Industrial Engineer

Job overview
Industrial engineers design improved methods and facilities for manufacturing and services, leading to better quality and productivity.

Their knowledge and skills are based on mathematics, statistics, economics and the physical and social sciences.

What do people do in this occupation?
Industrial engineers bring the realities of the business world to the attention of the other engineering disciplines with which they are working on a project.

They bridge the gap between the technology-driven design engineer and the profit-motivated manager.

They are integrators who should combine all the parts of a problem or a proposed solution into one final working entity.

Their activities cover:

• Technical studies involving planning of lay-out and of work and study methods, studies of equipment replacement, material handling problems, determining the characteristics of operational equipment, low-cost automation, value analysis, etc.
• Production and work standards, including production planning and control and updating production and maintenance standards.
• Manpower assessment and valuation of positions, including organisational studies.
• Industrial engineers must define the number of people, the level of training and the remuneration for every position to ensure the optimum efficiency of a system.

At the same time the organisational relationship between the various positions must be developed.

• Development and implementation of the industrial systems.
• This comprises the development, testing, evaluation and ongoing improvement of industrial systems to enable management to achieve plans.
• Economic feasibility studies to measure all results in monetary terms. Various techniques are available for the economical evaluation of technical plans and the comparison of various alternatives.
• Operations research studies with computerised application of techniques such as linear and dynamic programming, simulations, stock control and replacement theory? (?concerning industrial problems in areas such as production flow, facility and raw material planning?)?.
• Project management. In implementing new major construction projects, it is important for work progress to be monitored against the commissioning date of the project.
• Quality control. This includes setting up control systems to ensure products are manufactured to set standards.

What kinds of people are suitable for this career?
Apart from the general qualities that every engineer should possess, such as average intelligence and an aptitude for mathematics and science, industrial engineers should also have an analytical inclination and enjoy working with people.

It is essential that industrial engineers not only show proper technical understanding, but that they should also have insight into human relations, accounting and management techniques.

What qualifications are needed?
Basically a university degree in one of the traditional engineering disciplines.