The GISE Certificate Program consists of 12 graduate-level credits. Autumn and winter quarters are linked and focus on integrated lectures encompassing systems engineering, project management, finance, and supply chain. In the spring quarter, participants complete an extensive team design project.
Autumn and winter quarters
IND E 595
Schedule: Once a week integrated lectures on Thursday evenings (4:00-8:00 p.m.) cover the following material:
| Systems engineering | Project management | Finance | Supply chain |
|---|---|---|---|
| Top-down problem solving | Project initiation and selection | Time value of money | Global logistics & distribution |
| Decision analysis | Project planning and scheduling | NPV and IRR | Managing inventory/optimal policies |
| SE methodologies | Spreadsheet models and tools | Pricing | Risk & coordination mechanisms |
| Systems analysis | Risk management | Sources of risk | Mass customization |
| Requirements analysis | Cash flows and costs | Elements of cost | Vendor managed inventory |
| Functional modeling | Critical chain | Risk-adjusted discount rates | Bullwhip effect |
| Trade studies | Monitoring and control | Competitive business environment | |
| Business profitability and margins |
Spring quarter
IND E 596
The program concludes with a comprehensive team-based design effort involving a large-scale system. This project provides a culminating experience through which students bring together the systems analysis and design, project management, and financial modeling skills they have learned in the fall and winter quarters and apply them to a real-world problem using real data and presenting their results to an evaluation panel comprised of practitioners, academics, and client representatives. The teams will give a final presentation at the end of the quarter. In between, the teams will set their own schedules, but will come together, in person or virtually, every other class period for project reviews.