What is
Industrial Engineering?
Presentation for the pre-college audience
IIE-IAB
Ver: 070121c
So what is Industrial Engineering about?
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Industrial Engineering is:
– All about making things better and more efficient for people or machines by solving
problems
– An officially recognized university engineering program like mechanical or electrical
engineering
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Where do Industrial Engineers (I.E.’s) work?
IE’s work in nearly every large organization through out the world in a variety of area’s to
make things better for workers and their organizations. To categorize the work types into
three main groups, think of manufacturing, service and consulting. Examples include:
– Manufacturing:
• Boeing
• General Motors
• DuPont
– Service:
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Disney
Starbucks
Kaiser Permanente
UPS
– Consulting
– Government
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What does an IE do?
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Industrial Engineers do many different things. A few include:
– Working with people to improve, machinery and information systems
• Help make workers jobs easier, safer and more efficient
• Figuring out the best way to do things
– Partner with managers and workers to help both understand each other so that
everyone can do things in the best way possible
– Use a variety of analytical tools to figure out problems and make
recommendations
• Computer simulation, think of this as “Sim City” on steroids
• Excel -• Observation studies; looking at something, figuring out what is going on and how it
could be done better or faster
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What do you do as an IE?
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IE’s can do ANYTHING! Once you become an industrial engineer, you will have
the key skill sets to analyze, quantify, propose and implement ‘process’ changes
within ANY organization. If there is a process going on that could use
improvements, IE’s are needed. As thought starters, IE’s can do:
– Productivity and process improvement projects
• Acting as the internal consultant to review various processes to improve operational goals
– Figuring out how more people can ride a roller coaster per hour
– Performance Measurements
• Determining what standards and key performance indicators should be in place to determine if
the process is doing better or worse
– Providing a tool which informs the roller coaster manager how many people per hour rode the coaster
for the same period last year, what their new target goals are now and what they actually did yesterday
– Project Development
• IE’s are often requested to be involved in core development projects to provide balance and
provide the ‘big picture’
– Part of the core design team to add additional seats to the roller coaster
– Operations Planning
• Partnering with various operating teams to ‘figure out’ what the best solutions are for running
the business
– Determining the impact of labor so that there is the ‘right’ number of employees supporting the coaster
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during various days and roller coaster operating hours
What are the qualities of an Industrial
Engineer?
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IE’s are usually ‘people persons’
– A lot of what an IE does has to do with working with a variety of workers and
managers. IE’s add value when they can listen to all sides, figure out the best
option and help with implementation
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Can understand what is going on and can often think of a better way to do it
by being better, faster and more efficient
– Common sense is often the foundation of good IE work. An IE education just
takes it to the next level by providing the analytical tools to quantify both the facts
and the ‘feelings’ of what is being studied
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Like working with numbers to figure out the answer
– As in all formal engineering programs, IE’s use math as a key tool to find the
truth in options
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Enjoys figuring out how things work
– If you enjoy ‘discovery’ type TV shows like on the ‘Discovery Channel’ or
‘Mythbusters’, you probably have the aptitude to be an IE
– Find yourself taking things apart to figure out how they work
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Why haven’t I ever heard of Industrial
Engineering?
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You probably have heard of industrial engineering but didn’t know you had.
Since the skills of an IE are best designed to improve something, IE’s are
often the preferred skill set to be placed in various departments which may
not hold the industrial engineering title. Examples of what industrial
engineers are called include:
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Program Managers
Process Engineers
Efficiency Consultants
Human Factors Specialist
Production Coordinators
Planners / Schedulers
Lean Implementers
Kaizan Leaders
Executive (IE’s have proven to have the highest success rate to become
managers, directors, vice presidents and senior executives of many companies)
IE’s are also found in operations, finance, business and strategic planning,
training, safety and many other departments outside of engineering
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How do I become an Industrial Engineer?
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The best (and most efficient) approach to become an industrial engineer is
to set your sites on an being accepted into an accredited university
– The Institute of Industrial Engineering (IIE) partners with the ABET
(www.abet.org) as the formal organization which certifies each university IE
program meets or exceeds standards and provides a searchable list on their site
of various universities
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Once you identified your target universities, seek out their requirements for
the program with the aid of a school councilor. As in all engineering
programs math will be important but you don’t need to have 4.0’s in all of
your math classes. Most universities look for a rounded student who can
work with people
– As a suggestion, most universities will host an engineering day on campus and
are often willing to talk to prospective students. Remember, good IE’s are often
good communicators so don’t be shy about asking
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Another great resource is to look at the IIE web site at www.iienet.org
For any questions, call (800) 494-0460 x999 or email us at 411@iienet.org
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What are examples of interesting / fun IE
Projects?
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Service Industry (shipping company)
– “I was assigned to one of our main jet gateway airports to help during our peak
Christmas period helping operations. Due to bad weather, a lot of aircraft were
delayed and we were all working on options to recover the packages for delivery
which extended over 100 miles from the airport. Because of our ability to partner
with the air operations, we identified that the urgent packages were all for one
area which had a small jet gateway. We quickly quantified the impact of the
landing the aircraft in the main gateway versus re-routing it to the smaller
gateway which supported landing the aircraft in the smaller gateway. This midflight change saved the company hundreds of hours in extra labor and most
importantly allowed the area to deliver their Christmas packages to the
customers that day.”
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Questions?
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IE’s
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