During the 1960s, and after, Universities began to adopt operation research techniques and add them to the curriculum for the Industrial Engineering Degree. Now for the first time the methods of industrial engineering could rest on an analytical foundation, instead of the old method of empiricism. New developments in mathematics for optimization as well as new methods of advanced statistical analysis helped to fill in the holes once left by the purely theoretical approach. However, problems where extremely large and complex to and until the digital computer was developed processing this kind of information was almost impossible.
With Digital Computer and mass storage capabilities the industrial engineer had a brand new tool for calculating massive problems quickly. Prior to the computer computations on a system would take weeks or months if possible at all, but with the computer and the development of sub-routines, calculations could be done in minutes and easily repeated with new problem criteria. With the storage capabilities of the modern digital computer, results from previous systems could be saved and compared with new information. This data gave industrial engineers a powerful way of studying production systems and their reaction to change.