Economic globalization demands an approach to manufacturing that considers the whole world. IPS, as a state-of-the-art educational research base for the Asia-Pacific region, trains the highly-specialized professional engineers required in an age of internationalization.

Many international students from various countries in Asia and other regions are currently enrolled in IPS. It is a multicultural environment in which interchange among different cultures and intellectual traditions leads naturally to a cosmopolitan world view.

IPS actively pursues tie-ups and research exchanges with leading overseas universities such as UCB (University of California, Berkeley), EPFL(Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne), KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology), National Taiwan University, Tsinghua University, Indian Institute of Science, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Nanjing Univercity, Zhejing Univercity, Fudan Univercity, and Thammasat Univercity.

Kitakyushu City has a manufacturing tradition that goes back more than 100 years. More recently, it has been actively promoting a state-of-the-art system-LSI industry. IPS takes a distinctive approach to educational research that makes use of the advanced techniques and know-how accumulated in the region.

The industries of the region possess a wealth of human resources and experience. IPS makes good use of this know-how for practical education, while providing recurrent education that allows people already pursuing careers to shuttle between the enterprise and the graduate school.

Through participation in such joint efforts of industry, academia, and government as the Kitakyushu Human Technology Cluster Plan and the Regional R&D Innovation Project, IPS feeds the benefits of its research back into the region and contributes to the creation of new industries.