About us

Industrial Management & Engineering

Set up in 1974, the Department of Industrial and Management Engineering (IME) at IIT Kanpur was one of the first in the country to recognize the strength of combining the training of engineers with management education. Today the Department is engaged in a diverse set of activities that include teaching, academic research, industry consulting, regularly held management development programmes, and public sector projects.

The curriculum comprises state-of-art techniques to plan, design, implement and manage integrated systems of men, materials, capital, information and technology. The subjects taught provide a well-rounded coverage of the methods to manage and improve productivity, customer satisfaction and profitability of industrial, information and infrastructural (service) systems. In today's competitive era these methods have rapidly become relevant for engineers in all disciplines, Consequently, fresh engineering graduates as well as practicing professionals in fields ranging from computer science to aerospace engineering and architecture to electronics engineering regularly enroll in IME's postgraduate programmes.

The Department offers M Tech, MBA and Ph D degrees in Industrial and Management Engineering. A Bachelor's degree in any branch of engineering is the minimum requirement for admission to M Tech/MBA. A Master's degree in Management/Industrial Engineering/Operations Research or equivalent is required for admission to Ph D. The process of admission to M Tech and Ph D programmes includes a written test and a personal interview.

The Department started a 2 years MBA programme in July 2001. Open to engineering graduates of any branch, the programme consist of four semesters of course work with the intervening summer to be spent on a summer internship project in management in a host industry. Admission is through a Common Admission Test (CAT) followed by personal interview/group discussion.

Specialization offered in MBA include sectorial areas of Service and Manufacturing and Functional areas of Operations, Systems, Marketing, and Finance.

Core Competence

Aside from teaching, the faculty are engaged in wide research areas which include Operations Research, Operations Management, Decision Support Systems, Flexible and Computer Integrated Manufacturing Systems, Industrial Engineering, Organization Sciences, Personnel Management and Industrial Relations, Small Business Management, Total Quality Management, Manufacturing Strategy, Management of Technology , Strategic Management, Knowledge Management, Marketing and Consumer Behavior, e_Commerce, Entrepreneurship and Technological Innovation, Infrastructure Finance and Policy, Intellectual Property Rights.

Facilities

The Department is equipped with state-of-art facilities for computational support. The system optimization laboratory provides computational support both for teaching and for research. It includes Pentiums and workstations connected to form a local area network, and to access the computing facilities of the institute and Internet.

Head's Note

The engine of today's economy - the business world is increasingly becoming demanding and dynamic. In such a challenging scenario managing people, information and technology in an integrated fashion is going to be the mantra for a successful manager. The MBA programme at IIT Kanpur is an attempt to address this concern in a scientific spirit. Being an integral part of an institution of the stature of IIT Kanpur naturally helps the budding spark to imbibe all the values and ethos that have made it an epitome of excellence.

Our tryst with management started way back in 1974, when the Industrial and Management Engineering (IME) programme was initiated to teach methods to plan, design, implement and manage production and services. The MBA programme introduced in the year 2001, was thus a structured culmination of the process of dissemination of knowledge that had been gathered over the years

The rising complexity of the business environment has made it mandatory for an engineer to unshackle himself from the confines of mere technical competencies and assume the role of a complete manager. The course of MBA at IIT Kanpur is uniquely designed to train engineers into managers with a holistic outlook. The course is rooted in the Indian environment, along with the required international perspective. With a carefully designed syllabus , we keep up to the true IIT Kanpur tradition of sensitizing ourselves with the latest in the industry. The emphasis is on building people skills, with focus on team skills, indispensable to any organization. The class being a heterogeneous mix of engineers from diverse fields naturally enriches the learning environment, turning it into a fountainhead of vibrant ideas.

The response from the industry has been very enthusiastic and encouraging. This bears testimony to the value adding output that the students of MBA at IIT Kanpur have been giving to the industry and the society. I am sure that the encouragement from the industry will continue in the coming years, as an enforcement of the esteem in which IIT Kanpur is held.

Prof. Rahul Varman
Head, IME Department