Industrial Engineering

Industrial engineering is a branch of engineering dealing with the optimization of complex processes or systems. It is concerned with the development, improvement, implementation and evaluation ofintegrated systems of people, money, knowledge, information, equipment, energy, materials, analysis and synthesis, as well as the mathematical, physical and social sciences together with the principlesand methods of engineering design to specify, predict, and evaluate the results to be obtained from such systems or processes. Its underlying concepts overlap considerably with certainbusiness-oriented disciplines such as Operations Management, but the engineering side tends to emphasize extensive mathematical proficiency and usage of quantitative methods.
Depending on the sub-speciality (ies)involved, industrial engineering may also be known as operations management, management science, operations research, systems engineering, or manufacturing engineering, usually depending on theviewpoint or motives of the user. Recruiters or educational establishments use the names to differentiate themselves from others. In health care, industrial engineers are more commonly known as healthmanagement engineers or health systems engineers.
While the term originally applied to manufacturing, the use of "industrial" in "industrial engineering" can be somewhat misleading, since it has grown toencompass any methodical or quantitative approach to optimizing how a process, system, or organization operates. Some engineering universities and educational agencies around the world have changed theterm “industrial” to the broader term “production”, leading to the typical extensions noted above. In fact, the primary U.S. professional organization for Industrial Engineers, the Institute ofIndustrial Engineers (IIE) has been considering changing its name to something broader (such as the Institute of Industrial & Systems Engineers), although the latest vote among membership deemed this...