تويت
According with Womack and Jones (1996), an Industrial and Systems Engineer is one who is concerned with the design, installation, and improvement of integrated systems of people, material, information, equipment, and energy by drawing upon specialized knowledge and skills in the mathematical, physical, and social sciences, together with the principles and methods of engineering analysis and design to specify, predict, and evaluate the results to be obtained from such systems’’.
The work of and industrial and systems engineering
But, what kind of system is it that Industrial and Systems Engineering work to optimize? In the context of organizations, we can say that the ultimate system of interest is the extended enterprise.
Industrial and system engineers must see how performance improvement in the target subsystem (warehouse layout, work cell configuration, display /human-equipment interface, queue design, simulation, supply chain, etc.) serves the higher good or works to optimize the performance of the larger system.
The domain of industrial and systems engineering
Basically, industrial and systems engineering works in four areas: manufacturing systems engineering, management systems, operations research and human factors engineering. Of course, each of these areas needs basic knowledge of mathematics, accounting, economics, statistics, psychology, etc.
A simple representation of the domain of industrial and systems engineering is shown below.
The Industrial and systems engineering value proposition isn’t only knowledge; it is the ability to reduce that knowledge to practice in such a way that it produces positive business results.