2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Developing a novel Industrial Engineering program in a region rich in manufacturing offers a unique opportunity: the ability to place students directly in a real factory setting rather than replicating it on campus. This paper is a case study of how a regional campus’s industrial engineering (IE) program has created, maintained, and developed relationships with 10 manufacturing partners: Dräxlmaier, Sage Automotive Interiors, OPmobility, Spartanburg Steel, Oshkosh Defense, Rhino Tool, Keurig Dr Pepper, Milo’s, AFL, and SEW-Eurodrive. This paper also discusses how these embedded labs, coined “Labs-in-Industry”, were designed to allow students to experience meaningful manufacturing tasks, engage in structured reflection, and have industry partners become engaged stakeholders in educational design.
At each partner site, students performed tasks aligned with manufacturing practices, such as cycle-time studies, lean/TIMWOODS assessments, material staging, quality testing, Automated Guided Vehicle operations, and interactions with Manufacturing Execution Systems, among others. Prior to visits, lectures were aligned to cover manufacturing processes seen at each site, and students completed prelab quizzes confirming the site, safety rules, and clothing/PPE requirements. After each visit, students completed structured feedback surveys assessing clarity, process exposure, safety compliance, and opportunities for improvement they observed.
The university and IE faculty treat partner companies as a living advisory ecosystem. Effort is made to incorporate the content seen in labs directly into lectures. The IE program offers industry partners early access to student intern or co-op pipelines and ensures that the curriculum addresses their hiring needs.
While no data was explicitly collected, this case study provides qualitative and observational evidence related to the lab-in-industry program and maintenance. Preliminary outcomes on the first Manufacturing course to use the lab-in-industry model are reported alongside the program’s protocols for interacting with and maintaining relationships with industry partners. This partnership-centric, academically grounded lab-in-industry model demonstrates that embedding manufacturing laboratories within regional industry networks is feasible if approached systematically.