Industrial engineering is a branch of engineering which deals with the optimization of complex
processes or systems. It is concerned with the development, improvement, implementation
and evaluation of integrated systems of people, money, knowledge, information, equipment,
energy, materials, analysis and synthesis, as well as the mathematical, physical and
social sciences together with the principles and methods of engineering design to specify,
predict, and evaluate the results to be obtained from such systems or processes. Its underlying
concepts overlap considerably with certain business-oriented disciplines such as operations
management. Depending on the subspecialties involved,
industrial engineering may also be known as, or overlap with, operations management, management
science, operations research, systems engineering, management engineering, manufacturing engineering,
ergonomics or human factors engineering, safety engineering, or others, depending on the viewpoint
or motives of the user. For example, in health care, the engineers known as health management
engineers or health systems engineers are, in essence, industrial engineers by another
name.
Overview While the term originally applied to manufacturing,
the use of "industrial" in "industrial engineering" can be somewhat misleading, since it has grown
to encompass any methodical or quantitative approach to optimizing how a process, system,
or organization operates. Some engineering universities and educational agencies around
the world have changed the term "industrial" to broader terms such as "production" or "systems",
leading to the typical extensions noted above. In fact, the primary U.S. professional organization
for Industrial Engineers, the Institute of Industrial Engineers has been considering
changing its name to something broader, although the latest vote among membership deemed this
unnecessary for the time being. The various topics concerning industrial engineers
include management science, work-study, financial engineering, engineering management, supply
chain management, process engineering, operations research, systems engineering, ergonomics
/ safety engineering, cost and value engineering, quality engineering, facilities planning,
and the engineering design process. Traditionally, a major aspect of industrial engineering was
planning the layouts of factories and designing assembly lines and other manufacturing paradigms.
And now, in so-called lean manufacturing systems, industrial engineers work to eliminate wastes
of time, money, materials, energy, and other resources.
Examples of where industrial engineering might be used include flow process charting, process
mapping, designing an assembly workstation, strategizing for various operational logistics,
consulting as an efficiency expert, developing a new financial algorithm or loan system for
a bank, streamlining operation and emergency room location or usage in a hospital, planning
complex distribution schemes for materials or products, and shortening lines at a bank,
hospital, or a theme park. Modern industrial engineers typically use
predetermined motion time system, computer simulation, along with extensive mathematical
tools and modeling and computational methods for system analysis, evaluation, and optimization.
History
Efforts to apply science to the design of processes and of production systems were made
by many people in the 18th and 19th centuries. They took some time to evolve and to be synthesized
into disciplines that we would label with names such as industrial engineering, production
engineering, or systems engineering. For example, precursors to industrial engineering included
some aspects of military science; the quest to develop manufacturing using interchangeable
parts; the development of the armory system of manufacturing; the work of Henri Fayol
and colleagues; and the work of Frederick Winslow Taylor and colleagues. In the late
19th century, such efforts began to inform consultancy and higher education. The idea
of consulting with experts about process engineering naturally evolved into the idea of teaching
the concepts as curriculum. Industrial engineering courses were taught
by multiple universities in Europe at the end of the 19th century, including in Germany,
France, the United Kingdom, and Spain. In the United States, the first department of
industrial and manufacturing engineering was established in 1909 at the Pennsylvania State
University. The first doctoral degree in industrial engineering was awarded in the 1930s by Cornell
University. In general it can be said that the foundations
of industrial engineering as it looks today, began to be built in the twentieth century.
The first half of the century was characterized by an emphasis on increasing efficiency and
reducing industrial organizations their costs. In 1909, Frederick Taylor published his theory
of scientific management, which included accurate analysis of human labor, systematic definition
of methods, tools and training for employees. Taylor dealt in time using timers, set standard
times and managed to increase productivity while reducing labor costs and increasing
the wages and salaries of the employees. In 1912 Henry Laurence Gantt developed the
Gantt chart which outlines actions the organization along with their relationships. This chart
opens later form familiar to us today by Wallace Clark.
Assembly lines: moving car factory of Henry Ford accounted for a significant leap forward
in the field. Ford reduced the assembly time of a car more than 700 hours to 1.5 hours.
In addition, he was a pioneer of the economy of the capitalist welfare and the flag of
providing financial incentives for employees to increase productivity.
Comprehensive quality management system developed in the forties was gaining momentum after
World War II and was part of the recovery of Japan after the war.
In 1960 to 1975, with the development of decision support systems in supply such as the MRP,
you can emphasize the timing issue of industrial organization. Israeli scientist Dr. Jacob
Rubinovitz installed the CMMS program developed in IAI and Control-Data in 1976 in South Africa
and worldwide. In the seventies, with the penetration of
Japanese management theories such as Kaizen and Kanban West, was transferred to highlight
issues of quality, delivery time, and flexibility. In the nineties, following the global industry
globalization process, the emphasis was on supply chain management, and customer-oriented
business process design. Theory of constraints developed by an Israeli scientist Eliyahu
M. Goldratt is also a significant milestone in the field.
University programs Many universities have BS, MS, MTech and PhD
programs available. US News and World Report's article on "America's Best Colleges 2012"
lists schools offering undergraduate engineering specialities in Industrial or Manufacturing
Engineering. Penn State University had the first Industrial Engineering Department in
the U.S. The Georgia Institute of Technology has been ranked as having the best Industrial
Engineering program in the United States consecutively for twenty-two years while the University
of Michigan, Ann Arbor and University of California, Berkeley have been consistently ranked second
and third, respectively. One of the best known international graduate
programs in Europe can be found at Aalborg University in Copenhagen, Denmark, under the
title Global Systems Design. The program is successful in particular due to the involvement
of companies and the use of real use-cases throughout the program.
In Asia, Anna University in India includes Industrial Engineering in its undergraduate
curriculum. The Mechanical Engineering Department conducts research into applications in the
manufacturing industry, mainly the apparel industry, with linkages to European, American
and other institutions. Many universities in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan also have
such linked programs. Undergraduate curriculum
In the United States, the usual undergraduate degree earned is the Bachelor of Science or
B.S. in Industrial Engineering. Like most undergraduate engineering programs, the typical
curriculum includes a broad math and science foundation spanning chemistry, physics, engineering
design, system analysis and design, calculus, differential equations, statistics, materials
science, engineering mechanics, computer science, circuits and electronics, and often additional
specialized courses in areas such as management, systems theory, ergonomics/safety, stochastics,
advanced mathematics and computation, politics, robotics and economics. Some universities
require international credits to complete the BS degree.. In South Africa, either the
BEng(Industrial) or the BSc(Industrial) can be obtained at different universities, but
the degrees are quite similar in content. Postgraduate curriculum
The usual postgraduate degree earned is the Master of Science in industrial engineering,
production engineering, industrial engineering & management, manufacturing engineering & management
or industrial engineering & operations research. The typical MS curriculum includes:
Salaries and workforce statistics United States
The total number of engineers employed in the US in 2006 was roughly 1.5 million. Of
these, 201,000 were industrial engineers, the third most popular engineering specialty.
The average starting salaries were $55,067 with a bachelor's degree, $64,759 with a master's
degree, and $77,364 with a doctorate degree. This places industrial engineering at 7th
of 15 among engineering bachelors degrees, 3rd of 10 among masters degrees, and 2nd of
7 among doctorate degrees in average annual salary. The median annual income of industrial
engineers in the U.S. workforce is $68,620. Norway
The average total starting salary in 2011 for Norwegian industrial engineers is NOK
5050 ,100, while the average total salary in general is NOK 1,049,054.
See also Notes
Further reading Badiru, A.. Handbook of industrial and systems
engineering. CRC Press. ISBN 0-8493-2719-9. Blanchard, B. and Fabrycky, W.. Systems Engineering
and Analysis. Prentice-Hall. ISBN 0-13-186977-9. Salvendy, G.. Handbook of industrial engineering:
Technology and operations management. Wiley-Interscience. ISBN 0-471-33057-4.
Turner, W. et al.. Introduction to industrial and systems engineering. Prentice Hall. ISBN
0-13-481789-3. Eliyahu M. Goldratt, Jeff Cox: The Goal”.
North River Press; 2nd Rev edition. ISBN 0-88427-061-0; 20th Anniversary edition 0-88427-178-1
Miller, Doug, Towards Sustainable Labour Costing in UK Fashion Retail. Available at SSRN: http:ssrn.com/abstract=2212100
or http:dx.doi.orgssrn.2212100 Malakooti, B.. Operations and Production Systems
with Multiple Objectives. John Wiley & Sons.ISBN 978-1-118-58537-5