Problem Solved: The IISE Podcast

Problem Solved is a clear, practice-minded look at industrial and systems engineering in the places where decisions become consequences. It is not a theory showcase. The show follows engineers, ergonomists, healthcare improvement professionals, designers, students, and conference speakers as they explain how complex systems are shaped, tested, and improved. A site-selection conversation with Ramya Gowda turns location choice into a model of labor availability, drive times, real estate, disaster risk, cost of living, stakeholder priorities, and long-range defensibility. That level of operational detail is typical. The show likes the step behind the outcome. Applied Ergo episodes bring listeners onto the conference floor, where safety professionals and exhibitors talk about AI, exoskeletons, wearables, computer vision, hand and wrist models, and the practical limits of matching a product to a process. Keynote conversations widen the frame. Cassini Nazir connects curiosity, trust, empathy, and interaction design to tools students build for people with tremors, arthritis, or Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. Dr. Mark Benden talks about ergonomic ideas moving beyond prototypes toward commercialization and impact. Healthcare episodes carry a similar concern for fit and context. HSPI interviews ask what improvement professionals should do with AI, how communication breaks down through technology, and why leadership has to understand people, processes, and tools together. The show also reaches outside familiar workplace settings. Dr. Natalie Scala’s election-security episode treats ballots, poll worker training, usability, public trust, and organizational context as systems problems. Aly Kamel’s burnout conversation applies input-process-output thinking to sleep, energy, focus, recovery, clarity, health, and long-term growth. The format is polished but not flashy. Its strongest moments come when professional language gives way to practical examples: a voting app, a safer workstation, a better training process, a more humane routine. Problem Solved is for listeners who want improvement work explained by the people doing it, with enough detail to be useful and enough range to show why systems thinking matters beyond the factory floor.