Evolving Role of Industrial Engineers

Question

Over the past 10-20 years the market for both goods and services has become increasingly global. This has had and will continue to have a significant impact on the function of industrial engineers within an organization.
 
Your task is to research international business trends, then develop a hypothesis and support it concerning the role of Industrial Engineers' in the future from an international business perspective. You will find it quite easy to explore the business literature (i.e. Wall Street Journal, etc.) via some the electronic resources.

Summary:

The role of industrial engineer has become very important in an organisation, especially where goods and / or services are produced. The scope of industrial engineer has widened as markets today have increased from local, national to international levels and hence, the role of industrial engineer has been constantly evolving.

Answer 1

Evolving Role of Industrial Engineer’s:

The traditional roles of industrial engineers are mostly focused on the development of the industrial engineering design and improving the work system. These are systems which included people, equipments, materials and information. They are traditionally focused on the improvements of the processes and plan the production schedules. The other factors which they essentially plan on are quality control, facility layout and various aspects of project management and system engineering. But with the wave of globalization striking all the industries at once and essentially has transformed the traditional concept of industrial engineering.

The basic hypothesis of this research is that the role of industrial engineers has now become more consumer-centric in nature. That means currently the industrial engineers should be more concerned with concepts like mass customization and global competition. These concepts are overruling the traditional concepts and the companies all over the globe are focusing more on the needs and the wants of the consumers. But not only fulfilling the needs of the consumers will not do as the companies need to be faster and accurate, as at each and every segment there are competitors who are always threatening to occupy the market share. The new form of industrial engineering essentially includes three most important and fundamental concepts.  
 
Firstly lean management which essentially aims at more specified work environment aiming at improving the overall efficiency of the system. Then the second concept is the theory of constraints, where the engineers in order to make the work flow more fluent and efficient should focus on identifying the constraints, Over and above quality management has evolved as an essential component of the process design.

The main purpose of introducing the lean program is to eliminate the wastage by consciously introducing a culture of lean methodologies backed by a process of continuous improvements. Prior to the actual implementation process the needs and the requirements of the particular market is required to be recognized.

The process of performance improvement is basically a series of interrelated methodologies for improving the level of output for the individual employees as well as the performance of the organization. Thus the performance measurement in most of the departments can be used as a substitute for the Human Performance Technology, which has gained much attention lately in the international domain.