks, handouts, homework assignments and class projects as well as examples of graded work to indicate how the work is being graded.
Generally, all engineering programs on a campus will go through the accreditation process together. The College of Engineering at Purdue University are scheduled to be receive their site visit in the Fall 2001 semester, which requires us to submit the Self-Study Document by July 1, 2001.

Accreditation Criteria
The current criteria ABET uses to accredit programs are in principle quite simple. Programs are required to specify objectives - skills and characteristics students are expected to possess upon graduation. These objectives must reflect the needs of all the different constituencies the program serves – students, faculty, and employers. They must then specify a number of outcomes, by which the program can assess the degree to which the specified objectives have been achieved. ABET specifies a number of outcomes that must be included, but there is considerable freedom as to the specifics. Finally, the program has to develop and implement a process of continuous improvement, involving the collection and analysis of quantitative data regarding the program outcomes, the evaluation of this data to assess whether the program objectives are being achieved, and the initiation of actions to correct any problems that are identified.
Based on extensive discussions among the faculty, and with student groups and the School’s Industrial Advisory Board, the faculty of the School of Industrial Engineering adopted the following program objectives in the Spring 2000 semester:

1. Graduates should be prepared to take the lead in recognizing engineering problems in their organizations and designing solutions.
Prominent in this area are skills in developing (possibly several) useful analytical formulations to gain insights into ill-structured problems and characterize the best solution obtainable within the limits of the available time, data and economic resources. However, developing an elegant solution is not sufficient; the engineer should have a clear idea of issues related to the implementability of the proposed solution, make modifications required for acceptance of a proposal, and be capable of guiding a project through the implementation process.  

2. Graduates should be capable of identifying the best contemporary tools for the problem, applying them, and interpreting their results to gain insight into industrial engineering problems and propose effective solutions.
Graduates should be sufficiently trained in basic science and engineering to be able to read technical literature and become familiar with different tools that are available (computer software and modeling approaches/formalisms such as mathematical programming, simulation etc.) to the point that they can

1. Identify when each tool is appropriate to use, with a clear understanding of underlying assumptions and limitations;
2. Collect and analyze the data required for the selected approach, including understanding of the effects of missing and inaccurate data, and where appropriate, conducting experiments;
3. Interpret the results of the analysis in the context of the problem at hand;
4. Use the analysis as an effective base for assessing the implementability of the proposed solution.  

3. Graduates should be capable of operating effectively in today’s dynamic, heterogeneous organizations.
The accelerating rate of technological change is leading to organizations becoming global, culturally diverse and increasingly dynamic and goal-oriented in organizational structure. Often the basic organizational unit is the cross-functional team deployed to achieve a specific, tactical objective in a short period of time. This increasing lack of permanence in organization places new stresses on engineers’ ability to rapidly achieve an effective level of professional collaboration with people of diverse skill sets and cultural backgrounds. Performance in this environment requires the ability to communicate effectively with technical and non-technical people at very different levels of the organization, the ability to rapidly establish working relationships and become familiar with new application domains, and the assumption of several different roles with the same people over time -- perhaps even at the same time in different contexts. Effective problem definition, task breakdown and delegation are particularly important.

4. Graduates should have the basic skills required to maintain their professional knowledge over the entire duration of their career.
Graduates should be able to take responsibility for their own learning, including identifying weak areas in their background and seeking out resources to remedy them. The ability to do this in a time-effective manner is essential in today’s fast-paced engineering organizations. This results in many graduates pursuing a variety of advanced or professional degrees subsequent to their completion of the undergraduate industrial engineering program. Hence students should graduate with a solid base of skills and knowledge upon which these further studies can build. Examples are computer skills for problem solving, and basic literacy in science and engineering.

5. Graduates should be prepared to contribute as ethical and responsible members of society.
Engineering graduates should be as well prepared as any other citizens to contribute as members of society. Still, the increasing importance of technology to our economic wellbeing and its pervasive presence in all aspects of our daily lives places a special burden on the engineering community to be cognizant of the social impacts of their actions. Furthermore, engineering practitioners are increasingly being called upon to address problems with broad social and ethical consequences. Students should be familiar with these issues, and be prepared to address them with integrity and empathy for all stakeholders involved.

In order to assess the degree to which these objectives are being achieved, the following outcomes were selected:
Graduates should be able to:

1. Apply knowledge of math, science and engineering
2. Design systems involving people, materials, equipment, information and energy
3. Identify, formulate and solve engineering problems
4. Design and conduct experiments
5. Collect, analyze and interpret data
6. Model engineering systems quantitatively and draw appropriate inferences
7. Evaluate the impact of an engineering system on workers, users and organizations
8. Select appropriate combinations of manufacturing processes and materials to meet product requirements
9. Design, plan and control integrated production and service systems
10. 1Use modern computer tools to analyze and improve engineering systems
11. Function in cross-functional project teams
12. Communicate effectively, both orally and in writing
13. Understand professional and ethical responsibilities of engineers
14. Possess a knowledge of contemporary economic, social and politicalissues
15. Possess a knowledge of contemporary and emerging issues in industrial engineering practice
16. Appreciate the need for and availability of lifelong learning
17. Possess the basic science and engineering background to support lifelong learning

Clearly, not every course can be required to contribute to all outcomes. However, all outcomes must be addressed to an appropriate degree by the time a student has taken all required courses in the undergraduate curriculum.

Continuous Improvement Process
The continuous improvement process in the School of Industrial Engineering is aimed at collecting quantitative data regarding the outcomes listed above and evaluating this data on an ongoing basis to determine whether the outcomes, and hence the desired program objectives, are being achieved. This is being achieved in the following manner:

1. Each semester, all graduating seniors are invited to submit a short survey regarding their undergraduate experience, the strengths and  weaknesses of the program and the contribution of the different courses to the outcomes listed. 
2. Each semester, all faculty members must submit a syllabus and a check-sheet for each course taught, describing how the course addresses the above outcomes.
3. Once a year, an extensive alumni survey is undertaken to alumni who have graduated three and five years ago, asking them to assess the contribution of the program to their careers and directions for improvement.

These data are evaluated and reviewed by the School’s Undergraduate Curriculum Committee, which presents the results and its conclusions, as well as recommendations for any actions required to improve the curriculum and address deficiencies, to the entire faculty. The faculty as a whole then decides what action to take.