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Real IE Value

Industrial engineers are great at solving problems. Ironically enough, there is still one age-old problem they unable to solve-identity. And the problem is not getting any to solve. In fact,“ identity” is just one of several challenges currently facing the IE profession.

Today s competitive global economy and tighter corporate budgets are forcing IEs to deal with issues that were barely mentioned a decade ago. Companies are flattening corporate structures; IE departments are being eliminated or renamed; and universities and colleges are under even greater pressure to provide industry with graduates who are better trained to handle a much wider variety of job responsibilities.

On the other hand, today s IE has at his or her disposal more technology and tools than the IE of 30 years ago could have ever imagined. New technologies have improved accuracy and speed and generally have increased the IE s ability to cover a more diverse set of interests.

In addition, the IE now has a greater opportunity to concentrate on any one of a broad variety of areas that many companies now recognize as individual departments-including simulation, operations research, ergonomics, material handling and logistics.

The name game

What problems could possibly throw a shadow on such a bright array of opportunities? For starters, as new opportunities have developed for the IE, new questions have formed about what types of jobs the industrial engineer is qualified to perform.

At one time, it was easier to define what an IE did .” Industrial engineering was simple in those days when we dealt with methods, work standards and work simplification,” says Carlos Cherubin, director of engineering for The Limited Co. “But there has to be some way to get past the old industrial engineering definition.”

Even today, in many companies, IEs are still performing type of work that makes up what is now considered classical IE.” “The big change is that the commercialization of a lot of these areas have turned them into niche thrusts, ” says John Powers, director of the management service department at Eastman Kodak Co. While IEs have always been very adaptable to these “thrusts” as a skill set, he says ,they are now competing for the headlines.

Says Jerry Zollenberg, director of IE for United Parcel Service, “If a person loses slight of the total job and stars looking at the individual pieces, it comes out a little hairy.” For example, Zollenberg says that he has an operations research(OR) group of 40 to 50 individual who are working on the cutting edge of computer technology. At one time these people were designated as IEs. But Zollenberg says that even through they are not called IEs, the job they are doing is certainly IE-oriented and could be IE, depending on how you set up the organization.

Like it or not, the trend today is specialization, and companies are following suit. Tough economic times are forcing many companies to redefine corporate structures, with a primary goal of flatting their organization in an attempt to cut costs and speed the decision-making process. In the case of the IE department, that trend has moved departmental names from the generic “IE” to special functions or areas that are being performed. Former IE departments have been decentralized or renamed and are now described using such terms as Quality Improvement Engineering, Management Service or Engineering Service, just to name a few.

“What I see is companies getting away from the IE name and trying to have names that are more descriptive of the broader set of skills,” says Powers.

For many, including Rebecca Ray, IE manager at Glaxo Inc., it is a step in the right direction. Her

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