Industrial engineering is an engineering profession that is concerned with the optimization of complex processes, systems, or organizations by developing, improving and implementing integrated systems of people, money, knowledge, information and equipment. Industrial engineering is central to manufacturing operations.
Industrial engineers use specialized knowledge and skills in the mathematical, physical and social sciences, together with the principles and methods of engineering analysis and design, to specify, predict, and evaluate the results obtained from systems and processes. There are several industrial engineering principles followed in the manufacturing industry to ensure the effective flow of the systems, processes and operations.
This includes:
Lean Manufacturing
Six Sigma
Information Systems
Process Capability
Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control (DMAIC).
These principles allow the creation of new systems, processes or situations for the useful coordination of labor, materials and machines and also improve the quality and productivity of systems, physical or social. Depending on the subspecialties involved, industrial engineering may also overlap with, operations research, systems engineering, manufacturing engineering, production engineering, supply chain engineering, management science, management engineering, financial engineering, ergonomics or human factors engineering, safety engineering, logistics engineering or others, depending on the viewpoint or motives of the user.
List of industrial engineers
There is a general consensus among historians that the roots of the industrial engineering profession date back to the Industrial Revolution. The technologies that helped mechanize traditional manual operations in the textile industry including the flying shuttle, the spinning jenny, and perhaps most importantly the steam engine generated economies of scale that made mass production in centralized locations attractive for the first time. The concept of the production system had its genesis in the factories created by these innovations.
