Industrial engineering is a branch of study specifically designed to create manpower for effective management of the entire industrial operations. It was expected that like any other engineering discipline this branch of study would help in the integration between manufacturing and floor management. The viewpoints obtained from different parts of the globe would help us to gain a better perspective about the current importance given to this academic stream.
It is interesting to note that despite the dismal industrial picture Bangladesh presents to the world, the courses related to industrial engineering are slowly picking up in this country. The major reason for this sudden change is the increased demand for industrial engineers by national and reputed multinational companies. This has helped industrial engineering to emerge as a very important field of engineering in Bangladesh. The story of Indonesia is very different. Trying very hard to become a developed industrial country industrial engineering courses were offered in a large number of universities and colleges.
Due to the issues related to the implementation of industrialization policies, the process becomes weaker and resulted in poor job profiles for industrial engineers. Japan, in spite of having graduated in industrial engineering, also couldn’t guarantee good positions for industrial engineers due to poor contributions in the professional domain. In Malaysia too, the profession of industrial engineers exist and most of those currently undertaking these roles are not specifically qualified with a graduate degree in industrial engineering. This shows that a specialized role for trained industrial engineers has been felt in this country. Also, with the industry opening up to the service sector huge opportunities are expected to emerge for industrial engineers.
In another example from western Europe, Belgium doesn’t have a formal educational system leading to a degree in industrial engineering. This situation has placed a lot of small-scale manufacturing and other companies at a disadvantage as they have to depend on support from other neighborhood countries. In Turkey, the importance of industrial engineers has getting realized, and have started hiring the trained personnel from other countries to work in factories and the manufacturing sector.
The domain of industrial engineering is still to get an acceptable profile of job among the industry. Other than a few manufacturing units, which have a few specialists industrial engineers none of the small-scale industrial units recognize the need for such trained people.
The story is not very different in most of the major African nations. In Botswana, as the manufacturing sector is slowly gaining growth, the requirement for industrial engineers and demand for industrial engineering courses is also expected to improve. The drawback in the industrial engineering capability has made them very inefficient in industrial operations like the inability to use software tools that could make the process very efficient. In Egypt, the profession of industrial engineering is not known to many. Though some developers have taken place, there is a long way to be traveled to make Industrial engineering a career among the prospective students in the country. Egypt has only a bachelor’s and master’s degree program in industrial engineering with no research programs being offered currently.
Works Cited
International Engineers Spanning the Globe with Our Profession. All Business. 2004. Web.