Shortcomings of Industrial Engineering Discipline and Profession - 2020

What are Shortcomings of Industrial Engineering Discipline and Profession as reviewed in the year 2020?

The biggest shortcoming of industrial engineering discipline is that engineering component of the discipline is not adequately organized.

This weakness was pointed in 1908 itself. But still the discipline has not done the proper correction for it.


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Engineering in Industrial Engineering - Product/Process Industrial Engineering

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_Hv0JH9OkQ

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IISE publishes issues of IISE Transactions in the area of Design and Manufacturing. But the issues are not adequately integrated with industrial engineering implications. Industrial engineers have to continuously update their engineering knowledge to use it in industrial engineering. Industrial engineers have to opportunity and potential to invent or discover in the engineering field and it has to be communicated to the engineering profession so that those discoveries and inventions are captured in future designs. Industrial engineering as evolved is redesign of products and process during operations. The first design of products and processes are carried out engineers who specialize in the concerned products and processes. Industrial engineers are part of operations teams, who use the data generated in operations, do special studies and experiments and redesign the products (product industrial engineering) and processes (process industrial engineering) with the primary focus on cost reduction or productivity improvement.  They have to consider and understand all dimensions of product and process performance as any redesign has to make sure that there is no negative impact on the system level of performance of the product, process extending up to the entire organization.

Production engineers are conscious of productivity. In the book "Metal Cutting Theory and Practice" Stephenson - Agapiou provide many relations between variables of machine tools, cutting tools and accessories and productivity. They also quote the contribution of F.W. Taylor in increasing the productivity of machining operations. Industrial engineers do not have textbooks that discuss the relation between productivity and various developments in engineering.

The statements related to productivity given by Stephenson - Agapiou can be read in Productivity Science of Machining - Stephenson - Agapiou.

Industrial Engineering and Human Effort.

Industrial Engineering is System Efficiency Engineering and Human Effort Engineering.

Engineering Improvement First - Training the Man in the New Way of Engineering Second. Observing and Improving Human Effort Third

Shortcoming of Industrial Engineering Profession

Industrial engineers are shy of making public their contribution. They are behaving as though the cost reduction achieved by them has to be kept secret from public and their colleagues in the profession. Such a belief is wrong thinking. Cost reduction done by industrial engineers will ultimately help consumers and employees. There may be a lag in passing on the benefit to consumers in some or many instances. But it will get reflected and consumers get benefit. Every industrial engineer must account for the cost reduction and productivity improvement he has achieved and share with his profession. The details may not be shared, but the principles that were found useful can be shared. At the end of the day, society benefits when any profession delivers its services at the highest level using the available knowledge. Each industrial engineer is responsible for the development of his profession and the designation. 

I am doing a study of IE practice in top global engineering companies, I find all industrial engineers prefer to be silent on their achievements in their companies. This behavior has to change to elevate the IE profession.

The articles on IE practices in various companies are available in: 

Industrial Engineering Practice in Top 100 Global Manufacturing Companies