This is a review knol for the article Chapter 1.2. The Role and Career of the Industrial Engineer in the Modern Organization in Maynard's Handbook of Industrial Engineering, 2001.
by Chris Billings, Walt Disney World Co., Lake Buena Vista, Florida
Joseph J. Junguzza, Polaroid Corporation, Cambridge, Massachusetts
David F. Poirier, Hudson’s Bay Company, Toronto, Ontario
Shahab Saeed, Mountain Fuel Supply Co., Salt Lake City, Utah
Excerpts from the article
Organizations within North America have struggled to maintain and grow their competitiveness in the 1990s.
Indeed, probably the most commonly asked question of an industrial engineer in the workplace or outside may be, “What do industrial engineers really do?” IIE defines industrial engineering as being “concerned with the design, improvement, and installation of integrated systems of people, materials, information, equipment, and energy. It draws upon specialized knowledge and skill in the mathematical, physical, and social sciences, together with the principles and methods of engineering analysis and design to specify, predict, and evaluate the results to be obtained from such systems.” This definition
certainly does not succinctly describe what industrial engineers do.
From a historical viewpoint, and to some extent still today, industrial engineers are perceived to be stopwatch-and-clipboard-bound supervisors. A hope for the future is that they will come to be known and respected in more enlightened organizations for their roles as troubleshooters, productivity improvement experts, systems analysts, new project managers, continuous process improvement engineers, plant managers, vice presidents of operations, and CEOs.
The industrial engineer’s ability to understand how activities contribute to cost and/or revenue give him or her an advantage in leading divisional or enterprisewide process improvement initiatives. The fact that industrial engineers will spend time to study and thoroughly understand the current activities of an organization and will be able to link changes to improvement in financial terms, makes the industrial engineer a valuable asset to the organization. Understanding the current activities, applying creative solutions to current problems, and measuring their impact in the context of strategy are some of the best contributions an industrial engineer can make. The ability of many industrial engineers to relate to coworkers in different departments such as information systems, operations, and finance makes them great assets in many large organizations.
A survey of one dozen companies reveals the diversity found among the roles that industrial engineers play in various companies. While there are some significant differences, these five general roles are predominate: process improvement expert, systems integrator, change agent, productivity expert, and model developer. In addition to these roles, many industrial engineers play the role of facilitator/team leader on many change initiatives.
Canadian Retailing
Loblaw Companies is the largest retail and wholesale food distributor in Canada with $18 billion (Canadian dollars) in 1999 sales. At Loblaw, industrial engineers have had the opportunity to grow in many ways. There are industrial engineers in almost every division of the business: in operations (retail, distribution, transport), at head office (finance, administration, information systems, procurement), and as change agents, project managers, and internal consultants. Industrial engineers are also present at the executive level of the organization. Industrial engineers have been present in the Loblaw organization for almost 20 years. At first, they were spread around the business to support the core distribution activities, and then they moved to a separate head office division, acting as internal consultants for most
change initiatives happening in the business. The industrial engineering department has since established itself in the business units. Divisions now recognize the value that an industrial engineer brings to a change initiative and most now require that one be assigned before starting the initiative. The department has become involved in every aspect of the business: manufacturing, transport, distribution, logistics, retail, information system design, information flow design, procurement, supply chain management, performance measurement, and more. The department was initially involved in methods engineering and labor measurement initiatives.
Walt Disney World
Industrial engineering at Walt Disney World dates back to the beginning of the company in 1971. Industrial engineers at this time supported the facilities maintenance and central shops (the manufacturing arm of the company) functions, largely facilitating methods improvement, downtime analysis, and job shop planning and scheduling. The industrial engineering organization formally came into existence in the late 1970s and was most recently centralized into its current corporate role in 1988. The role of the IE has evolved tremendously since its inception and today the department supports nearly every part of this expansive business.
Productivity Improvement is the main area of focus in Walt Disney.
Key Success Factors
Be Flexible, but Focused. In whatever role industrial engineers play, they should strive to maintain a focus on value-added work.
Apply Industrial Engineering Concepts to Real-World Problems.
Understand the “Big Picture”—How Change Initiatives Impact the Overall Organization. System thinking is a skill that every industrial engineer should possess. Understanding how a change can impact an organization is essential in truly having a positive impact on the bottom line. It is easy to perform a process improvement on a subsystem, but understanding and conveying how it benefits the whole organization is what’s really important.
Understand and Analyze the Current Processes Accurately. To understand current processes an industrial engineer must live the day-to-day reality of the shop floor. (*To analyze accurately, first monitor new knowledge continuously. Collect catalogues and brochures related to all elements of all resources being used in your organization.)
Manage Change. People manage all processes. If the people affected by the changes are not convinced of the solution, there are many ways in which they can contribute to its failure (IEs are the change agents. They evaluate the usefulness of all new commercial offerings related to various elements of resources being used in their organization).
Follow Through on Implementation. The goal of an industrial engineer is to create value. It is up to the industrial engineer to ensure that a measurement or tracking system is put into place, following a project implementation. Benefits as well as project costs should be tracked to the bottom line.
Be Creative. The ability to see current reality and generate new ideas is what brings the most value to any changing organization. (Creativity is combining the problem with an idea around in a novel way to solve the problem. Creativity comes out of knowledge of many possible solution ideas, the awareness of the problem to be solved and a thinking that tries to integrate the problem with the possible ideas. Creative people go on discussing the issue with many persons individually or in groups, read a lot, search a lot and think a lot.)
Communicate Clearly. To put ideas into practice, an industrial engineer must also possess excellent verbal and written communication skills. Most of the process improvements recommended by industrial engineers involve techniques or technologies that can be complex. These solutions could have a sizable impact on the business but may require significant investments. The ability to present recommendations to decision makers in a way that they can readily comprehend requires that industrial engineers work on creating clarity.
Lack of Appreciation for the Discipline. Industrial engineering is a discipline that needs to be continually sold. Industrial engineers have been grappling with the profession’s image for the last 50 years as evidenced by letters to the editor in the first issue of the Journal of Industrial Engineering in June 1949 about the necessity of selling industrial engineering.
Failure to Align with Key Business Challenges. Whether the business strategy involves growth or cost containment, industrial engineers need to position themselves to contribute the greatest value.
Failure to Evolve. industrial engineers have the responsibility of marketing themselves. Those who do a good job of this are likely to reap the benefits of new opportunities that appear on the landscape before other so-called experts are called in.
Important Key Success Factors can be arranged in a sequence.
Understand and Analyze the Current Processes Accurately.
(Understand [Observe, Document and Study] and Analyze [Up-to-date Engineering Knowledge])
Be Creative.
Communicate Clearly.
Manage Change.
Follow Through on Implementation.
This can also be expressed as:
Productivity Science - Productivity Engineering - Productivity Management
Productivity Science - Indicates the direction in which productivity will increase. It also indicates variables which are to be modified appropriately to get increase in productivity.
Productivity Engineering - Industrial engineers have to do primarily modifications in engineering elements of operations and processes. Then they have to redesign the work place layout and motion patterns of the operators to operate the machines and tools and to provide material inputs. As part of productivity engineering, industrial engineers have to develop engineering concepts and detailed engineering. Detailed engineering can be done by IE department personnel, or other engineering departments within the company or external engineering consultants.
The following activities are part of productivity engineering.
Understand and Analyze the Current Processes Accurately.
(Understand [Observe, Document and Study] and Analyze [Up-to-date Engineering Knowledge])
Be Creative (in developing solutions).
Productivity Management: Industrial engineering work needs to be managed like any other industrial or business activity.
Communicate Clearly.
Manage Change.
Follow Through on Implementation.
The above three activities are part of productivity management task of industrial engineers.
Additional Material
Industrial Engineering
(Florida International University)
The role of industrial engineer has increased and is critical to a company's financial success, as the technologies that must be integrated are increasingly complicated and costly, and the competition in the world marketplace is great.
Industrial Engineer Career & Salary
You can make a good living as an Industrial Engineer. In 2002, the United States Department of Labor issued the median annual salary for the industrial engineers at $62,150. By 2007, that median had risen to $73,490.
In 2007, the National Association of Colleges and Employers conducted a survey that revealed people with bachelor’s degrees in Industrial engineering were being offered average beginning wages of $55,067, while master’s degree graduates were averaging $64,759, and Ph.D. graduates were being offered average beginning salaries of $77,364.
Source:
http://www.guidetoonlineschools.com/career/industrial-engineer.html
Originally posted in knol by me
Number 1046
Traditionally, the role of industrial engineer focuses on efficiency and quality. However, in order to respond to current challenges and address all the complexities of today’s business environment, total performance excellence is the trend to ensure the business sustainability. Now, industrial engineering graduates can take a part to assist the organization to turn the corner towards performance excellence and make progress to win the awards.
The following role summary is a good description
Role Summary -Industrial Engineer-Athletic Footwear
The role of Industrial Engineer is to identify and implement improvements to processes by analyzing current processes and utilizing established improvement methodologies to maximize the efficiency of equipment and personnel and to support company improvement initiatives. The Industrial Engineer performs the leading role in improving process efficiency in manufacturing facilities, and analyzes and specifies integrated components of people, machines, and facilities to create efficient and effective systems that produce footwear to the highest performance and quality. And the key roles of the position are as below:
1)Plans utilization of facilities, equipment, materials, and personnel to improve efficiency of operations and establishes work measurement programs and analyzes work samples to develop standards for labor utilization.
2)Studies functional statements, organization charts, and project information to determine functions and responsibilities of workers and work units and to identify areas of duplication and analyzes work force utilization, facility layout, and operational data, such as production costs, process flow charts, and production schedules, to determine efficient utilization of workers and equipment.
3)Recommends methods for improving worker efficiency and reducing waste of materials and utilities, such as restructuring job duties, reorganizing work flow, relocating work stations and equipment, and purchase of equipment.
4)Confers with management and production engineering staff to implement plans and recommendations.
5)Estimate production cost and effect of product design changes for management review, action, and control.
Role Requirements:
-Bachelor's Degree in Industrial Engineering, Business or related disciplines OR
-With at least 8 years experience, typically in development, engineering and/or production with relevant footwear product experience preferred. Significant exposure with a variety of manufacturing processes, materials, costing, pricing and determining margins would be an asset.
-Thorough knowledge of footwear components, technologies, engineering and advanced product construction concepts and understanding and diversified working experience of the tools that support the product creation process, and with a well understanding of the connectivity between business and innovation.
-Ability to communicating the complex concepts, developing partnerships and demonstrating the influencing skills.
-Good command of written and spoken English & Chinese.
-Computer Proficiency.
The industrial engineering is often called the people oriented engineering discipline, because it does not only consider the behavior of inanimate objects as they are governed by physical laws, but also the behavior of people as they operate together in organizations. This discipline is concerned with the integrated systems of people, and the design, improvement and installation of materials and equipment. Industrial engineers design methods and process to achieve the efficiency in the integrated system. Some integrated working system arise in industry and manufacturing, while others are found in a variety of non-industrial settings ranging from healthcare and education to financial centers and government.
Originally posted in Knol
http://knol.google.com/k/ the-purpose-and-evolution-of-industrial-engineering#
Knol number 538
Ud. 6.7.2025, 25.5.2022
Pub 6.2.2012
