Explanation of My Field

I’m majoring in Industrial Engineering at North Dakota State University.  In the following paragraphs, I will present my major’s definition, mission, and my curriculum based on my understanding.

THE DEFINITION OF INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING

In my point of view, industrial engineering is significant to our daily lives.  On Wikipedia, the definition of industrial engineering is: “Industrial engineering is a branch of engineering dealing with the optimization of complex process or system. It is concerned with the development, improvement, implementation and evaluation of integrated systems of people, money, knowledge, information, equipment, energy, materials, analysis and synthesis, as well as the mathematical, physical and social sciences together with the principles and methods of engineering design to specify, predict, and evaluate the results to be obtained from such systems or processes.” In another word, Industrial Engineering is an extensive field of studying.  As we can see, for all human and non-human, as long as the action occurs, we can apply industrial engineering principles to analyze them. Coherent analysis of the action in the Industrial Engineering (operation sequence) is a good example of how to apply industrial engineering to analyze the real problem. Because any kind of human action has a coherence of the action, after analyzing this action carefully, we can divide action into several units, and then we delete some unnecessary units. Finally, we connect these units to simplify the work.

THE MISSION OF INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING

Industrial Engineering is a bridge where   engineering and management science converge. According to the definition, we know my major’s main missions are  efficiency improvement, quality control, timeliness management. Efficiency plays an important role in such a competitive society.  If a company runs inefficiently, it will be a disaster in the future. Not only will the company lose profit, but  it will also waste time and resources. The problem will become apparent over time. Industrial engineers predict and evaluate the results with specialized knowledge, skills and tools in the mathematical, statistics. If the productivity is improved, while the quality is not controlled, which is far from enough. Fortunately, industrial engineers analyze the problem from the systematic perspective. We don’t focus on a specific segment to avoid one fault lead to that we will fall into another. For industrial engineers, how to figure out the problem or improve the system performance is always difficult. Here are some basic techniques that I learned in the class. The first method is 5W1H, which presents why, what, who, when, where, and how. This method is used to ask questions to find the problem.  The second method is mod analysis based on the time study, which is very useful when we want to simplify human action. In addition, there are some principles regarding the improvement of the methods. Used most frequently is the ECRS Principle, which means eliminate, combine, rearrange, and simplify.

MY CURRICULUM  

I have learned some basic technical classes and software applications which may help me to be an industrial engineer. Although most of my knowledge I have learned from the textbook and lectures, I can guess how those concepts and principles apply to the real field. Fortunately, we have some classes, like System Engineering, that they have final projects that test our understanding of knowledge and how to apply the knowledge to real problems.   Industrial engineers need computer skills related to design and manufacturing because many industrial engineers work in the field related to robotics and automated systems.  Using computer simulations and mathematical methods or models, we evaluate and analyze a variety of factors. Hence, during these years, besides Microsoft Office, I have learned like ProE, AutoCAD, Minitab, and Arena . In my opinion, Minitab is very useful to analyze the statistical problem and Arena is widely used as a decision-making tool in manufacturing and service industries in the last couple of decades. In addition, I have some classes that required me to finish some lab reports, like Work Design, Quality Control, Manufacturing Process. In the lab class, we will apply our knowledge to some specific fields. For instance, we design a chair based on our measurement regarding the size of human body and theory of human factor engineering.  In the Manufacturing lab, we learn how to use a turning machine, a drilling machine and know some basic steps to design metallic parts. In the college, some Computer Programing, Electrical Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering are required to complete some industrial engineering classes.

CONCLUSION 

Industrial engineers’ purpose is to maximize output and minimize the costs for efficiency and production. The role of Industrial engineers is to find and perform the efficient ways to the basic factors of human, machines, materials, production and energy to produce manufactured goods and provide a service.  Increasing productivity through managing people and methods of business and technology is one of the most important missions. I just wrote a brief explanation of my field of Industrial Engineering on this blog.  Industrial Engineering can be applied to various fields and almost all companies that produce or develop the product need Industrial Engineering. I hope my explanation can help you to know my field.




Work cited
"Industrial Engineering". Wikipedia. 27 Jan 2013.Web.18 Feb 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_engineering