What is Industrial Engineering? What does an Industrial Engineer do?

Industrial Engineering

Industrial engineering is a concept of engineering which deals with the elimination of the waste of time, man-hours, money, materials, machine time, energy and other resources that actually do not generate any value to the products of service. Industrial Engineering widely used in different manufacturing and services industry to reduce or eliminate those wastes and non-value adding activities.

Industrial engineers always find the way to make or do things better. They also concern about doing things right in first time.

Industrial Engineers are different from other engineers. They combine the knowledge of mathematics, physics, architecture, ergonomics and social science together with the principles and methods of engineering analysis and design to measure, specify, forecast and evaluate the results obtained from systems and processes.

From these results, they are able to design, create and develop new methods, processes, systems or situations for the fruitful combination and coordination of man, machine, material, money and management as well as improve the productivity, quality, efficiency and effectiveness of product, service or system.

All engineering process starts with the measurement. Where other engineers might measures force, load, pressure, temperature, industrial engineer measures the cycle time of work to complete, rates of machine failure, demand of the customer, amount of non-value adding activities, efficiency of systems etc.

Industrial Engineering concept synchronize 6M to improve any system in scientific way. They are-

• Man 
• Machine 
• Material 
• Method 
• Money & 
• Management

Industrial Engineering concept eliminate the waste of-

• Time
• Money
• Machine
• Energy
• Resources

Industrial Engineers-

• Remove non-value adding activities prom product or service
• Improve product or service quality
• Increase product or service flexibility
• Increase system efficiency and effectiveness
• Ensure the ergonomic working environment in workplace
• Ensure safety and reduce/remove hazards from the workplace

 

What does an Industrial Engineer do?

1. Industrial engineers always concern about doing things right in the first time.
2. Industrial engineers study job elements and reduce non-value-adding activities form jobs.
3. Industrial engineers study methods of job and develop new, easy and efficient way of performing that job.
4. Industrial engineers remove or reduce waste from any system or activities to reduce process time and increase efficiency.
5. In the manufacturing industry, Industrial engineers can work in work study, system productivity and efficiency improvement, production planning, financial planning, cost analysis, system development, system integration, product quality control, statistical process control, designing and implementing ergonomic work environment etc.
6. In service industry, Industrial engineers can work in system efficiency improvement, management information system, service sequencing and scheduling, service accommodation, operations research etc.