Career Profiles

Industrial Engineer

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What is Industrial Engineering?

Industrial engineering is an exciting discipline of engineering in which the main concern is around optimisation and promotion of efficiencies within complex systems and processes. The industrial engineer thus takes mathematics, physical and social science knowledge and skills and what they have learned about engineering analysis and design in order to critically and thoroughly evaluate and analyse, identify and predict and work towards improvements to and creation of new systems and processes to meet client requirements.

Quality and productivity improvement and the elimination of waste and inefficiencies are at the heart of what an industrial engineer strives for. As an industrial engineer you could find yourself streamlining a manufacturing process, analysing the layout of equipment in a warehouse or shipyard, working out why there are long queues in theme parks, designing a new facility from nothing, reconfiguring an already established facility, designing the admissions procedure at a hospital, performing motion and time studies or optimising customer service processes at any assortment of organisations. This range of activities illustrates the range of industries in which the industrial engineer could find themselves including the service and entertainment industries, shipping and logistics businesses, health care organisations and of course manufacturing and industrial plants.

Industrial engineers expend a lot of effort into making things better, ensuring resources are maximized and utilised most efficiently. This field of engineering could be seen to be the meeting of minds between engineering and business.

For more information, please go to the South African Institute for Industrial Engineering.

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This article was first published on WSP.

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