What is Industrial Engineering?

The Engineer

10 years ago

Industrial engineering is known by a myriad of names such as operations management, management science, operations research, systems engineering etc and can be defined as the field of engineering that deals with optimizing complex processes or systems. It tackles the development, implementation, improvement and evaluation of any complex system that is concerned with money, information, people, energy, equipment or health. So, in short, you could say that it is the application of knowledge to design complex systems and to predict the results of such systems.

Industrial Engineering Sub Disciplines

Industrial engineering has been divided into a number of sub-disciplines which are as follows;

Operations research and optimization techniques
Engineering economics
Supply chain management and logistics
Systems simulation and stochastic processes
System dynamics and policy planning
System analysis and techniques
Manufacturing systems/manufacturing engineering
Human factors engineering and ergonomics (safety engineering)
Production planning and control
Management sciences
Computer-aided manufacturing

Top Industrial Engineering Universities

The top three ranked universities when it comes to Industrial Engineering are as follows;

Georgia Institute of Technology
University of Michigan
Northwestern University

Industrial Engineering Associations

There are a myriad of associations pertaining to Industrial engineering but we shall list only three;

IIE
ASQ
ASEM

Being an Industrial Engineer

Being an industrial engineer will require you to understand complex systems. You’ll need a firm grip on science, mathematics and engineering methods since you’ll be applying them for the sake of system integration and operations. An industrial engineer works with a broad system that is complex in nature and therefore, skills and knowledge pertaining to a number of disciplines is necessary. You will have to work on your communication skills since you will be dealing with a lot of people while working in this field. In a nutshell; you will be analyzing, designing, planning and evaluating systems.