Exploring Engineering Ep. 07: Industrial Engineering and Operations Research

Rhonda Righter
In fact, they say, you know, what’s the difference between an optimist, a pessimist, and an industrial engineer? Well, the pessimist says the glass is half empty, the optimist says the glass is half full, and the industrial engineer says the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

Laura Vogt
Our opening joke on this episode of Exploring Engineering was brought to you by Rhonda Righter, UC Berkeley faculty member in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research—and our first interview is coming up in just a moment.

Hi, I’m Laura Vogt, the host and producer of this podcast, Exploring Engineering at UC Berkeley. I’m part of Berkeley Engineering’s Marketing and Communications team as the Director of Student Communications.

Thank you for joining me to learn more about this episode’s major: Industrial Engineering and Operations Research—or IEOR, as it’s better known.

IEOR is a major for students who really enjoy math. Engineers that study IEOR analyze and learn tools and approaches for design, analysis, risk management, and decision-making in complex real-world systems like supply chains, energy systems, healthcare systems, and financial systems.

Now here’s Sarah Yang, Assistant Dean of Marketing and Communications in the College of Engineering, and her conversation with Rhonda Righter.

Rhonda Righter
I’m Rhonda Righter, and I teach in IEOR here at Berkeley. And I’m an alum. Go Bears.

Sarah Yang
When did you graduate, and what was your path to this field?

Rhonda Righter
Well, I graduated here at Berkeley with my Ph.D. in 1986. Before that, I was in high school, and I didn’t know what I wanted to major in. I was torn between math and English, and I was thinking, well, I mean, I really like both, but I don’t want to have to write lots of papers.

Sarah Yang
Oh, my God…

Rhonda Righter
Maybe math. And then, you know, it turned out I loved it. And here I am, writing papers about math.

Sarah Yang
How did that come about? Did you feel like, okay, maybe there are more opportunities?

Rhonda Righter
I just kind of started in it. And then I just really thought, oh, this is fun. I really like this.

So then, while I was pursuing my math degree, I realized that pure math—just thinking about esoteric number theory or whatever—that wasn’t really it. I wanted something with some application, to think about some real-world problems.

Even though, in the range of research, mine is still kind of more on the mathy end, it is motivated by real-world problems. And so I got excited about that.

Sarah Yang
What made you decide to go into industrial engineering rather than, say, civil or mechanical engineering, or any of the other fields?

Rhonda Righter
Well, I think coming from a math background, I was thinking more about the operations research side.

So, what is industrial engineering and operations research? It’s kind of all this mash-up, and now analytics is sort of part of it. Management science is kind of all related, and they’re just slightly different aspects of trying to solve real-world problems—with math, with modeling, with computers, with data, with AI—whatever, and putting it all together.

Sarah Yang
What are some examples of where that is applied in our day-to-day life?

Rhonda Righter
All sorts of things. Earlier, you mentioned having gone to Disneyland. And that is, in fact—one of our alums went off and became an Imagineer at Disneyland.

Figuring out how to handle the traffic flows, how to even do the layouts. How long should people walk from one amusement park feature to another? That’s all math—timing, wait times, whether there should be a Fast Pass or not.

Doing the analysis and figuring out how to get vaccines out to the people who need them in Africa—all kinds of logistics.
Operations research actually became a thing during World War II, where they were trying to solve big, complicated logistics problems and needed the help of mathematicians—but also an interdisciplinary approach.

Sarah Yang
I got the impression that with the pandemic and COVID, people had a far greater appreciation for logistics and supply chains—even people who did not understand or care about it before suddenly appreciated it.

Rhonda Righter
That’s right. That’s a big chunk of what we do.

Sarah Yang
Can we talk about what supply chain management is like? Getting something from one place to another?

Rhonda Righter
So, it’s figuring out: who should your suppliers be? How much inventory should you hold at different places? The timing and the transportation and all that.

I have to say, that’s not the area that I personally work in, so I don’t have any personal anecdotes on that front—but that’s an example.
Sarah Yang
You do stochastic modeling.

Rhonda Righter
I do stochastic modeling—and in particular, queuing theory: waiting in queues, waiting in lines.

And you think, well, okay—Disneyland is a great example. But not just humans waiting in lines: people waiting on hold at a call center, jobs waiting to be handled in a computer center, requests waiting for memory access. All sorts of things.

It’s not just about driving down costs. It’s about how to make things better, how to make customers happier, how to solve problems that aren’t necessarily business-oriented but governmental, too.

I like to think: mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, civil engineering—those fields are working on specific, well-defined objects, even if they’re large, like a bridge. But industrial engineers are thinking about much bigger systems—supply chains, layouts, systems where you have to worry about humans as well as technology.

Laura Vogt
I was able to have a conversation with one of our current students about his path to choosing IEOR. It included learning about the Berkeley Engineering and Haas School of Business joint degree program, Management, Entrepreneurship, and Technology, or M.E.T.

Kenny Wongchamcharoen
My name is Kenny Wongchamcharoen. I am a sophomore here at Berkeley, majoring in IEOR and also doing a data science minor.

I was born and raised in Bangkok, Thailand, and then I went to school in Singapore for high school. For all my life, I thought I really liked business and finance, and I really wanted to go into investment banking or consulting.

I applied to a bunch of other schools in the US, like USC and other East Coast schools. For Berkeley, it was really interesting because there’s an M.E.T. program, which is like engineering plus business, right? And I was just like, okay, why not try this?
I was looking over the list of engineering majors, and I realized I don’t really like physics that much or chemistry. Nothing really struck me, then I came across IEOR. I thought, okay, I’ve never heard of this term before. What exactly is operations research?

So I went to Berkeley’s IEOR website. It said something like “We’re expanding the frontier of optimization.” I was like, okay, what is optimization? I know it’s about making something more efficient, but what do you actually study?

I learned it involves a lot of math—formulating real-world problems into mathematical formulas—and then using skills from computer science, data science, and statistics to solve those problems and translate the results into real-life applications. That’s what interests me about IEOR: how interdisciplinary it is. It requires skills from computer science, math, and data science, and you can really feel the impact of what you’re doing because it’s about translating real-world problems into real-world solutions.

I think there are two main misconceptions I want to address.

The first is that people think IEOR is mostly a technical degree. That’s true to a certain extent. We learn about how business functions, but we don’t learn about negotiations or soft skills like in Haas. Instead, we learn about business problems that come in different forms—resource optimization problems, pricing to maximize revenue.

IEOR is about using mathematical tools or knowledge to solve business problems. Most people think we just do business stuff that anyone can do, but that’s not true. We learn sophisticated optimization techniques like linear programming and dynamic programming, which intersect with machine learning and AI. That’s really cool.

The second misconception is that industrial engineering is mostly about working in factories or manufacturing, which is true to an extent. The main difference is that IEOR focuses on the theoretical aspect—how to formulate problems, how to solve them, how to optimize by minimizing formulas subject to constraints using solvers or programming languages like Python.

Industrial engineering applies these theories practically, using methodologies like Lean Six Sigma and product management. You can see alumni making an impact in many industries—tech, academia, healthcare, consulting. It’s really cool.

Laura Vogt
Our last conversation today is with an alum that I remember so well. I worked with her many times during her time here at Berkeley as an undergrad. I was excited to catch up with Nanavati Low, hear what she’s been up to, and learn how she chose IEOR. Here’s an excerpt from our conversation.

Nanavati Low
Ever since graduating from Berkeley back in 2016—I graduated with an Industrial Engineering and Operations Research major and minored in History.

Laura Vogt
I’m curious, how did you become an IEOR major to begin with?

Nanavati Low
I love the ability to optimize complex systems, whether it’s supply chain processes or large-scale assembly systems. IEOR offers an opportunity to solve technical and non-technical problems—and fundamentally, that’s really society’s challenge: making better systems, smarter decisions, and more sustainable outcomes for solutions we develop for the world.

Laura Vogt
How did you investigate IEOR or find out what it was?

Nanavati Low
Ultimately, IEOR was a major that encompassed many industries. I was looking for something more general engineering but also wanted to understand the niches within general engineering. Coming out of high school, there are many opportunities, so I did a lot of research.

Laura Vogt
Going back to before you started at Berkeley, what misconceptions did you have about industrial engineering?

Nanavati Low
I used to think IEOR was a niche, but that misconception quickly disappeared. Most students assume it’s about manufacturing and assembly. My first internships were in quality engineering and process engineering, which helped me understand how to break large, complex products down into subassembly problems. Fundamentally, IEOR is that framework.

It may start with something more traditional, like manufacturing, but IEOR has the ability to impact every business because it’s about processes and large assemblies.

For anyone curious about IEOR, start by looking at your favorite industries—tech, medical, environmental—and study how IEOR fits at the company level. Podcasts like this are great to understand strategy, how strategy impacts systems, and to look for problems that interest you.

I think fundamentally, as human beings, we contribute to society by solving each other’s problems and making life more harmonious in a complex world. Look for problems you want to solve, and when you find them, dig deeper and break them down into smaller, tangible, actionable tasks. That is the framework of how industrial engineering refines and shapes problem-solving.

Laura Vogt
Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Exploring Engineering about Industrial Engineering and Operations Research.
Wrapping up—you should know that this major is for you if you want to analyze and improve complex systems, use math and statistics to quantify the world around you, leverage computing when working with large amounts of information, and find ways to save time and resources.

With an IEOR degree, you can be a scientist, analyst, entrepreneur, researcher, designer, consultant, and much more.

Exploring Engineering is only the beginning of learning about IEOR. We encourage you to continue learning more. You can start on our podcast webpage at engineering.berkeley.edu/exploringengineering, where you’ll find links to resources, videos, and more.

And once again, please share this podcast series with your friends, classmates, and schools so that others can learn and explore what being an engineer means to you.