Industrial engineering is a discipline that makes our lives easier and more efficient through user-centered product design, efficient production systems, waste minimization, reliable quality control, consumer analysis through data mining, and ergonomic work environments.
When we look around us, we see products and services that we use every day that make our lives easier. For example, when shopping online, you can choose the products you need or like, pay for them, and have a delivery driver deliver them to your home. These things don’t just magically appear to consumers. Industrial engineering is about studying the complexity of these non-magical processes and learning how to deliver products to consumers according to their needs.
Depending on the purpose of the product, the design work begins first and foremost. Any major can do this. However, industrial engineering majors design products around the user by understanding not only human psychology and behavior, but also mental and physical limitations. Sometimes, people’s behaviors can be surprising. For example, when I was walking from my dormitory to Building 39, the sidewalk is clearly marked on the right, but almost everyone walks on the left instead of using the marked sidewalk. Therefore, people will not use products or services that are designed without considering the user. If you observe human behavior, your product design will be much more usable. In the case of the government library, students spend a lot of time in a sitting position, so it’s important to design chairs that minimize back strain. The chairs were carefully selected by the professor of industrial engineering. So, when designing a product, it’s important to focus on user-centered research in industrial engineering to make it comfortable and easy for users to use.
Another important aspect of industrial engineering is system analysis and optimization. For example, when designing a factory production line, various techniques are used to maximize the efficiency of each process. By analyzing the bottlenecks in the production process and improving them, the overall production speed and efficiency can be increased. These optimizations contribute significantly to reducing production costs while maintaining product quality.
The worst part of designing a product and then producing it is the waste. It’s not just about industrial engineering, it’s also about satisfying the needs of the consumer and the profits of the manufacturer. The most important thing in the production process is to minimize waste. Not only is it wasteful if you have to throw away a product because of a defect, but it’s also wasteful if you overproduce. There’s the cost of keeping products in the warehouse and the cost of not selling enough of them. In most cases, wasteful costs have a significant impact on the bottom line. That’s why industrial engineering studies demand forecasting to reduce waste. By producing the optimal amount according to a reliable forecast, you can reduce costs and increase profits. For airline companies, for example, demand forecasting has played a very important role. A good prediction of how many people will book business class seats and how many will book economy class seats on a flight can maximize profits by reducing losses from not selling seats or selling seats too cheaply.
Your product needs to be of high quality to gain consumer trust. That’s why you need to be cautious about creating defects when manufacturing your products. It’s also the job of industrial engineering to keep an eye on products from design to manufacturing. Industrial engineering students use statistical analysis to create products while measuring criteria within an acceptable range. In the past, the process of testing a product was done after it was finished, but now it’s done as it’s being manufactured. That way, if something goes wrong, a solution can be put in place quickly. Otherwise, problems can pile up and become complicated.
You need to know what consumers want before you can introduce a product or service to them. Industrial engineering has a weapon to get to know consumers or users better. It’s called data mining. Data mining is the act of organizing and analyzing data. In this day and age, there is a lot of data and it’s getting bigger and bigger, but it needs to be organized in a logical way to become useful information. The reason why it is a weapon is that the information obtained in this process is invisible to our eyes and there are many unusual phenomena. When consumers search for books they are interested in on the Internet, not only the book, but also the age, occupation, gender, etc. are collected. Through data mining, we can recommend books that you might be interested in. This weapon can be applied in many fields. It can also analyze the patterns of consumer purchases or service use. When you go to a large supermarket, products are not just placed randomly, but they are placed together if the data analysis shows that certain products are selling well.
Industrial engineering also focuses on ergonomics (human factors). It studies how work environments and tools affect the health and efficiency of users. For example, it’s important to use ergonomically designed chairs and desks for people who work on computers for long periods of time. Such research is essential to ensure the safety and health of workers.
When we look back at the products and services we use in our lives, we realize that they didn’t come to us by magic, but through a complex process. In other words, industrial engineering is the study of products that are designed to meet the needs of consumers and connect them to our lives. The various research and applications of industrial engineering make our lives more convenient and efficient, and the future will bring even more innovative changes.
