Industrial engineering has evolved to meet the changing times by fusing various disciplines. To become a problem-solving professional, modern industrial engineers need to cultivate strategic thinking and planning skills, and build their own industrial engineering.
Industrial engineering is a discipline that encompasses many different fields, including math, computers, quality, management, and more. Because of this, many students are confused about the identity of industrial engineering. The answer to the question “What is industrial engineering?” varies even among professors, but here’s the view that resonated with me the most: “Industrial engineering is the utilization of engineering in industry. Industries have diversified over time, and the engineering disciplines required within them have expanded. This is why the subjects studied in industrial engineering have become increasingly diverse. Some students think that industrial engineering has no identity because there are so many different fields of study, but they are wrong. After hearing this, I have been trying to create my own industrial engineering by figuring out which field I want to work in and what I need in that field, and then creating my own industrial engineering.
To better understand industrial engineering, it is important to look at its historical development. The beginnings of industrial engineering date back to the industrialization era, when the goal was to get the most out of the workers in the factories that produced goods. The division of labor, minimizing breaks during the workday, and optimizing every process and workstation so that workers could perform at peak efficiency were the beginnings of industrial engineering, which led to the concept of “maximizing efficiency,” an important concept in industrial engineering.
As time went on, machines were introduced, and people began to manage machines. Whereas before, people were concerned with human efficiency, after the introduction of machines, people began to think about how to maximize efficiency through machines. At the same time, efforts were made to reduce the defect rate of products. With these changes, industrial engineering students primarily aimed to become factory managers who would manage and improve everything related to the production of products. As a result, they began to study a variety of disciplines, including work management, factory process design, mechanical engineering, computer science, quality control, mathematics, and statistics.
But it wasn’t enough to simply make a product; management needed to be more scientific and systematic to increase profits, which in turn would be invested in research and development (R&D), creating a virtuous cycle. Management, strategy, marketing, banking, finance, and accounting also became necessary knowledge for leaders. In this way, industrial engineering became more than just a study of production management, but a comprehensive discipline that encompassed all elements of an organization.
In the modern era, as industries have become more diverse, industrial engineers have realized that they need to take on a new role. This is the role of a problem finder, a problem defender, and a problem solver. In today’s complex society, we need not only experts in one field, but also people who can look at problems from different perspectives and propose solutions. This is where industrial engineers who have learned various knowledge such as engineering and management can play a leading role. In this trend, a new orientation called “Problem Solver” has been created internally in the Department of Industrial Engineering. This means that industrial engineers should be excellent problem solvers regardless of their field.
In the midst of these changes, I am trying to build my own kind of industrial engineering. In particular, I want to work in the field of strategy and planning. One of the most important issues in this field is to discover new market opportunities by analyzing people’s behavior based on data. For example, I want to create market opportunities such as “We analyzed people’s purchasing behavior in supermarkets and found that beer and diapers are often sold together, so we increased related sales by 30% by placing beer and diapers closer together in the store.
However, during this process, I realized that simply analyzing data is not enough; it is important to strategically utilize the results derived from data analysis and create actionable plans based on them. It also requires flexible thinking and a creative approach that can quickly respond to market changes and customer needs. To equip myself with these capabilities, I am focusing on developing my strategic thinking and planning skills as well as data analysis.
Industrial engineering is not just a technical discipline, but a comprehensive discipline that encompasses the entire industry. As times change, it is the role of industrial engineers to solve new problems and find innovative ways to solve them. To fulfill this role, I am constantly learning and growing, and ultimately, I aim to perfect my own industrial engineering and become a leader in the future of industry.
