The focus of the Center for Services Research and Education (CSRE) is on services research and education. It draws extensively from what has happened at RPI’s Department of Decision Sciences and Engineering Systems (DSES) in regard to services research and education. More specifically, DSES’ Center for Services Research and Education (CSRE) – established in 1990 – has been responsible for our substantial activities in furthering services research and services education.

Several factors have accounted for our progress in services research. First, the department, formally established in 1987, brought together faculty from science (in operations research), management (in information systems and statistics) and engineering (in industrial and systems engineering) – that is, from those disciplines that are coincidentally required for services research.

Second, a majority of the DSES faculty has always had a research interest in services, especially in public (including transportation and infrastructure) and financial services.

Third, we have advanced services research by exploiting similarities, complementarities and differences between services and manufacturing, while building on the extensive research in manufacturing.

Fourth, the department’s decision informatics (i.e., decision-driven, information-based, real-time, continuously-adaptive, customer-centric and computationally-intensive) approach to data analysis (e.g., fusion, mining), decision modeling (e.g., genetic algorithms, simulation), and systems engineering (e.g., Bayesian networks, distributed control) is especially appropriate for developing innovative and customized electronic services.

Fifth, we have been particularly mindful of the intellectual property issues associated with services, especially in contrast to those associated with manufactured goods and products. Coincidentally, following the establishment of DSES in 1987 and based on our services research, we have revised our courses and curricula to be more services relevant, at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. We have revised and expanded our undergraduate program in Industrial and Management Engineering and inaugurated a Master’s program in Services and Systems Engineering and Technology Management.

Researchers at CRSE view services as systems that require integration with other systems and processes, over both time and space; in fact, we make a case for further developing a branch of systems engineering that focuses on problems and issues which arise in the services sector. In this manner, we demonstrate how the traditional systems approach to analysis, control and optimization can be applied to a system of systems that are each within the province of a distinct service provider. We underscore this special focus not only because of the size and importance of the services sector but also because of the unique systems engineering opportunities that can be exploited in the design and joint production and delivery of services.