Our department places great importance on developing sustainable long-term relationships that generate immediate return on investment for our partner organizations. We take great pride in being customer-focused and truly hearing and understanding their diverse educational and research needs. We formally engage our educational partners by encouraging them to serve on advisory boards as we continuously improve our curriculum to keep it up-to-date as well as develop courses to meet new challenges and opportunities such as globalization.

Types of Relationships
The relationships take on a variety of forms.

• Applied research projects
• Partner in government-funded research grants
• Specially designed degree programs: e.g. Engineering Management Master's Program (EMMP) and Production Management Leadership Program (PMLP)
• Short courses for technical managers and executives Internships for undergraduate, master's and PhD students
• Consulting projects
• Student capstone projects
• Provide scholarships for students who study targeted areas of need

Leadership
Our efforts are in large part led by retired automotive executives: Sham Rushwin, Bob Luscomb and Jerry Leman each of whom has more than 30 years of experience in addressing the toughest engineering and manufacturing management challenges and opportunities the automotive industry faces. In addition all of the full-time faculty have consulted in a wide variety of organizational settings in the US and around the globe.

List of Relationships
The following is part of a growing list of industrial and organizational relationships:

American Axle
Automotive Components Holding
Arvin Meritor
Beaumont Hospital
Blue Cross and Blue Shield
DaimlerChrysler
Delphi
EDS
Ford
GE Power Systems
GM
Henry Ford Health Systems
Siemens
UPS
Veterans Administration
Visteon