WORKSHOP: Engineering the Service Sector (ESS); Atlanta, Georgia, July 23-24, 2001

Georgia Tech Research Corporation, Atlanta GA

Investigators

Abstract

This grant provides funding for a workshop on Engineering the Service Sector (ESS) to be held at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, Georgia. The workshop will help shape a small initiative on ESS planned for the late Fall of 2001 that will transition into a new program element within the Division of Design and Industrial Innovation (DMII). Issues include the boundaries of the basic research agenda for using engineering tools and problem solving techniques to address critical problems in major service industries such as health care, finance, retail and transportation, and how solutions already available in manufacturing can be adapted to service applications. Success with this workshop should position the Division of Design, Manufacture and Industrial InnovationI and the National Science Foundation to play a more active role in understanding and improving the roughly 80% of the U.S. economy involved in service activity, as well as raise new modeling and analysis challenges that will yield tools for all engineering.