INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING:
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE
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CHAPTER 1.1
THE PURPOSE AND EVOLUTION OF INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING
Louis A. Martin-Vega
National Science Foundation Arlington, Virginia
The historical events that led to the birth of industrial engineering provide significant insights into many of the principles that dominated its practice and development throughout the first half of the twentieth century. While these principles continue to impact the profession, many other conceptual and technological developments that currently shape and continue to mold the practice of the profession originated in the second half of the twentieth century. The objective of this chapter is to briefly summarize major events that have contributed to the birth and evolution of industrial engineering and assist in identifying common elements that continue to impact the purpose and objectives of the profession.
INTRODUCTION
Born in the late nineteenth century, industrial engineering is a dynamic profession whose growth has been fueled by the challenges and demands of manufacturing, government, and service organizations throughout the twentieth century. It is also a profession whose future depends not only on the ability of its practitioners to react to and facilitate operational and organizational change but, more important, on their ability to anticipate, and therefore lead, the change process itself.
The historical events that led to the birth of industrial engineering provide significant insights into many of the principles that dominated its practice and development throughout the first half of the twentieth century. While these principles continue to impact the profession, many of the conceptual and technological developments that currently shape and will continue to mold the practice of the profession originated in the second half of the twentieth century.The objective of this chapter is to briefly summarize the evolution of industrial engineering and in so doing assist in identifying those common elements that define the purpose and objectives of the profession. We hope that the reader will be sufficiently interested in the historical events to pursue more comprehensive and basic sources including Emerson and Naehring [1], Saunders [2], Shultz [3], Nadler [4], Pritsker [5], and Turner et al. [6]. Since the history of industrial engi- neering is strongly linked to the history of manufacturing, the reader is also advised to refer to Hopp and Spearman [7] for a particularly interesting and relevant exposition of the history of American manufacturing. This chapter draws heavily on these works and their references.
EARLY ORIGINS
Before entering into the history of the profession, it is important to note that the birth and evolution of industrial engineering are analogous to those of its engineering predecessors.
Even though there are centuries-old examples of early engineering practice and accomplish- ments, such as the Pyramids, the Great Wall of China, and the Roman construction projects, it was not until the eighteenth century that the first engineering schools appeared in France. The need for greater efficiency in the design and analysis of bridges, roads, and buildings resulted in principles of early engineering concerned primarily with these topics being taught first in military academies (military engineering). The application of these principles to nonmilitary or civilian endeavors led to the term civil engineering. Interrelated advancements in the fields of physics and mathematics laid the groundwork for the development and application of mechanical principles. The need for improvements in the design and analysis of materials and devices such as pumps and engines resulted in the emergence of mechanical engineering as a distinct field in the early nineteenth century. Similar circumstances, albeit for different tech- nologies, can be ascribed to the emergence and development of electrical engineering and chemical engineering. As has been the case with all these fields, industrial engineering devel- oped initially from empirical evidence and understanding and then from research to develop a more scientific base.
The Industrial Revolution
Even though historians of science and technology continue to argue about when industrial engineering began, there is a general consensus that the empirical roots of the profession date back to the Industrial Revolution, which began in England during the mideighteenth century.
The events of this era dramatically changed manufacturing practices and served as the gene- sis for many concepts that influenced the scientific birth of the field a century later. The driving forces behind these developments were the technological innovations that helped mechanize many traditional manual operations in the textile industry. These include the fly- ing shuttle developed by John Kay in 1733, the spinning jenny invented by James Hargreaves in 1765, and the water frame developed by Richard Arkwright in 1769. Perhaps the most important innovation, however, was the steam engine developed by James Watt in 1765. By making steam practical as a power source for a host of applications, Watt’s invention freed manufacturers from their reliance on waterpower, opening up far greater freedom of location and industrial organization. It also provided cheaper power, which led to lower production costs, lower prices, and greatly expanded markets. By facilitating the substitution of capital for labor, these innovations generated economies of scale that made mass production in central- ized locations attractive for the first time. The concept of a production system, which lies at the core of modern industrial engineering practice and research, had its genesis in the facto- ries created as a result of these innovations.
Specialization of Labor
The concepts presented by Adam Smith in his treatise The Wealth of Nations also lie at the foundation of what eventually became the theory and practice of industrial engineering. His writings on concepts such as the division of labor and the “invisible hand” of capitalism served to motivate many of the technological innovators of the Industrial Revolution to establish and implement factory systems. Examples of these developments include Arkwright’s imple- mentation of management control systems to regulate production and the output of factory workers, and the well-organized factory that Watt, together with an associate, Matthew Boul- ton, built to produce steam engines. The efforts of Watt and Boulton and their sons led to the 1.4 INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE
planning and establishment of the first integrated machine manufacturing facility in the world, including the implementation of concepts such as a cost control system designed to decrease waste and improve productivity and the institution of skills training for craftsmen.
Many features of life in the twentieth century including widespread employment in large- scale factories, mass production of inexpensive goods, the rise of big business, and the exis- tence of a professional manager class are a direct consequence of the contributions of Smith and Watt.
Another early contributor to concepts that eventually became associated with industrial engineering was Charles Babbage. The findings that he made as a result of visits to factories in England and the United States in the early 1800s were documented in his book entitled On the Economy of Machinery and Manufacturers. The book includes subjects such as the time required for learning a particular task, the effects of subdividing tasks into smaller and less detailed elements, the time and cost savings associated with changing from one task to another, and the advantages to be gained by repetitive tasks. In his classic example on the manufacture of straight pins, Babbage extends the work of Adam Smith on the division of labor by showing that money could be saved by assigning lesser-paid workers (in those days women and children) to lesser-skilled operations and restricting the higher-skilled, higher- paid workers to only those operations requiring higher skill levels. Babbage also discusses notions related to wage payments, issues related to present-day profit sharing plans, and even ideas associated with the organization of labor and labor relations. It is important to note, however, that even though much of Babbage’s work represented a departure from conven- tional wisdom in the early nineteenth century, he restricted his work to that of observing and did not try to improve the methods of making the product, to reduce the times required, or to set standards of what the times should be.
Interchangeability of Parts
Another key development in the history of industrial engineering was the concept of inter- changeable parts. The feasibility of the concept as a sound industrial practice was proven through the efforts of Eli Whitney and Simeon North in the manufacture of muskets and pis- tols for the U.S. government. Prior to the innovation of interchangeable parts, the making of a product was carried out in its entirety by an artisan, who fabricated and fitted each required piece. Under Whitney’s system, the individual parts were mass-produced to tolerances tight enough to enable their use in any finished product. The division of labor called for by Adam Smith could now be carried out to an extent never before achievable, with individual workers producing single parts rather than completed products. The result was a significant reduction in the need for specialized skills on the part of the workers—a result that eventually led to the industrial environment, which became the object of study of Frederick W. Taylor.
PIONEERS OF INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING
Taylor and Scientific Management
While Frederick W. Taylor did not use the term industrial engineering in his work, his writings and talks are generally credited as being the beginning of the discipline. One cannot presume to be well versed in the origins of industrial engineering without reading Taylor’s books: Shop Management and The Principles of Scientific Management. An engineer to the core, he earned a degree in mechanical engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology and developed sev- eral inventions for which he received patents. While his engineering accomplishments would have been sufficient to guarantee him a place in history, it was his contributions to manage- ment that resulted in a set of principles and concepts considered by Drucker to be “possibly
the most powerful as well as lasting contribution America has made to Western thought since the Federalist Papers.”
The core of Taylor’s system consisted of breaking down the production process into its component parts and improving the efficiency of each. Paying little attention to rules of thumb and standard practices, he honed manual tasks to maximum efficiency by examining each component separately and eliminating all false, slow, and useless movements. Mechani- cal work was accelerated through the use of jigs, fixtures, and other devices—many invented by Taylor himself. In essence, Taylor was trying to do for work units what Whitney had done for material units: standardize them and make them interchangeable.
Improvement of work efficiency under the Taylor system was based on the analysis and improvement of work methods, reduction of the time required to carry out the work, and the development of work standards. With an abiding faith in the scientific method, Taylor’s con- tribution to the development of “time study” was his way of seeking the same level of pre- dictability and precision for manual tasks that he had achieved with his formulas for metal cutting.
Taylor’s interest in what today we classify as the area of work measurement was also moti- vated by the information that studies of this nature could supply for planning activities. In this sense, his work laid the foundation for a broader “science of planning”: a science totally empirical in nature but one that he was able to demonstrate could significantly improve pro- ductivity. To Taylor, scientific management was a philosophy based not only on the scientific study of work but also on the scientific selection, education, and development of workers.
His classic experiments in shoveling coal, which he initiated at the Bethlehem Steel Cor- poration in 1898, not only resulted in development of standards and methods for carrying out this task, but also led to the creation of tool and storage rooms as service departments, the development of inventory and ordering systems, the creation of personnel departments for worker selection, the creation of training departments to instruct workers in the standard methods, recognition of the importance of the layout of manufacturing facilities to ensure minimum movement of people and materials, the creation of departments for organizing and planning production, and the development of incentive payment systems to reward those workers able to exceed standard outputs. Any doubt about Taylor’s impact on the birth and development of industrial engineering should be erased by simply correlating the previously described functions with many of the fields of work and topics that continue to play a major role in the practice of the profession and its educational content at the university level.
Frank and Lillian Gilbreth
The other cornerstone of the early days of industrial engineering was provided by the hus- band and wife team of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth. Consumed by a similar passion for effi- ciency, Frank Gilbreth’s application of the scientific method to the laying of bricks produced results that were as revolutionary as those of Taylor’s shoveling experiment. He and Lillian extended the concepts of scientific management to the identification, analysis, and measure- ment of fundamental motions involved in performing work. By applying the motion-picture camera to the task of analyzing motions they were able to categorize the elements of human motions into 18 basic elements or therbligs. This development marked a distinct step forward in the analysis of human work, for the first time permitting analysts to design jobs with knowl- edge of the time required to perform the job. In many respects these developments also marked the beginning of the much broader field of human factors or ergonomics.
While their work together stimulated much research and activity in the field of motion study, it was Lillian who also provided significant insight and contributions to the human issues associated with their studies. Lillian’s book, The Psychology of Management (based on her doctoral thesis in psychology at Brown University), advanced the premise that because of its emphasis on scientific selection and training, scientific management offered ample oppor- tunity for individual development, while traditional management stifled such development by 1.6 INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE
concentrating power in a central figure. Known as the “first lady of engineering,” she was the first woman to be elected to the National Academy of Engineering and is generally credited with bringing to the industrial engineering profession a concern for human welfare and human relations that was not present in the work of many pioneers of the scientific manage- ment movement.
Other Pioneers
In 1912, the originators and early pioneers, the first educators and consultants, and the man- agers and representatives of the first industries to adopt the concepts developed by Taylor and Gilbreth gathered at the annual meeting of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) in New York City. The all-day session on Friday, December 6, 1912, began with a pre- sentation titled “The Present State of the Art of Industrial Management.” This report and the subsequent discussions provide insight and understanding about the origin and relative con- tributions of the individuals involved in the birth of a unique new profession: industrial engi- neering.
In addition to Taylor and Gilbreth, other pioneers present at this meeting included Henry Towne and Henry Gantt. Towne, who was associated with the Yale and Towne Manufacturing Company, used ASME as the professional society to which he presented his views on the need for a professional group with interest in the problems of manufacturing and management.
This suggestion ultimately led to the creation of the Management Division of ASME, one of the groups active today in promoting and disseminating information about the art and science of management, including many of the topics and ideas industrial engineers are engaged in.
Towne was also concerned with the economic aspects and responsibilities of the engineer’s job including the development of wage payment plans and the remuneration of workers. His work and that of Frederick Halsey, father of the Halsey premium plan of wage payment, advanced the notion that some of the gains realized from productivity increases should be shared with the workers creating them.
Gantt’s ideas covered a wider range than some of his predecessors. He was interested not only in standards and costs but also in the proper selection and training of workers and in the development of incentive plans to reward them. Although Gantt was considered by Taylor to be a true disciple, his disagreements with Taylor on several points led to the development of a
“task work with bonus” system instead of Taylor’s “differential piece rate” system and explicit procedures for enabling workers to either protest or revise standards. He was also interested in scheduling problems and is best remembered for devising the Gantt chart: a systematic graphical procedure for planning and scheduling activities that is still widely used in project management.
In attendance were also the profession’s first educators including Hugo Diemer, who started the first continuing curriculum in industrial engineering at Pennsylvania State College in 1908; William Kent, who organized an industrial engineering curriculum at Syracuse Uni- versity in the same year; Dexter Kimball, who presented an academic course in works admin- istration at Cornell University in 1904; and C. Bertrand Thompson, an instructor in industrial organization at Harvard, where the teaching of Taylor’s concepts had been implemented.
Consultants and industrial managers at the meeting included Carl Barth, Taylor’s mathemati- cian and developer of special purpose slide rules for metal cutting; John Aldrich of the New England Butt Company, who presented the first public statement and films about micro- motion study; James Dodge, president of the Link-Belt Company; and Henry Kendall, who spoke of experiments in organizing personnel functions as part of scientific management in industry. Two editors present were Charles Going of the Engineering Magazine and Robert Kent, editor of the first magazine with the title of Industrial Engineering. Lillian Gilbreth was perhaps the only pioneer absent since at that time women were not admitted to ASME meetings.
Another early pioneer was Harrington Emerson. Emerson became a champion of effi- ciency independent of Taylor and summarized his approach in his book, the Twelve Principles
of Efficiency. These principles, which somewhat paralleled Taylor’s teachings, were derived primarily through his work in the railroad industry. Emerson, who had reorganized the work- shops of the Santa Fe Railroad, testified during the hearings of the Interstate Commerce Commission concerning a proposed railroad rate hike in 1910 to 1911 that scientific manage- ment could save “a million dollars a day.” Because he was the only “efficiency engineer” with firsthand experience in the railroad industry, his statement carried enormous weight and served to emblazon scientific management on the national consciousness. Later in his career he became particularly interested in selection and training of employees and is also credited with originating the term dispatching in reference to shop floor control, a phrase that undoubtedly derives from his railroad experience.
THE POST–WORLD WAR I ERA
By the end of World War I, scientific management had firmly taken hold. Large-scale, verti- cally integrated organizations making use of mass production techniques were the norm.
Application of these principles resulted in spectacular increases in production. Unfortunately, however, because increases in production were easy to achieve, management interest was focused primarily on the implementation of standards and incentive plans, and little attention was paid to the importance of good methods in production. The reaction of workers and the public to unscrupulous management practices such as “rate cutting” and other speedup tac- tics, combined with concerns about dehumanizing aspects of the application of scientific man- agement, eventually led to legislation limiting the use of time standards in government operations.
Methods Engineering and Work Simplification
These reactions led to an increased interest in the work of the Gilbreths. Their efforts in meth- ods analysis, which had previously been considered rather theoretical and impractical, became the foundation for the resurgence of industrial engineering in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1927, H. B. Maynard, G. J. Stegmerten, and S. M. Lowry wrote Time and Motion Study, empha- sizing the importance of motion study and good methods. This eventually led to the term methods engineering as the descriptor of a technique emphasizing the “elimination of every unnecessary operation” prior to the determination of a time standard. In 1932, A. H. Mogen- son published Common Sense Applied to Time and Motion Study, in which he stressed the concepts of motion study through an approach he chose to call work simplification. His thesis was simply that the people who know any job best are the workers doing that job. Therefore, if the workers are trained in the steps necessary to analyze and challenge the work they are doing, then they are also the ones most likely to implement improvements. His approach was to train key people in manufacturing plants at his Lake Placid Work Simplification Confer- ences so that they could in turn conduct similar training in their own plants for managers and workers. This concept of taking motion study training directly to the workers through the work simplification programs was a tremendous boon to the war production effort during World War II. The first Ph.D. granted in the United States in the field of industrial engineer- ing was also the result of research done in the area of motion study. It was awarded to Ralph M. Barnes by Cornell University in 1933 and was supervised by Dexter Kimball. Barnes’s the- sis was rewritten and published as Motion and Time Study: the first full-length book devoted to this subject. The book also attempted to bridge the growing chasm between advocates of time study versus motion study by emphasizing the inseparability of these concepts as a basic principle of industrial engineering.
Another result of the reaction was a closer look at the behavioral aspects associated with the workplace and the human element. Even though the approach taken by Taylor and his fol- 1.8 INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE
lowers failed to appreciate the psychological issues associated with worker motivation, their work served to catalyze the behavioral approach to management by systematically raising questions on authority, motivation, and training. The earliest writers in the field of industrial psychology acknowledged their debt to scientific management and framed their discussions in terms consistent with this system.
The Hawthorne Experiment
A major episode in the quest to understand behavioral aspects was the series of studies con- ducted at the Western Electric Hawthorne plant in Chicago between 1924 and 1932. These studies originally began with a simple question: How does workplace illumination affect worker productivity? Under sponsorship from the National Academy of Science, a team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) observed groups of coil- winding operators under different lighting levels. They observed that productivity relative to a control group went up as illumination increased, as had been expected. Then, in another experiment, they observed that productivity also increased when illumination decreased, even to the level of moonlight. Unable to explain the results, the original team abandoned the illu- mination studies and began other tests on the effect of rest periods, length of work week, incentive plans, free lunches, and supervisory styles on productivity. In most cases the trend was for higher than normal output by the groups under study.
Approaching the problem from the perspective of the “psychology of the total situation,”
experts brought in to study the problem came to the conclusion that the results were primar- ily due to “a remarkable change in the mental attitude in the group.” Interpretations of the study were eventually reduced to the simple explanation that productivity increased as a result of the attention received by the workers under study. This was dubbed the Hawthorne effect. However, in subsequent writings this simple explanation was modified to include the argument that work is a group activity and that workers strive for a sense of belonging—not simple financial gain—in their jobs. By emphasizing the need for listening and counseling by managers to improve worker collaboration, the industrial psychology movement shifted the emphasis of management from technical efficiency—the focus of Taylorism—to a richer, more complex, human-relations orientation.
Other Contributions
Many other individuals and events should be recorded in any detailed history of the begin- nings of industrial engineering. Other names that should be included in any library search, which will lead to other contributors, include L. P. Alford, Arthur C. Anderson, W. Edwards Deming, Eugene L. Grant, Robert Hoxie, Joseph Juran, Marvin E. Mundel, George H. Shep- ard, and Walter Shewart. In particular, Shewart’s book, Economic Control of the Quality of Manufactured Product, published in 1931, contains over 20 years of work on the theory of sampling as an effective approach for controlling quality in the production process. While many of his ideas were not applied until after World War II, his work marked the beginning of modern statistical quality control and the use of many of the tools that today are taught to everyone, including workers, as a means of empowering them to control the quality of their work.
Status at the End of This Era
In 1943, the Work Standardization Committee of the Management Division of ASME included under the term industrial engineering functions such as budgets and cost control, manufacturing engineering, systems and procedures management, organization analysis, and
wage and salary administration. Most of the detailed activities were primarily related to the task of methods development and analysis and the development of time standards, although other activities such as plant layout and materials handling, and the production control activ- ities of routing and scheduling, were also contained in this definition. The level of coverage of these topics varied significantly among manufacturing organizations, and from an organiza- tional standpoint, the activities might have been found within the engineering department, as part of manufacturing, or in personnel. From an educational perspective, many of the method- ologies and techniques taught in the classroom and laboratories were very practical and largely empirically derived. Sophisticated mathematical and computing methods had not yet been developed, and further refinement and application of the scientific approach to prob- lems addressed by industrial engineers was extremely difficult. Like other professional areas, the start of industrial engineering was rough, empirical, qualitative, and, to a great extent, dependent on the commitment and charisma of the pioneers to eloquently carry the day. The net effect of all this was that industrial engineering, at the end of this era, was still a dispersed discipline with no centralized focus and no national organization to bring it together. This sit- uation started to change shortly after World War II.
THE POST–WORLD WAR II ERA
In 1948, the American Institute of Industrial Engineers (AIIE) was founded in Columbus, Ohio. The requirements for membership included either the completion of a college-level program or equivalent breadth and understanding as derived from engineering experience.
The American Society for Quality Control was also founded at the close of World War II. The establishment of these two societies requiring professional credentials for membership began to provide the focus that had been lacking in the profession to that time. These developments, along with the emergence of a more quantitative approach to the issues of industrial engi- neering, provided the impetus for the significant transition that the discipline experienced during this era.
The Emergence of Operations Research
During World War II and the balance of the 1940s, developments of crucial importance to the field occurred. The methods used by the industrial engineer, including statistical analysis, proj- ect management techniques, and various network-based and graphical means of analyzing very complex systems, were found to be very useful in planning military operations. Under the pressure of wartime, many highly trained scientists from a broad range of disciplines con- tributed to the development of new techniques and devices, which led to significant advances in the modeling, analysis, and general understanding of operational problems. Their approach to the complex problems they faced became known as operations research. Similarities between military operational problems and the operational problems of producing and dis- tributing goods led some of the operations researchers from wartime to extend their area of activity to include industrial problems. This resulted in considerable interaction between industrial engineers and members of other scientific disciplines and in an infusion of new ideas and approaches to problem solving that dramatically impacted the scope of industrial engineering education and practice.
The decade of the 1950s marked the transition of industrial engineering from its prewar empirical roots to an era of quantitative methods. The transition was most dramatic in the educational sector where research in industrial engineering began to be influenced by the mathematical underpinnings of operations research and the promise that these techniques provided for achieving the optimal strategy to follow for a production or marketing situation.
1.10 INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE
While the application of operations research concepts and techniques was also pursued by practicing industrial engineers and others, the gap between theoretical research in universities and actual applications in government and industry was still quite great during those years.
The practice of industrial engineering during the 1950s continued to draw heavily from the foundation concepts of work measurement, although the emergence of a greater scientific base for industrial engineering also influenced this area. A significant development that gained prominence during these years was predetermined motion time systems. While both Taylor and Gilbreth had essentially predicted this development, it was not until the develop- ment of work factor by a research team from RCA and MTM (methods time measurement) by Maynard and Associates that the vision of these two pioneers was converted into industry- usable tools for what was still the most basic of industrial engineering functions.
By the 1960s, however, methodologies such as linear programming, queuing theory, simu- lation, and other mathematically based decision analysis techniques had become part of the industrial engineering educational mainstream. Operations research now provided the indus- trial engineer with the capability to mathematically model and better understand the behav- ior of large problems and systems. However, it was the development of the digital computer and the high-speed calculation and storage capabilities provided by this device that provided the industrial engineer with the opportunity to model, design, analyze, and essentially experi- ment with large systems. The ability to experiment with large systems also placed industrial engineers on a more equal footing with their engineering counterparts. Other engineers were generally not limited in their ability to experiment prior to the computer age because they could build small-scale models or pilot plants that enabled them to extrapolate the results to a full-scale system. However, prior to the development of the digital computer, it was practi- cally impossible for the industrial engineer to experiment with large-scale manufacturing and production systems without literally obstructing the capabilities of the facility under study.
These developments essentially changed industrial engineering from a field primarily con- cerned with the individual human task performed in a manufacturing setting to a field con- cerned with improving the performance of human organizations. They also ushered in an era where the scope of application of industrial engineering grew to include numerous service operations such as hospitals, airlines, financial institutions, educational institutions, and other civilian and nongovernmental institutions.
A Definition of Industrial Engineering
Recognition of this new role and the breadth of the field were reflected in the definition of industrial engineering that was adopted by the American Institute of Industrial Engineers in the early 1960s:
Industrial engineering is concerned with the design, improvement, and installation of integrated systems of men, materials, equipment and energy. It draws upon specialized knowledge and skill in the mathematical, physical and social sciences together with the principles and methods of engi- neering analysis and design to specify, predict, and evaluate the results to be obtained from such systems.
Status at the End of This Era
The decades of the 1960s and 1970s are considered by many to constitute the second phase in the history of industrial engineering during the twentieth century. During these years the field became modeling-oriented, relying heavily on mathematics and computer analysis for its development. In many respects, industrial engineering was advancing along a very appropri- ate path, substituting many of the more subjective and qualitative aspects of its early years
with more quantitative, science-based tools and techniques. This focus was also consistent with the prevalent mind-set of the times that emphasized acquisition of hard facts, precise measurements, and objective approaches for the modeling and analysis of human organiza- tions and systems. While some inroads were made in the area of human and organizational behavior, particularly in the adoption of human factors or ergonomics concepts for the design and improvement of integrated work systems, industrial engineers during this era tended to focus primarily on the development of quantitative and computational tools almost to the exclusion of any other concerns.
Evolution of the IE Job Function
Figure 1.1.1 illustrates how the job functions of industrial engineers (IEs) changed in the 1960s and 1970s [5]. Activities throughout the early part of the 1960s were still concerned pri- marily with work simplification and methods improvement, plant layout, and direct labor standards. In the next five years, work began on indirect labor standards and project engi- neering. During the 1970s, quantitative approaches and computer modeling caused a dramatic shift in job functions. By the end of the 1970s, over 70 percent of industrial engineering job functions were estimated to be in the areas of scientific inventory management, systematic design and analysis, and project engineering.
The evolutionary trends illustrated by Fig. 1.1.1 reflected a future where the fraction of workers in direct labor positions would continue to decrease and the number of positions in the service industries would increase. These changes, along with increased information pro- cessing capabilities, pointed toward a future where industrial engineering functions and roles would provide input and impact the decision and planning processes of management at higher levels than ever before.
1.12 INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE
FIGURE 1.1.1 Changes in the IE function between 1960 and 1980. (From A.A.B. Pritsker, Papers, Experiences, Perspectives [5].)
THE ERA FROM 1980 TO 2000
The 1980s in many ways validated these projections. During this decade the role of the indus- trial engineer expanded significantly beyond its traditional support functions to include orga- nizational leadership responsibilities in both the design and integration of manufacturing and service systems. In the case of manufacturing, these functions oftentimes included the design and development of new hardware and software that enabled the automation of many pro- duction and support functions and the integration of these functions within operational envi- ronments.
With many manufacturing environments now consisting of complex arrays of computer- ized machines, the design and integration of information systems that could effectively con- trol and handle data related to product designs, materials, parts inventories, work orders, production schedules, and engineering designs became a growing element in the role of the industrial engineer. The automatic generation of process plans, bills of materials, tool release orders, work schedules, and operator instructions; the growth in numerically controlled machine tool capability; and the use of robots in a variety of industrial settings are examples of applications in which industrial engineering played a major role during the 1980s. Many of these functions, which include tasks critical to the success of computer-aided design (CAD), computer-aided manufacturing (CAM), or computer-integrated manufacturing (CIM) efforts, reflected the broadening, systems-related role of the industrial engineer in many man- ufacturing organizations.
Sophisticated tools with which to analyze problems and design systems, which by now had become part of the industrial engineering toolkit, were also applied successfully in service activities such as airline reservation systems, telephone systems, financial systems, health sys- tems, and many other nonmanufacturing environments. Many of these developments were a natural outgrowth of the emphasis on quantitative and computational tools that had impacted the profession during the prior two decades. While a number of these applications also reflected a growing role in design and integration functions, a major impact of the field on the service sector was the creation of a growing appreciation of the more generic nature of the term production systems to include the provision of services and the value of the role of indus- trial engineering in these environments. In addition to assuming increasingly higher-level managerial responsibilities in both manufacturing and service organizations, the roles of industrial engineers expanded to include functions such as software developer, consultant, and entrepreneur. The broad preparation of the industrial engineer, combined with the tech- nological developments of this decade, had apparently resulted in a profession and a legion of professionals uniquely qualified to play the integrative, systems-oriented role that was now required to enhance the effectiveness of organizations.
The New Challenges of This Era
Despite indications that seemed to point to a profession that was moving in the right direc- tion, many of these same organizations that industrial engineers were serving found them- selves losing ground during the 1980s to non-U.S. competitors. This was particularly true in major industrial arenas such as the automobile industry, machine tooling, and many sectors of the electronics industry. While it would certainly be an overstatement to blame these devel- opments on industrial engineering (it could be argued that part of the problem was that many industrial engineers had still not been able to influence managerial decision making in many of these industries at high enough levels), a relevant and related question was whether the high degree of specialization that resulted from many industrial engineering efforts during this decade had created a field that placed more emphasis on tools and techniques than the problems it was intending to solve. This perception was reinforced by studies that indicated that many of the non-U.S. competitors that had made significant gains on U.S. organizations
were accomplishing their gains by focusing not so much on tools and techniques, but rather on questioning the underlying premises associated with basic issues and problems in the areas of quality, productivity, timeliness, flexibility, responsiveness to customers, and cost minimiza- tion.
What many have concluded was that even though the industrial engineering profession seemed to be moving in the right direction from the post World War II years through the early 1980s, the actual impact of this effort was off the mark. Rather than continuing to question prevailing modes of reasoning related to the organization of work and management, as had been done by the pioneers of the profession, the argument is that the field reached a point where industrial engineers became more concerned with finding places to apply the many new tools and techniques that had been developed and less concerned with addressing the needs and problems of the organizations they were serving. While there is undoubtedly a large amount of truth in this assertion, it is also the natural result of a profession that was striving to enhance its respectability through the incorporation of a more “scientific”
approach to its problem-solving efforts, an approach that is also consistent with the intent of the pioneers of the profession. The net result of these developments, which essentially came to a head in the mid-1980s, was a profession at the crossroads. It was at this point that the industrial engineering profession started what is essentially the third phase of its develop- ment, a period of reassessment, self-study, and growth that continues as we enter the twenty- first century.
One of the leading causes of the reassessment process that industrial engineering started experiencing in the mid-1980s was the dramatic results obtained by Japanese organizations such as Toyota, Sony, and others that questioned many of the underlying manufacturing sys- tems and management practices associated with the areas of quality and timeliness. Their commitment to the application of quality management principles, which they were first exposed to as early as the 1950s by Deming and others, resulted in product quality levels and customer expectations that were significantly higher than those obtained by their U.S. coun- terparts. Similar results were obtained through the commitment of significant resources to the training of their workforce for over two decades in principles of work simplification, which led to the development of manufacturing management philosophies such as just-in-time produc- tion and the eventual implementation of many of the principles we today associate with con- tinuous improvement methodologies.
One of the most important lessons learned by these developments, from an industrial engi- neering perspective, was that the Japanese were able to illustrate very dramatically that the continued development of more sophisticated quality control techniques or inventory models did not necessarily lead, in practice, to greater organizational productivity. It was the ques- tioning of the underlying assumptions associated with techniques used to determine accept- able quality limits, production cycle times, economic order quantities, and other related concepts that lay at the heart of the issue of organizational productivity, at least in most man- ufacturing environments. The wake-up call provided by these and similar developments, while painful at first, have eventually led to a process of change in both the focus and role of the industrial engineer that is serving the profession well as it begins the next century.
The growing role played by industrial engineers as manufacturing systems integrators and the paradigm shifts that many industrial engineers have stimulated in the development of new manufacturing technologies serve as examples of this new focus in manufacturing environ- ments. In the 1980s, the problem of using excessive technologies without proper integration led to the creation of many “islands of automation,” or situations where various parts of a fac- tory automated by computers, robots, and flexible machines did not result in a productive environment because of a lack of integration among the components. A greater focus on sys- tems integration has yielded more organizations whose functions are mutually rationalized 1.14 INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE
Evolution of the Role of the IE During This Era
and coordinated through appropriate levels of computers in conjunction with information and communication technologies. The role played by industrial engineers during the 1990s in these efforts includes not only the integration of shop floor activities and islands of automa- tion, but also a greater emphasis on shortened development and manufacturing lead times, knowledge sharing, distributed decision making and coordination, integration of manufactur- ing decision processes, enterprise integration, and coordination of manufacturing activities with external environments. The impact of the industrial engineer in new manufacturing tech- nologies can also be illustrated through the field’s growing role in the development and appli- cation of concepts such as flexible, agile, and intelligent manufacturing systems and processes;
design techniques and criteria for manufacturing, assembly, and concurrent engineering; rapid prototyping and tooling; and operational modeling including very significant contributions in factory simulation and integrated modeling capabilities [9,10].
Similar statements can be made for the impact of industrial engineering in government and service sectors where the catalyst has been a renewed focus on process modeling, analy- sis, and improvement, and the development and application of operational modeling and optimization-based approaches. Sectors where the industrial engineer is playing an increas- ingly active role include financial services, both in new product development and process improvement; distribution and logistics services, particularly through the development of new software and operational modeling, analysis, and design capabilities; government services; and many segments of the growing worldwide market for information services and technologies.
Figure 1.1.2 illustrates a projection for future IE roles as presented by Pritsker in 1985 [5].
This projection was based on the premise that the conceptual framework for an industrial engineer parallels the framework for decision makers in general, thereby allowing future roles to be categorized as those associated with strategic planning, management control, or operational control. Strategic planning was defined as the process of deciding on the objec- tives of an organization, on changes in these objectives, on the resources used to obtain these objectives, and on the policies that are to govern the acquisition, use, and disposition of
FIGURE 1.1.2 Changes in the IE function between 1960 and 1980. (From A.A.B. Pritsker, Papers, Experiences, Perspectives [5].)
resources. Management control was defined as the process by which managers assure that the required resources are obtained and used effectively and efficiently in the accomplishment of the organization’s objectives. Operational control refers to the process of assuring that spe- cific tasks are carried out effectively and efficiently.
The projection called for industrial engineers to increase their role in the strategic plan- ning and management control areas and to lessen their involvement in the area of operational control. The rationale for this projected trend was based on the following observations [5]:
1. That operational control including data acquisition would become more automated. This would result in a growing role for the industrial engineer in the development of tools and procedures for providing this automation to companies, a role that falls in the category of management control systems since it would involve the design and development of both hardware and software.
2. That strategic planning, including entrepreneurship, would continue to increase during the latter part of the 1980s and throughout the decade of the 1990s with industrial engineers building and using models of the system and the corporation.
While it would be difficult to determine if the percentages of this projection have been borne out, there should be no doubt that the projected trend has indeed accurately reflected the role of the industrial engineer as we enter the twenty-first century. Regardless of the many job titles that industrial engineers may hold at this moment, their role, either within manufac- turing, service, government, and educational organizations or as the pilots of their own orga- nizations, has moved significantly from the operational control origins of the profession to a role that is influencing not only the accomplishment of organizational objectives but, even more so, the decisions related to defining organizational objectives and policies. The industrial engineer as a systems designer, software developer, systems integrator, entrepreneur, consul- tant, and/or manager is now a commonplace occurrence and reflects the growing maturity of this vibrant and dynamic profession.
FUTURE CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES
Emerging economies, social and political transitions, and new ways of doing business are changing the world dramatically. These trends suggest that the competitive environment for the practice of industrial engineering in the near future will be significantly different than it is today. While the industrial engineering profession and the role of the IE has changed signifi- cantly over the last 20 years, the emergence of new technologies, spurred by intense competi- tion, will continue to lead to dramatically new products and processes both in manufacturing and service environments. New management and labor practices, organizational structures, and decision-making methods will also emerge as complements to these new products and processes. To be successful in this competitive environment, industrial engineers will require significantly improved capabilities. The attainment of these capabilities represents one of the major challenges facing industrial engineers.
The 1998 publication Visionary Manufacturing Challenges for 2020 [8] provides insights into the issues that will play a dominant role in the development of the competitive environ- ment and technical scenarios anticipated in the future. It is important to note that the authors of this study originally defined manufacturing to mean the processes and entities that create and support products for customers. During the course of this study, however, it became increasingly clear that the definition of manufacturing will become even broader in the future as new configurations for the manufacturing enterprise emerge and the distinctions between manufacturing and service industries become blurred. This last message is particularly critical for the industrial engineer of the future, in which case the messages contained in this study 1.16 INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE
shed considerable insight into the settings where industrial engineers will be working and the capabilities they should be acquiring or developing now to be viable and effective participants in this year 2020 scenario.
This study envisions manufacturing (and service) enterprises in 2020 bringing new ideas and innovations to the marketplace rapidly and effectively. Individuals and teams will learn new skills quickly because of advanced network-based learning, computer-based communica- tion across extended enterprises, enhanced communications between people and machines, and improvements in the transaction and alliance infrastructure. Collaborative partnerships will be developed quickly by assembling the necessary resources from a highly distributed manufacturing (or service) capability in response to market opportunities and just as quickly dissolving them when the opportunities dissipate.
While manufacturing in 2020 will continue to be a human enterprise, it is envisioned that enterprise functions as we know them today (research and development, design engineering, manufacturing, marketing, and customer support) will be so highly integrated that they will function concurrently as virtually one entity that links customers to innovators of new prod- ucts. New corporate architectures for enterprises will emerge, and although production resources will be distributed globally, fewer materials enterprises and a greater number of regional or community-based product enterprises will be connected to local markets.
Extremely small-scale process building blocks that allow for synthesizing or forming new material forms and products may emerge as well. Nanofabrication processes will evolve from laboratory curiosities to production processes, and biotechnology will lead to the creation of new manufacturing processes with new and exciting applications on the shop floor of the twenty-first century.
Figure 1.1.3 summarizes both the “grand challenges” and key or priority technologies needed to address these challenges. While the terms used to define the grand challenges are familiar to most industrial engineers (concurrent manufacturing, integration of human and technical resources, conversion of information to knowledge, environmental compatibility,
FIGURE 1.1.3 Applicability of priority technology areas to the grand challenges. (From Visionary Manufac- turing Challenges for 2020 [8].)
reconfigurable enterprises, and innovative processes), the challenge actually lies in achieving the level of capability envisioned as necessary to achieve the projected vision. For example, the goal of concurrent manufacturing is the ability to achieve concurrency in all operations of the supply chain—not just design and manufacturing. Conversion of information to knowl- edge is defined as the instantaneous transformation of information gathered from an array of diverse sources into knowledge useful for effective decision making. Environmental compati- bility translates to near zero reduction of production waste and product environmental impact, while innovative processes refers to a focus on decreasing dimensional scale.
Finally, the key or priority technologies should be interpreted as the skill set that needs to be either enhanced or acquired to meet the grand challenges. While many industrial engineers are already significant players in a number of these areas (e.g., adaptable and reconfigurable systems, enterprise modeling and simulation, information technology, improved design methodologies, machine-human interfaces, and education and training), other areas such as waste-free processes, submicron and nanoscale manufacturing, biotechnology, and collabora- tion software systems represent opportunities for industrial engineers to expand their skill set in anticipation of future development. While the technology areas believed to have the most impact across the grand challenges (adaptable and reconfigurable systems, enterprise model- ing and simulation, and information technology) are areas where many industrial engineers are currently involved, changes in the state of the art of these technologies is so rapid as to represent a continuous challenge for everyone in the profession.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
The section titles of this handbook reflect much of the evolution and development of the industrial engineering profession and provide insights into its future and continuing chal- lenges. The original motivation for the development of the field and the work of its early pio- neers was driven by the desire to increase productivity through the analysis and design of organizational work methods and procedures and to provide a set of scientific principles that would serve as a foundation for continued studies of this nature. These efforts provided the framework upon which bodies of knowledge in the areas of work analysis and design, work measurement and standards, engineering economics, and production and facilities-planning functions emerged and established themselves as the underpinnings of the field. Concurrent efforts in behavioral aspects contributed to the knowledge base in compensation manage- ment and eventually led to the incorporation of issues associated with human performance, ergonomics, and safety as part of the scope of the profession. The arrival of operations research together with developments in computer technology provided the profession with a rich, new set of tools and technologies that significantly expanded the scope of the field beyond its original application areas and into areas such as information technologies and ser- vice applications. The need to reexamine the true impact of these innovations on organiza- tional productivity has been a catalyst for more recent developments in areas such as product design and quality management, which have now become a major part of both the educational background and practice of today’s industrial engineer.
Much of the attractiveness of industrial engineering lies in the fact that it is an engineering field that provides its members with a broad spectrum of career options. That the field has evolved in this way, from what could be considered rather narrow beginnings, has been pri- marily because of those in the profession who were not willing to accept boundaries and lim- itations regarding both the potential and promise of its principles, emerging technologies, and areas of application. Standing at the beginning of the twenty-first century, with slightly over 100 years of history under its belt, there is no reason to doubt that this dynamic field will con- tinue to mature in its role as a global leader of societal change and provide its members with a wealth of new and challenging opportunities.
1.18 INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author specifically acknowledges Tim Greene, from Oklahoma State, and Way Kuo, from Texas A&M University, whose thoughtful comments contributed significantly to the improvement of this chapter. Appreciation is also extended to my colleagues at Lehigh Uni- versity and the National Science Foundation (NSF), across the country and around the world, for conversations that have benefited the article. Thanks also to Veronica T. Calvo from NSF for her very capable assistance in the final production of the chapter and to Maggie Martin for her insightful comments and understanding at various stages of this process. Finally, I thank Kjell Zandin for his considerable patience and consideration throughout this whole process.
REFERENCES
1. Emerson, H., and D.C. Naehring, Origins of Industrial Engineering: The Early Years of a Profession, Industrial Engineering and Management Press, Institute of Industrial Engineers, Atlanta/Norcross, 1988. (book)
2. Saunders, B.W., “The Industrial Engineering Profession,” Chap. 1.1, The Handbook of Industrial Engineering, 1st ed., Wiley, New York, 1982. (book)
3. Schultz, A., Jr., “The Quiet Revolution: From Scientific Management to Operations Research,” Engi- neering: Cornell Quarterly, Winter, 1970. (magazine)
4. Nadler, G., “The Role and Scope of Industrial Engineering,” Chap. 1, The Handbook of Industrial Engineering, 2d ed., Wiley, New York, 1992. (book)
5. Pritsker, A.A.B., Papers, Experiences, Perspectives, Systems Publishing Corp., Lafayette, IN, 1990.
(book)
6. Turner, W.C., J.H. Mize, K.E. Case, and J.W. Nazemetz, Introduction to Industrial and Systems Engi- neering, 3d ed., Prentice-Hall, New Jersey, 1993. (book)
7. Hopp, W.J,. and M.L. Spearman, Factory Physics: Foundations of Manufacturing Management, Richard D. Irwin, 1996. (book)
8. Visionary Manufacturing Challenges for 2020; Committee on Visionary Manufacturing Challenges, Board on Manufacturing and Engineering Design, Commission on Engineering and Technical Sys- tems, National Research Council; National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 1998. (book)
9. Shaw, M.J., “Manufacturing Systems Integration,” McGraw-Hill Yearbook of Science and Technology, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1994. (book)
10. White, K.P., and J.W. Fowler, “Manufacturing Technology,” McGraw-Hill Yearbook of Science and Technology, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1994. (book)
BIOGRAPHY
Louis A. Martin-Vega, Ph.D., P.E., is currently the director of the Division of Design, Manu- facture, and Industrial Innovation at the National Science Foundation in Arlington, Virginia.
He is on leave from Lehigh University where he is a professor and former chairman of the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering. Prior to joining Lehigh, he held the Lockheed Professorship at Florida Institute of Technology; he has also held tenured faculty positions at the University of Florida and the University of Puerto Rico (Mayaguez). Martin-Vega’s research and consulting interests are in the areas of production and manufacturing systems, and he has received grants and contracts from numerous govern- ment, manufacturing, and service organizations to pursue interests in these areas. He is a fel- low of the Institute of Industrial Engineers and is a registered professional engineer in Florida and Puerto Rico.
CHAPTER 1.2
THE ROLE AND CAREER OF THE INDUSTRIAL ENGINEER IN THE MODERN ORGANIZATION
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
The role and career of the industrial engineer in the modern organization can best be summed up the by word diversity, for there is hardly a profession, much less a discipline within engi- neering, that is so broadly defined. This chapter presents a series of case studies and examples of the diverse roles that industrial engineers play in several modern organizations and the many career paths available to them in organizations of this nature. The evolution of modern organizations and the resulting impact on the role of industrial engineers and the career paths open to them will be explored as well. Finally, the chapter will address the key success factors that have enabled many industrial engineers to advance their careers, as well as key threats to the discipline including experts that go by other names.
INTRODUCTION
In discussing the role and career of a field as broad and diverse as industrial engineering, it is important to gain perspective from a cross section of practitioners. This chapter has been coau-
thored by four individuals who are members of the Council on Industrial Engineering (CIE).
The Council was formed by the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE) in 1963 and is comprised of top industrial engineers from a cross section of industries and countries. Its purpose is to provide a noncompetitive environment for sharing best practices and to discuss issues facing the industrial engineering profession. Some of the current companies represented on the Council include Boeing, General Motors, Deere, Philips, Kodak, and Kraft Foods.
In the authors’ opinion, it is important to use true-life examples in portraying the role and career of industrial engineers. Therefore, a significant portion of this chapter will be anecdo- tal, relying on the authors’ experiences within their respective companies and industries. The companies represented are Loblaw Companies; Hudson’s Bay Company; Questar Corpora- tion and its subsidiary, Mountain Fuel Supply Company; the Polaroid Corporation; and the Walt Disney World Company. While the examples are relevant to these and similar organiza- tions, there are many roles and career paths that are not illustrated in this article and the focus here is largely on organizational as opposed to technical issues. Please note that the views expressed in this chapter are representative of the authors and not necessarily of the Council as a whole.
EVOLUTION OF THE MODERN ORGANIZATION
There is no doubt that the corporate environment and the competitive landscape have changed immensely in the last 10 years. The needs of organizations have grown more sophisti- cated and the business world has grown immensely more complex. The need to respond to trends that arise and change faster and faster, advanced technologies, the Internet economy, and greater expectations from customers have all put a phenomenal amount of pressure on traditional organizational structures and employee role definitions. “E-corporations” are emerging organizations that are not just using the Internet to alter their approach to markets and customers but are combining computers, the Web, and programs known as enterprise soft- ware to change everything about how they operate [1]. The resulting impact of these changes has made many traditional corporate organizational structures obsolete. Indeed, about the only constant in modern organizations is the presence of change at ever increasing speeds.
Organizations within North America have struggled to maintain and grow their competi- tiveness in the 1990s. With the movement toward the global and Internet economies, com- petitors are not found simply down the street or even in the next region, but in London, Tokyo, Seoul, and Beijing, and customers gain access to them with the click of a mouse. For- rester Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, estimated Internet commerce at $50 billion in 1998 and that it will grow to $1.4 trillion by 2003 [2]. The individual has become the most pow- erful economic unit, which has given rise to mass customization. As one response to this real- ity, many corporations have tried to reengineer themselves. Modern organizations are seeking to organize themselves around their customers to increase speed and flexibility [3]. While the intent of reengineering was to reinvent processes by reducing unnecessary and non-value- added work to improve profitability and competitiveness, in many corporations it became the scapegoat blamed for downsizing and layoffs. As a result, many consultants and academics have begun to view reengineering as nothing more than a new paradigm for organizational and social change [4].
Shareholder expectations for higher investment returns have helped fuel a drive for greater efficiency and have placed increased pressure on companies to raise the expectations of their employees. The “leaner and meaner” attitude coupled with the last cycle of corporate downsizing has brought about a change in the fundamental relationship between employer and employee. With lifetime employment a thing of the past, many employees feel the pres- sure to add value every day to simply hold on to their current jobs, much less to advance their careers. On the other hand, economic growth has created thousands of new jobs making employees in many organizations more likely than ever to leave for a better opportunity. In 1.22 INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE
addition, “de-layering” has pushed decision making to lower and lower levels within organi- zations through the reduction of many middle manager positions.
Organizations have had to evolve their thinking, expectations, and structures in response to all of these fundamental changes in the business environment. In turn, organizations have altered their expectations of what employees need to deliver. These factors are a few of the reasons why the role and career of the industrial engineer have evolved so significantly over the last 20 years.
THE INDUSTRIAL ENGINEER’S ROLE
Industrial engineers many times encounter people who do not understand or are unfamiliar with the term industrial engineer. 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.
One of the great challenges of the IE profession is communicating the distinct roles that industrial engineers play when the roles are so diverse and varied across organizations. 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.
While confusion over the roles of industrial engineers can be a liability, it also presents oppor- tunities that arise when expectations are allowed to evolve. In many organizations the roles of industrial engineers have become highly evolved and many industrial engineering depart- ments have grown to fill a unique niche. Still, the term industrial engineer largely says more about the training and degree, and less about the actual role played in most organizations.
The industrial engineering education is an excellent foundation for careers of choice in today’s business environment. It is comprised of a multitude of different skills and tools that enable the industrial engineer to act as a master of change and thus make a tremendous impact in any type of organization. The industrial engineer’s ability to understand how activ- ities 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 valu- able asset to the organization. Understanding the current activities, applying creative solu- tions 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 engi- neers to relate to coworkers in different departments such as information systems, operations, and finance makes them great assets in many large organizations.
The ability to understand the constraints and needs of different areas of the business and translate it to other participants in a change initiative is also something that not all profes- sionals have. Industrial engineers with this ability are good candidates to facilitate different forces in an organization, a role that can make the difference between a successful change ini- tiative and one that fails. In addition, the ability to learn the activities of an organization on a detailed level, coupled with a knowledge of finance and budgeting, helps to groom the indus- trial engineer to become the decision maker of tomorrow. These are some of the reasons a number of industrial engineers are reaching high levels in today’s organizations.
