Industrial engineering

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article includes a list of references, but its sources remain unclear becau
se it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by
introducing more precise citations. (January 2017) (Learn how and when to remove
this template message)
Industrial engineering is a branch of engineering which deals with the optimizat
ion of complex processes, systems or organizations. Industrial engineers work to
eliminate waste of time, money, materials, man-hours, machine time, energy and
other resources that do not generate value. According to the Institute of Indust
rial and Systems Engineers, they figure out how to do things better, they engine
er processes and systems that improve quality and productivity.[1]
Industrial engineering is concerned with the development, improvement, and imple
mentation of integrated systems of people, money, knowledge, information, equipm
ent, energy, materials, analysis and synthesis, as well as the mathematical, phy
sical and social sciences together with the principles and methods of engineerin
g design to specify, predict, and evaluate the results to be obtained from such
systems or processes.[2] While industrial engineering is a longstanding engineer
ing discipline subject to (and eligible for) professional engineering licensure
in most jurisdictions, its underlying concepts overlap considerably with certain
business-oriented disciplines such as operations management.
Depending on the sub-specialties involved, industrial engineering may also be kn
own as, or overlap with, operations research, systems engineering, manufacturing
engineering, production engineering, management science, management engineering
, ergonomics or human factors engineering, safety engineering, or others, depend
ing on the viewpoint or motives of the user.
Contents [hide]
1 Overview
2 History
2.1 Origins
2.1.1 Industrial Revolution
2.1.2 Specialization of labor
2.1.3 Interchangeable parts
2.2 Pioneers
2.3 Modern practice
2.4 Compared to other engineering disciplines
3 Education
3.1 Undergraduate curriculum
3.2 Graduate curriculum
4 Salaries and workforce statistics
4.1 United States
4.2 Norway
5 See also
6 Notes
7 Further reading
Overview[edit]
This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by addi
ng citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and remov
ed. (October 2014) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)
While originally applied to manufacturing, the use of "industrial" in "industria
l engineering" can be somewhat misleading, since it has grown to encompass any m
ethodical or quantitative approach to optimizing how a process, system, or organ
ization operates. Some engineering universities and educational agencies around
the world have changed the term "industrial" to broader terms such as "productio
n" or "systems", leading to the typical extensions noted above.
The various topics concerning industrial engineers include:
Process engineering: design, operation, control, and optimization of chemical, p
hysical, and biological processes.
Systems engineering: an interdisciplinary field of engineering that focuses on h
ow to design and manage complex engineering systems over their life cycles.
Safety engineering: an engineering discipline which assures that engineered syst
ems provide acceptable levels of safety.
Data science: the science of exploring, manipulating, analyzing, and visualizing
data to derive useful insights and conclusions
Machine learning: the automation of learning from data using models and algorith
ms
Analytics and data mining: the discovery, interpretation, and extraction of patt
erns and insights from large quantities of data
Cost engineering: practice devoted to the management of project cost, involving
such activities as cost- and control- estimating, which is cost control and cost
forecasting, investment appraisal, and risk analysis.
Value engineering: a systematic method to improve the "value" of goods or produc
ts and services by using an examination of function.
Quality engineering: a way of preventing mistakes or defects in manufactured pro
ducts and avoiding problems when delivering solutions or services to customers.
Project management: is the process and activity of planning, organizing, motivat
ing, and controlling resources, procedures and protocols to achieve specific goa
ls in scientific or daily problems.
Management engineering: a specialized form of management that is concerned with
the application of engineering principles to business practice
Supply chain management: the management of the flow of goods. It includes the mo
vement and storage of raw materials, work-in-process inventory, and finished goo
ds from point of origin to point of consumption.
Ergonomics: the practice of designing products, systems or processes to take pro
per account of the interaction between them and the people that use them.
Operations research, also known as management science: discipline that deals wit
h the application of advanced analytical methods to help make better decisions
Operations management: an area of management concerned with overseeing, designin
g, and controlling the process of production and redesigning business operations
in the production of goods or services.
Job design: the specification of contents, methods and relationship of jobs in o
rder to satisfy technological and organizational requirements as well as the soc
ial and personal requirements of the job holder.
Financial engineering: the application of technical methods, especially from mat
hematical finance and computational finance, in the practice of finance
Industrial plant configuration: sizing of necessary infrastructure used in suppo
rt and maintenance of a given facility.
Facility management: an interdisciplinary field devoted to the coordination of s
pace, infrastructure, people and organization
Engineering design process: formulation of a plan to help an engineer build a pr
oduct with a specified performance goal.
Logistics: the management of the flow of goods between the point of origin and t
he point of consumption in order to meet some requirements, of customers or corp
orations.
Accounting: the measurement, processing and communication of financial informati
on about economic entities
Capital projects: the management of activities in capital projects involves the
flow of resources, or inputs, as they are transformed into outputs.[3][4] Many o
f the tools and principles of industrial engineering can be applied to the confi
guration of work activities within a project. The application of industrial engi
neering and operations management concepts and techniques to the execution of pr
ojects has been thus referred to as Project Production Management.[5]
Traditionally, a major aspect of industrial engineering was planning the layouts
of factories and designing assembly lines and other manufacturing paradigms. An
d now, in lean manufacturing systems, industrial engineers work to eliminate was
tes of time, money, materials, energy, and other resources.
Examples of where industrial engineering might be used include flow process ch