Industrial engineers

Industrial engineers integrate human, information, material, monetary, and technological resources to produce goods and services optimally.

Major areas of specialization

• Engineeringeconomics and decision analysis
• Human factors (human-machine/computer interaction)
• Manufacturing systems
• Optimization
• Production, distribution, and material handling
•Statistics
• Stochastic systems
About Industrial Engineering

Industrial engineering (IE) is about choices. Other engineering disciplines apply skills to very specific areas. IE gives you theopportunity to work in a variety of businesses. The most distinctive aspect of industrial engineering is the flexibility that it offers. Whether it’s shortening a rollercoaster line, streamlining anoperating room, distributing products worldwide, or manufacturing superior automobiles, all share the common goal of saving companies money and increasing efficiencies.

As companies adopt managementphilosophies of continuous productivity and quality improvement to survive in the increasingly competitive world market, the need for industrial engineers is growing. Why? Industrial engineers are theonly engineering professionals trained as productivity and quality improvement specialists.

Industrial engineers figure out how to do things better. They engineer processes and systems that improvequality and productivity. They work to eliminate waste of time, money, materials, energy, and other commodities. Most important of all, IEs save companies money. This is why more and more companiesare hiring industrial engineers and then promoting them into management positions.

“‘Industrial engineer’ is synonymous with systems integrator - a big-picture thinker, in other words. It's anemployee who takes what exists today and conceptualizes what should exist in the future. A lot of engineers become disillusioned with the engineering profession because they get involved in minutiae or...