The Imaginary Engineer

For those who do not know, I am a graduate student in Industrial Engineering (Engineering Management) at the University of South Florida. During a discussion in class yesterday (Tuesday, 9/12) our class (and professor) had a rather passionate discussion of what makes Industrial Engineering such an obscure and misunderstood part of the engineering profession (thankfully no one has asked me about the Taylor motion studies--yet).

My background, to be fair, is not that of industrial engineering. Until I was well into college (my junior year, to be precise), I had scarcely heard anything at all about Industrial Engineering, despite being very active in the engineering school and finding acquaintances from a wide variety of engineering disciplines. My background is Civil (Structural) Engineering. While people may not know my specialty is buildings (most people, for some reason, automatically think of bridges), at least some people have an idea of what civil engineers do. Maybe a woefully small percentage of this world, but a recognizable portion nevertheless. Industrial engineering lacks even this sort of common understanding.

This may not be a bad thing. When people do know about Industrial Engineering, they inevitably misunderstand it (I will refrain, at this time, from extending that comment into a general thesis of my endeavors). The name Industrial Engineering itself is somewhat off-putting. People think of factories and assembly line processes when they think of Industrial Engineering. While this is certainly a part of the field, it is a very small part (in this country--not so in areas of the world where primary manufacturing actually goes on). For the most part, Industrial Engineering can be (perhaps a tad misleadingly) simplied as management for and of smart people. In particular, Industrial Engineering looks at the processes (both in procedures and power relationships as well as in technology and equipment) that lead to efficiency as well as effectiveness in management (including the management of engineers--who in a previous discussion in another class of mine had very little nice to say about MBA's without an engineering background). A look at my classes in my curriculum sheet will give some idea as to the sorts of material an industrial engineer would study on the master's degree level:

Principles of Engineering Management
Management of Technological Change
Technology and Finance
Engineering Management Policy and Strategies
Statistical Design Models
Work Design and Productivity
Total Quality Management Strategies
Occupational Safety Engineering
Project Management
ISO 9000/14000
Benchmarking

In other words, the field of Industrial Engineering is one of those hybrid fields between engineering (with its focus on technical and technological solutions to the problems of mankind) and concerns of management (even adopting some of the jargon of management, like Total Quality Management and Six Sigma and so forth, as well as the concern of finances). This sort of blend has led Industrial Engineers to market themselves (when they do market themselves, which is not often, apparently) as engineering without the math (and by math engineers mean such things as differential equations and matrix analysis). The fact that Industrial Engineering is not as heavy in high level mathematics has led many other (perhaps envious) engineering students to label Industrial Engineers as "Imaginary Engineers."

I find this to be amusing, but others are perhaps less amused by this. Every major, at least in engineering, has some sort of insult attached to it (my favorite for the civil engineering profession: mechanical engineers build weapons; civil engineers build targets--and my favorite for engineers in general is: What do engineers use for birth control? Their personalities.). Industrial Engineers seem to have done a poor job of marketing themselves. This is perhpas ironic, but it is not a serious problem to me (I generally have a severe distaste for the inevitable distortion and oversimplification that results from marketing efforts, even if I recognize the necessity of successful marketing to make sure the needs of people are met, even when those needs are not originally known or felt). As it is, there are few industrial engineers in this world, and few people know what they do or how important they are. This was the source of some humor in the classroom as well.

I suppose I could go on much longer, but the basic point has been made and I have other ways to spend my time then endlessly pontificate on an obscure field most people reading this are probably quite unfamiliar with. At any rate, hopefully this has been a useful update as to how I spend my time when I am not ranting about some topic, and about why my updates are so infrequent. Regardless, until my next post, fare thee well.