Industrial Engineering Education for the 21st Century by : Badiru, Adedeji B.; Baxi, Herschel J.

    Strategic planners all over the world are using the year 2000 as the focal point for future business activities. Are we all ready for that time? Is industrial engineering education ready for that time? As the industrial world prepares to meet the technological challenges of the 21st century, there is a need to focus on the people who will take it there. IEs should play a crucial role in preparing organizations for the 21st century through their roles as change initiators and facilitators. Improvements are needed in IE undergraduate education if that role is to be successfully carried out.
Quality in IE education
    Incorporating quality concepts into education is a goal that should be pursued at national, state, local and institution levels. Existing models of total quality management (TQM) and continuous process improvement (CPI) can be adopted for curriculum improvement.
Theory and practice
    Teaching determines the crux of research while research determines the crux of teaching. Integration of teaching and research is required for effective professional practice. The need to incorporate some aspect of practice into engineering education has been addressed widely in the literature. Pritsker recommends that professors must combine research interests with teaching responsibilities. The declining state of university education was described by Samuelson with respect to waste, lax academic standards and mediocre teaching and scholarship. These specific problems have been cited in the literature:
* Increasing undergraduate attrition despite falling academic standards at many schools. Decreasing teaching loads in favor of increasing dedication to research;
* Migration of full professors from undergraduate teaching in favor of graduate teaching and research;
* Watered down contents of undergraduate courses in the attempt to achieve retention goals; and
* Decreasing relevance of undergraduate courses to real-world practice.
Role of the IE
    IE is quickly losing its identity as a value-adding profession. The basic cause of this problem is that many IEs graduate without resolving the question of identity related to the following questions:
* What separates an IE from other engineers? and
* What contribution does the profession make to an organization?"
    The root of this identity problem lies in the structured and isolated approach of various IE courses. This results in specialization that is too narrow. For example, graduates today tend to associate more with focused professional societies rather than the general IE. This is a disturbing drift that may destroy the identity of IE as we now know it.
Ethics in education
    Professional morality and responsibility should be introduced early to IE students. Lessons on ethics should be incorporated into curriculum improvement approaches. IE graduates should be familiar with engineering code of ethics so that they can uphold and advance the integrity, honor and dignity of their professions by:
* using their knowledge and skill for the enhancement of human welfare;
* being honest, loyal, and impartial in serving the public, their employers and clients;
* striving to increase the competence and prestige of their professions; and
* supporting the professional and technical societies of their disciplines.

Are Industrial Engineers Working on the Right Things in Manufacturing? by : Seifert, Deborah J.; Settles, F. Stan

    The first challenge in addresing this question is defining the "right things”. One way to define the "right things" is as those problems which if solved would provide the most benefit to the total operation of interest. This definition implies an integrated system view by the industrial engineer at the broadest organizational level possible.
    The trend in manufacturing costs has been toward increasing the indirect labor portion while reducing the direct labor portion. Has the percentage of industrial engineering effort followed the same trend? Our perception is that industrial engineering in most companies has not done so. We hear a number of reasons for this. Some of them are as follows: 1.) We don't have as good a set of tools for dealing with indirect or white collar labor. 2.) The problems are quite different. 3.) We haven't done this before. 4.) Management is more interested in direct labor savings. 5.)Direct labor forms the basis of the cost accounting system.
    Industrial engineers need to better understand and address the total functional interdependencies within a company, rather than treating manufacturing as an island. We tend to attack manufacturing costs instead of addressing total company costs. We design systems to support production engineering, but often ignore the engineering design function. Factory networks are put in place, but often don't tie into total company information networks.
    Understanding the impact engineering has on manufacturing is probably one of the most critical challenges facing industrial engineers today. We do a great job of designing group technology cells, but until we convince engineering to embrace this philosophy along with the resulting design standardization, we are realizing only a portion of the potential benefits.
    Inventory control has long been the forte of the industrial engineer. But how many industrial engineers understand configuration management and the tremendous impact that engineering changes have on inventory levels as well as other indirect manufacturing costs involved in implementing these changes?
    For about a decade we have been seeing literature dealing with the importance of manufacturing in the strategy of the firm. The results to date have not been impressive. Industrial engineers need to accept some of the blame for this lack of results. We can point to a number of industrial engineers who have roles in the strategic areas of their businesses. However, the percentage of them is pretty low. We see this resulting in analyses and presentations that do not get the attention of general management.
    Our challenge as industrial engineers is to continually seek an understanding of where our overall company or organization is headed and then be sure our plans fit this direction. The next step is to seek ways to influence the total organization's strategic plans.
    The importance of selecting the right things to work on cannot be overstated. Many industrial engineers have spent a great deal of time and money working on a problem only to find out that some more strategic element has eliminated the need to solve that problem.

The Role of Women, Minorities and the Handicapped in the Engineering Sector by : Forbes, Lincoln H.; Edosomwan, Johnson A.

       There are predictions of an impending engineering manpower crisis. One source of supply has been put in the spotlight and IIE and the engineering community are taking a close look at what can and should be done.
Changing Technological Trends
      The dynamics of the equation are becoming increasingly complex-Good old American ingenuity is not so rare a commodity any longer. It refined the automobile and brought it to the masses in a way that no other country quite did. In the halcyon days of the industry, not too long ago, we tolerated more than our fair share of imperfections because we were so enamored with the novelty of each year's model changes, and we changed our autos so frequently, that this was not such a problem. Other countries such as Japan, Sweden, West Germany and France have shown us that they have a tremendous amount of ingenuity as well, but most importantly, that they know how to implement it.
Emerging Economic Trends
       The dreaded "I word," inflation has been creeping upwards over the years, to the point where we are torn between "Buy American" and buying products that are durable and cost effective, although they may have been produced by other countries. Our national productivity has not been keeping pace with inflation. Over the past several decades have seen a vicious circle with management striving to contain costs that ultimately lead to inflation, and with labor clamoring to have workers compensated better, in order to keep up with the same kind of inflation.
Women, Minorities, the Handicapped
       The engineers and scientists of the future will come increasingly from the ranks of women and minorities, two groups who by historical precedent have not been adequately prepared for or oriented towards these fields. A majority of engineering school deans around the nation concur that colleges must make a concerted effort to recruit women and minorities into engineering.
IIE strategy and contribution  

       The Institute of Industrial Engineers has been acutely aware of this problem and has made a commitment to address it. Task Force studied the problem, it became evident that:
       Many minority and female students do not enter the fields of science and engineering because they do not consider them to be as attractive as Law, Medicine, Accounting, etc. Furthermore, these fields are consumer-oriented and offer a degree of independence of the corporate structure, from which minorities and females have historically felt a degree of alienation. Many such students, their interest notwithstanding, often cannot readily enter college programs in science and engineering because of inherent deficiencies in their elementary and secondary education.
      Most minority families live perilously close to the poverty line, and therefore can scarcely afford to send even the most promising students to college. Scholarships and other financial assistance are available, but not plentiful enough to address the educational shortfall.

Characteristics to Identify Winners and Losers in Industrial Engineering by Tompkins, James A

Many industrial engineers are the manufacturing engineers for their companies and are doing an excellent job of addressing the right manufacturing issues and asking the right questions. These industrial engineers have a broad perspective of manufacturing. These professionals understand the importance of industrial engineers being the facilitators and integrators of the product, process, organizational, facilities, material handling, methodology and control systems design.

These industrial engineers have reputations of being implementors of integrated manufacturing systems that are flexible, modular, reliable, responsive, have no or little inventory and produce high quality. Unfortunately, not all industrial engineers working in manufacturing fit into this first category. There are two other categories.

The second category is the opposite of the first category. If one desires labels, I would label the first category the winners and the second the losers. There are many different characteristics that would result in my referring to an industrial engineer as a loser. The characteristics most often encountered are:

1.      The Techie: The techie spends at least six hours a day at his PC and collecting of software and only gets involved with improving manufacturing when this is an avenue to obtain a new software package.

2.      The Fad Chaser: The fad chaser is an enthusiastic industrial engineer who lives for the latest new acronym. Unfortunately, after several years, this person becomes burned out and moves on to another category of loser.

3.      The Detailer: The detailer is an engineer who knows everything there is to know about a very limited area. Detailers' usefulness is limited because they are so narrow in perspective that they really don't know how to apply what they know.

4.      The Meeting Person: A characteristic of this loser is a stack of phone messages on his or her desk. The meeting person spends eight hours a day in meetings and never has time to spend on the shop floor or to do any work. Unfortunately, nothing is ever implemented or improved.

5.      The Mole: The mole has no vision of the future, no creativity and, although appears to be conscientious, never really does anything. The mole is different from the detailer in that the detailer knows everything about a very limited scope, the mole knows nothing about everything.

The third category of industrial engineering working in manufacturing is a former winner that has become a defector. Many winning industrial engineers make major contributions to their company and therefore get promoted into manufacturing management. Once promoted, these professionals view themselves as managers and not as industrial engineers. This is a same. The fact is that these professionals are, and always will be, industrial engineers. Their avocation may be manufacturing manager, but their profession is industrial engineering.

These professionals were promoted because they utilized their industrialengineering expertise to improve manufacturing. Hopefully, being promoted to manager will not end their efforts to improve manufacturing. It is in the best interests of the individual and the company for the industrial engineer to remain an industrial engineer even if his or her title happens to change to manager. Not all industrial engineers are doing well in manufacturing. However, not all industrial engineers are doing poorly in manufacturing.

What If an Engineer Ran the Next Sales and Marketing Meeting? by babettetenhaken

You’ve heard me say that the most dangerous sales person for your organization is an engineer who understands the dynamics and language of the sales process. So let’s take that a step further. What if an Engineer ran the next Sales and Marketing meeting? Engineer just might be the head of your company. What would happen?

1. The meeting would be efficient. It would run within the time slot allocated. Perhaps even less time. Which would provide process improvement metrics because the goal  -from the engineer’s perspective - might be to accomplish more in less time. On the other hand, the goal - from sales and marketing perspective - might be to accomplish less while devoting more time to someone’s “great idea” that may not have a straight forward engineering solution in the first place and is being thrust on the table.
2. The meeting would reach definite conclusions about the topics being addressed. No room for “maybe” or “let’s table that discussion until next time, when we have more information.” Engineers would demand that sales and marketing folks do their homework before they introduce the subject. The engineers would be annoyed that sales and marketing folks would take up a lot of their engineering time coming up with the questions that should have answers in the first place.
3. The meeting would be boring from the sales and marketing perspective, instead of pointless from the engineering perspective. There would be lengthy discussions at a technical level never traversed by the sales and marketing folks, which effectively shuts them out of the discussion. 
4. The engineers would get up from their side to retreat back to their cubicles or offices to attend to what is most important to them: completing their projects.  The sales and marketing folks would stay in the room and continue to discuss what had not been fully fleshed out.
5. The amount of work the engineers had to accomplish would diminish over time because meetings with the sales and marketing folks did not result in new product or technology development.  Due to the requirements from the Engineer running the meeting, most or all ideas would be shut down when introduced because insufficient information was being presented from which the engineering staff could determine feasibility.

6.        Sales would drop because the company had no new products or technological advances. As no new innovation came out of the company, that company’s brand was eroded by competition whose sales and engineering staff worked more collaboratively. As revenue dropped, management began looking for strategies for cost-containment. The company would also be looking seriously at retaining senior engineers with the most knowledge.

Let’s face it, do you have to wait until your organization prunes its ranks to a place where you have no other recourse but to join forces with the remaining sales and marketing and engineering staff?

Posted : September 26,2011 

Source :  http://www.engineering.com/Library/ArticlesPage/