Courses in Industrial Systems Engineering Specialisations
Students from cohorts 2021/2022 onwards could pursue interests in any of the following specialisations:
1
Supply Chain Analytics
According to the World Bank’s Logistics Performance Index, Singapore has ranked 1st in Asia since 2007. Singapore is a vital hub that offers world-class connectivity to the region and beyond. One-seventh of the world’s container transhipment throughput is handled by Singapore.
Singapore has also launched Industry Transformation Maps (ITM) that involves five industries: Air Transport, Sea Transport, Land Transport, Logistics and Wholesale Trade. Led by the Ministry of Transport (MOT) and the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB), these ITMs concern the competitive advantages of trade & connectivity across these industries. Over 5,000 good jobs are expected to be created by 2025 together with a value-add of $4.5 billion. Notwithstanding this, digitalisation of global supply chains has been uneven and hampered by issues such as low adoption, lack of data sharing, and a preponderance of different platforms.
As such, supply chains are crucial processes whereby competitive edges must be further attained by the timely adoption of technologies in areas like data analytics and advanced digitalisation, by stakeholders in the logistics, finance and regulatory, and cargo owner sectors. Such competitive edges can be illustrated by advances in data analytics to improve supply chain efficiency through data validation, anomaly detection, operations benchmarking, etc so as to provide agile reporting and visibility into global logistics’ offerings in real-time route optimizations, improved demand forecasts, and inventory management; and timely responses to government audits.
2
Analytics and Decision Intelligence
Businesses have complex adaptive systems. Unsuccessful outcomes often arise from the discrepancies between the sophistication of organizational decision-making practices and the complexity of the situations in which those decisions need to be taken. With the urgency to digitalize and gain competitive edges from new technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), decision intelligence is the missing link between data and improved decision making.
Decision intelligence connects human decision-makers to technologies like operations research, machine learning, artificial intelligence, deep learning, visual decision modeling, complex systems modeling, big data, data analytics, UX design, statistical analysis, business intelligence, business process management, causal reasoning, evidence-based analysis, and more to arrive at optimal decisions. Decision intelligence solutions can be implemented in a wide range of use cases under different industries to empower an organization’s ability to make data-driven decisions in real-time, a critical capability in numerous scenarios and resource-intensive industries.
3
Sustainability Analytics
The impacts of climate change are global in scope, disrupting national economies and affecting livelihoods. In response, many nations have set sustainability targets to address climate change. As part of Singapore’s commitments under the UN’s 2030 Sustainable Development and the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, the government in February 2021 launched the Singapore Green Plan which charts ambitious and concrete targets over the next ten years and beyond. Following that, Minister for Finance Mr Lawrence Wong announced at Budget 2022 that Singapore will raise its climate ambition to achieve net zero emissions by or around mid-century. To enable the transition to a low-carbon future, the carbon tax levels will be raised progressively from 2024.
Meeting global or national net zero target cannot be achieved without businesses taking strong climate action. With growing consumer and shareholder pressure, business uptake of climate action has been accelerating. A growing number of companies have set net zero target, and are preparing their businesses by hiring and developing sustainability and decarbonization expertise.
Sustainability analytics focuses on skills in analytic methods and quantitative analysis that are employed to measure, report and communicate the sustainability of organizations, products and services.
The requirements of the Specialisation in Supply Chain Analytics are:
- Fulfil the requirements of primary major in Industrial & Systems Engineering;
- Pass at least 20 units from the following list of courses:
| Pass IE4100R B. Eng Dissertation (8 units) |
|---|
| Pass any three elective courses (12 units) from the list below: 1. IE3120 Manufacturing Logistics 2. IE4220 Supply Chain Modeling 3. IE4210 Operations Research II 4. IE4214 Revenue Management & Pricing Analytics 5. IE4229 Selected Topics in Logistics 6. IE5108 Facility Layout & location 7. IE5202 Applied Forecasting Methods 8. IE5221 Transportation Modelling and Economics 9. IE5401 Modern Supply Chain and Blockchain Technologies |
The requirements of the Specialisation in Analytics & Decision Intelligence are:
- Fulfil the requirements of the primary major in Industrial & Systems Engineering;
- Pass at least 20 units from the following list of courses:
| Pass IE4100R B. Eng Dissertation (8 units) |
|---|
| Pass any three elective courses (12 units) from the list below: 1. IE4210 Operations Research II 2. IE4211 Modeling & Analytics 3. IE4213 Learning from Data 4. IE4215 Machine Learning for Industrial Engineering 5. IE4243 Decision Modeling & Risk Analysis 6. IE4280 Generative AI and Web3 in Industrial Engineering 7. IE5202 Applied Forecasting Methods 8. IE5205 Healthcare Systems & Analytics 9. IE5231 Statistical Methods for Process Design and Control |
The requirements of the Specialisation in Sustainability Analytics are:
- Fulfil the requirements of primary major in Industrial & Systems Engineering;
- Pass at least 20 units from the following list of courses in the following table under option A or Option B
|
Option A: Pass IE4100R BEng Dissertation (related to Sustainability Analytics) and three electives in Basket A and Basket B with at least one elective from each basket. (Total : 20 Units) Option B: Pass five electives in Basket A and Basket B with at least two electives from each basket. (Total : 20 units) |
|---|
| IE4100R B. Eng Dissertation (8 units)
Basket A Electives Basket B Electives |
Students are required to do BEng Dissertation (IE4100R) with the relevant topic for these specialisations.
As students are only allowed to read one BEng Dissertation, students who decide to read two specialisations will require to read 20 units of courses which include a BEng Dissertation (IE4100R) in the first specialisation and read 20 units of courses from list of elective courses (excluding IE4100R) in the second specialisation.
Students may double-count up to 8 units of courses between the two specialisations. However, students may not use BEng Dissertation (IE4100R) from the first specialisation to be double counted towards the second specialisation.
At least 60% of the units earned for a specialisation must be earned through courses read at NUS.
A maximum of two level-5000 courses (8 units) are allowed to count towards each specialisation.