Understanding of Industrial Engineering 工业工程的认识 Real IE Value
工业工程的真正价值
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.
工业工程师非常善于解决问题。可是具有讽刺性的却是他们仍有一个长期性的问题得不到解决----一致性。而且这个问题解决起来一直很困难。事实上，“一致性”恰好是目前工业工程领域所面临的众多挑战性问题之一。
今天激烈的世界竞争和紧张的公司预算都迫使工业工程师们去解决被人们忽视很久的问题。公司开始重新组合团队结构；工业工程部被逐渐被取消或者重新命名；而且大学和学院也承担着向工业界提供被更好的培训而掌握了更广泛工作能力的毕业生的压力。
另一方面，现在的工业工程师可以使用许多他们30年前的同行想都想不到的技术和工具。新技术已经提高了精确度和速度并逐渐提高了工业工程师们解决更多样问题的能力。 值得一提的是，工业工程现在有更多的机会去集中于现在许多企业已经视为独立的学科的众多领域中的一个-----包括防真学、运筹学、人因学、物料搬运和物流学。
The name game
命名问题
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 Z ollenberg 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.
什么问题可能会在如此明亮的机会阵列上投下阴影呢？对于初学者来说，随着工业工程新的机遇的产生，诸如工业工程师到底能胜任什么样的工作问题也随之产生。
曾经，定义工业工程是很容易的。“工业工程那时候在解决问题，制订工作标准和工作简明化方面很简单”有限公司的经理卡罗. 彻罗宾如是说。“但是现在需要放弃那些落后的工业工程定义了。”
甚至现在，在许多公司，工业工程仍然在从事那些现在看来是经典工业工程的传统的工作。“埃斯曼. 柯达公司的人力资源部经理约翰帕娃说：“最大的变化就是工业工程领域的商业化使它们成为具有竞争性的舒适职业。”而且，工业工程师已经适应了这种竞争技能。他们现在正在争取这份工作。
联合包装服务公司的工业工程经理杰瑞说：“如果一个人不能对整项工作做全面把握而只是将注意力放在个别的方面，那么结果就不会令人满意。”例如，诺龙博格博士说他公司有一个由40到50个人组成的专门从事计算机尖端技术的研究小组，这些人曾被称做工业工程师，但是，即使他们没被予以这种头衔，他们所做的还是工业工程的工作可以被称做工业工程，这取决于你如何组织这个团队。
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 department will soon carry the title Performance Improvement
Engineering. ” IE is probably the only engineering profession that insists on wearing its degree on its departmental door,” she says. “we have focused too much on maintaining our degree, instead of identifying our function within our company.” 不管是否真的这样，专业化是目前的趋势就，而且企业也在向这个方向发展。许多企业在这个经济时代的要求下都在重组公司结构，以期能够是组织有效能，可以节约开支并加快决策的进度。而在工业工程部门，专业化的趋势是工业工程不在是普通的工业工程而是具有专业的作用或者是个正在改善的行业。从前的工业工程部已经被分解或者重新命名。现在他们已经部分成为质量改善工程，质量服务或者工程服务，仅是名字多一点。
帕娃说：“我所看到的就是企业都在减少使用工业工程这个名字而在尝试使用些更新的描述这些技能的名字。”
许多人，包括格莱斯公司的工业工程经理瑞贝卡瑞都认为，这是正确方向上的一步。而且她的部门也要命名为绩效改善工程了。她还说：“工业工程可能是工程专业仅有的坚持要求把自己的地位建立在本部门之上的专业”。“我们已经过多的注重维护我们的地位而忽略了我们对公司所起的作用。”
Dr. Vinod Sahney, corporate vice president at Henry Ford health Syste engineering department, ” he says, “I have never seen a mechanical engineering department. “One of our biggest difficulties is we equate industrial engineering department, but they are hired and get a wide-range of jobs.”
Tony Vieth, IE manager at Boeing Georgia Inc., believes that the individual person, depending on how they are trained, can bring the rights skills to the right job and they do not need to be in a department called industrial engineering. He also thinks IEs have gotten hung up on what over the years. On the other hand, the decentralized type of environment appears more threatening to others. “If we assume that decentralized will continue to the point of transferring IE responsibilities to others, as seen in the Volvo organization, we will see a profound impact upon the profession, namely unemployment, ” predicts Donald Barnes of Barnes Management Training Services.
But, a centralized IE department does not guarantee employment for the industrial engineer. Many large companies have “IE ” departments where only a handful of industrial engineers can be found. An example is Boeing. Boeing has some very large IE departments, but often less than two or three people within the department have IE degrees. According to Vieth, it is because some of the functions within the department are so diverse.
亨利福得保健设备公司的副主席文纳德. 沙尼博士也同意她的观点. 他说:”我从未发现有机械工程部, 我们最大的困难就是平等看待工业工程部门, 但机械工程专业的人却有很多就业机会且就业范围广泛. ”
佐治亚的波音公司的工业工程经理托尼. 万斯认为一个人的工作决定于他所学习的技能使他所学有所用而不是取决于他在哪个部门工作. 而且他认为工业工程师已经为这个问题困扰了许多年. 而巴勒斯管理培训服务公司的唐纳德. 巴勒斯却持有相反意见. 他说:”如果这种分解继续的话, 工业工程的职责就会改变. 就象我们在沃而沃公司看到的一样, 我们就会到这种影响将会造成这个行业的失业.
但是, 对于工业工程部的整合也并不会给工业工程师带来工作. 许多大企业的工业工程部里仅有少量的工业工程师. 拿波音公司做个例子, 波音公司有一些大的工业工程部, 但是其中只有2个或三个人有工业工程学位. 通过万斯来看, 那是因为部门里的某些函数太多样了.
Problems associated with renaming IE departments to describe their particular function may have more to do with appearance than with the actual job being performed. While IEs actually perform many of the specialized jobs, little credit is given to IE principles used in the approach. In fact, it often turns out that many of the individual functions and skills used by IEs are viewed by management as industrial engineering. As a result, individuals who can master one of those skills are mistakenly referred to by management as “industrial engineers.”
Yet, those who understand the real value of industrial engineering still realize that the degreed IE brings to the job a unique way of thinking.
“There are things you can teach non-degreed people that are basic repetitive tasks, ” says Vieth. “But what you can ’t teach is how to take what you see, translate it and recognize there is a problem, and then come up with a solution to that problem. ”
Erin Wallace, director of IE at Walt Disney World Co., would not hire anyone who was not a degreed IE. “I insist on it,” she says. “When you’ve got a group of people who are distinctly IEs, they carry with them what we like to refer to as distinct competencies. Those distinct competencies for an IE at Walt Disney World include their ability to do quantitative analysis. You need an IE degree to be able to do that type of work.”
Wallace says that when someone hires IE technology-type majors, they do not get some of the rudimentary problem solving skills acquired from taking engineering courses.
将工业工程部重新命名以明确描述其具体职能, 其间所出现的问题与其说与实际完成的工作有关倒不如说与问题的表象有关. 工业工程师们在完成许多专业性工作的过程中的工作原则极少得到承认. 实际上, 工业工程师们的个体作用和技能通常被管理学认为是工业工程学. 结果, 拥有这些技能中的某一项的人被错误的认为是”工业工程师”
然而, 那些懂得工业工程的真正价值的人依然意识到工业工程这个专业给了这份工作一个与众不同的思考途径.
万斯说:”你可以教一个没有专业基础的人一些基本重要的工作, 但是你却不能教他们如何了解和转化看到的问题并找出方法去解决这个问题.
任职于华特. 迪斯尼世界公司的工业工程部经理爱瑞. 沃仑斯从部雇用非工业工程专业的人. 她说:”我坚持这样做是因为如果你雇用了一批专业的工业工程人士, 那么他们具备我们需要的独特的能力. 在华特. 迪斯尼, 这种独特的能力包括他们做质量分析的能力. 你需要一个工业工程的毕业生从事这种工作. ”
沃仑斯说当雇用工业工程技术类型的专业人员时, 他们就不需要通过参加工业工程课程来获得解决基本技术问题所要的技能了.
Curriculum
课程
Since there is a favorable consensus about the technical qualification of degreed IEs, universities and colleges must be doing all industry believes is necessary to prepare today’s IE students. Appearances may be deceiving.
In fact, even though ABET accredits many IE and IET programs in the United States, there remains much variance and flexibility among each of the programs.
Evidence of the fact can be found in a recent Australian study undertaken by the Industrial Engineering/Management (IE/M) group of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering Swinburne Institute of Technology (SIT).
The school initiated a set of promotional activities to rejuvenate the industrial engineering name and status. One of the school’s goals was to help convince managers and government to reconsider the role of industrial engineering.
既然对于工业工程师必须具有技术素质已经成为共识, 那么大学和学院必须使工业界相信提供现代的工业工程毕业生是很必要的. 表面现象通常是不可信的.
事实上, 尽管工业工程与技术鉴定委员会鉴定了美国的许多工业工程与工业工程技术项目, 但这些项目之间仍然存在很大的区别和灵活性. 事实的根据可以从最近澳大利亚机械和制造工业学校的工业工程管理小组的研究中得到证实. 该学校隶属于机械和制造工程技术小组.
学校开始行动起来改变工业工程学的名字和地位. 学校的目标之一就是帮助管理人员和政府重新评估工业工程学的价值.
Understanding of Industrial Engineering 工业工程的认识 Real IE Value
工业工程的真正价值
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.
工业工程师非常善于解决问题。可是具有讽刺性的却是他们仍有一个长期性的问题得不到解决----一致性。而且这个问题解决起来一直很困难。事实上，“一致性”恰好是目前工业工程领域所面临的众多挑战性问题之一。
今天激烈的世界竞争和紧张的公司预算都迫使工业工程师们去解决被人们忽视很久的问题。公司开始重新组合团队结构；工业工程部被逐渐被取消或者重新命名；而且大学和学院也承担着向工业界提供被更好的培训而掌握了更广泛工作能力的毕业生的压力。
另一方面，现在的工业工程师可以使用许多他们30年前的同行想都想不到的技术和工具。新技术已经提高了精确度和速度并逐渐提高了工业工程师们解决更多样问题的能力。 值得一提的是，工业工程现在有更多的机会去集中于现在许多企业已经视为独立的学科的众多领域中的一个-----包括防真学、运筹学、人因学、物料搬运和物流学。
The name game
命名问题
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 Z ollenberg 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.
什么问题可能会在如此明亮的机会阵列上投下阴影呢？对于初学者来说，随着工业工程新的机遇的产生，诸如工业工程师到底能胜任什么样的工作问题也随之产生。
曾经，定义工业工程是很容易的。“工业工程那时候在解决问题，制订工作标准和工作简明化方面很简单”有限公司的经理卡罗. 彻罗宾如是说。“但是现在需要放弃那些落后的工业工程定义了。”
甚至现在，在许多公司，工业工程仍然在从事那些现在看来是经典工业工程的传统的工作。“埃斯曼. 柯达公司的人力资源部经理约翰帕娃说：“最大的变化就是工业工程领域的商业化使它们成为具有竞争性的舒适职业。”而且，工业工程师已经适应了这种竞争技能。他们现在正在争取这份工作。
联合包装服务公司的工业工程经理杰瑞说：“如果一个人不能对整项工作做全面把握而只是将注意力放在个别的方面，那么结果就不会令人满意。”例如，诺龙博格博士说他公司有一个由40到50个人组成的专门从事计算机尖端技术的研究小组，这些人曾被称做工业工程师，但是，即使他们没被予以这种头衔，他们所做的还是工业工程的工作可以被称做工业工程，这取决于你如何组织这个团队。
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 department will soon carry the title Performance Improvement
Engineering. ” IE is probably the only engineering profession that insists on wearing its degree on its departmental door,” she says. “we have focused too much on maintaining our degree, instead of identifying our function within our company.” 不管是否真的这样，专业化是目前的趋势就，而且企业也在向这个方向发展。许多企业在这个经济时代的要求下都在重组公司结构，以期能够是组织有效能，可以节约开支并加快决策的进度。而在工业工程部门，专业化的趋势是工业工程不在是普通的工业工程而是具有专业的作用或者是个正在改善的行业。从前的工业工程部已经被分解或者重新命名。现在他们已经部分成为质量改善工程，质量服务或者工程服务，仅是名字多一点。
帕娃说：“我所看到的就是企业都在减少使用工业工程这个名字而在尝试使用些更新的描述这些技能的名字。”
许多人，包括格莱斯公司的工业工程经理瑞贝卡瑞都认为，这是正确方向上的一步。而且她的部门也要命名为绩效改善工程了。她还说：“工业工程可能是工程专业仅有的坚持要求把自己的地位建立在本部门之上的专业”。“我们已经过多的注重维护我们的地位而忽略了我们对公司所起的作用。”
Dr. Vinod Sahney, corporate vice president at Henry Ford health Syste engineering department, ” he says, “I have never seen a mechanical engineering department. “One of our biggest difficulties is we equate industrial engineering department, but they are hired and get a wide-range of jobs.”
Tony Vieth, IE manager at Boeing Georgia Inc., believes that the individual person, depending on how they are trained, can bring the rights skills to the right job and they do not need to be in a department called industrial engineering. He also thinks IEs have gotten hung up on what over the years. On the other hand, the decentralized type of environment appears more threatening to others. “If we assume that decentralized will continue to the point of transferring IE responsibilities to others, as seen in the Volvo organization, we will see a profound impact upon the profession, namely unemployment, ” predicts Donald Barnes of Barnes Management Training Services.
But, a centralized IE department does not guarantee employment for the industrial engineer. Many large companies have “IE ” departments where only a handful of industrial engineers can be found. An example is Boeing. Boeing has some very large IE departments, but often less than two or three people within the department have IE degrees. According to Vieth, it is because some of the functions within the department are so diverse.
亨利福得保健设备公司的副主席文纳德. 沙尼博士也同意她的观点. 他说:”我从未发现有机械工程部, 我们最大的困难就是平等看待工业工程部门, 但机械工程专业的人却有很多就业机会且就业范围广泛. ”
佐治亚的波音公司的工业工程经理托尼. 万斯认为一个人的工作决定于他所学习的技能使他所学有所用而不是取决于他在哪个部门工作. 而且他认为工业工程师已经为这个问题困扰了许多年. 而巴勒斯管理培训服务公司的唐纳德. 巴勒斯却持有相反意见. 他说:”如果这种分解继续的话, 工业工程的职责就会改变. 就象我们在沃而沃公司看到的一样, 我们就会到这种影响将会造成这个行业的失业.
但是, 对于工业工程部的整合也并不会给工业工程师带来工作. 许多大企业的工业工程部里仅有少量的工业工程师. 拿波音公司做个例子, 波音公司有一些大的工业工程部, 但是其中只有2个或三个人有工业工程学位. 通过万斯来看, 那是因为部门里的某些函数太多样了.
Problems associated with renaming IE departments to describe their particular function may have more to do with appearance than with the actual job being performed. While IEs actually perform many of the specialized jobs, little credit is given to IE principles used in the approach. In fact, it often turns out that many of the individual functions and skills used by IEs are viewed by management as industrial engineering. As a result, individuals who can master one of those skills are mistakenly referred to by management as “industrial engineers.”
Yet, those who understand the real value of industrial engineering still realize that the degreed IE brings to the job a unique way of thinking.
“There are things you can teach non-degreed people that are basic repetitive tasks, ” says Vieth. “But what you can ’t teach is how to take what you see, translate it and recognize there is a problem, and then come up with a solution to that problem. ”
Erin Wallace, director of IE at Walt Disney World Co., would not hire anyone who was not a degreed IE. “I insist on it,” she says. “When you’ve got a group of people who are distinctly IEs, they carry with them what we like to refer to as distinct competencies. Those distinct competencies for an IE at Walt Disney World include their ability to do quantitative analysis. You need an IE degree to be able to do that type of work.”
Wallace says that when someone hires IE technology-type majors, they do not get some of the rudimentary problem solving skills acquired from taking engineering courses.
将工业工程部重新命名以明确描述其具体职能, 其间所出现的问题与其说与实际完成的工作有关倒不如说与问题的表象有关. 工业工程师们在完成许多专业性工作的过程中的工作原则极少得到承认. 实际上, 工业工程师们的个体作用和技能通常被管理学认为是工业工程学. 结果, 拥有这些技能中的某一项的人被错误的认为是”工业工程师”
然而, 那些懂得工业工程的真正价值的人依然意识到工业工程这个专业给了这份工作一个与众不同的思考途径.
万斯说:”你可以教一个没有专业基础的人一些基本重要的工作, 但是你却不能教他们如何了解和转化看到的问题并找出方法去解决这个问题.
任职于华特. 迪斯尼世界公司的工业工程部经理爱瑞. 沃仑斯从部雇用非工业工程专业的人. 她说:”我坚持这样做是因为如果你雇用了一批专业的工业工程人士, 那么他们具备我们需要的独特的能力. 在华特. 迪斯尼, 这种独特的能力包括他们做质量分析的能力. 你需要一个工业工程的毕业生从事这种工作. ”
沃仑斯说当雇用工业工程技术类型的专业人员时, 他们就不需要通过参加工业工程课程来获得解决基本技术问题所要的技能了.
Curriculum
课程
Since there is a favorable consensus about the technical qualification of degreed IEs, universities and colleges must be doing all industry believes is necessary to prepare today’s IE students. Appearances may be deceiving.
In fact, even though ABET accredits many IE and IET programs in the United States, there remains much variance and flexibility among each of the programs.
Evidence of the fact can be found in a recent Australian study undertaken by the Industrial Engineering/Management (IE/M) group of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering Swinburne Institute of Technology (SIT).
The school initiated a set of promotional activities to rejuvenate the industrial engineering name and status. One of the school’s goals was to help convince managers and government to reconsider the role of industrial engineering.
既然对于工业工程师必须具有技术素质已经成为共识, 那么大学和学院必须使工业界相信提供现代的工业工程毕业生是很必要的. 表面现象通常是不可信的.
事实上, 尽管工业工程与技术鉴定委员会鉴定了美国的许多工业工程与工业工程技术项目, 但这些项目之间仍然存在很大的区别和灵活性. 事实的根据可以从最近澳大利亚机械和制造工业学校的工业工程管理小组的研究中得到证实. 该学校隶属于机械和制造工程技术小组.
学校开始行动起来改变工业工程学的名字和地位. 学校的目标之一就是帮助管理人员和政府重新评估工业工程学的价值.