Raunak Goyal
Roll No:76,Sec-B
PGDIE-42
Summary of “Technology's impact on the future of industrial
engineering”
Authors:C. Patrick Koelling, Mario G. Beruvides , and
Kriengkrai Tankoonsombut
*Department of
Industrial and Systems Engineering
Virginia
Polytechnic Institute and State University
Blacksburg, VA 24061-0118
*Department of
Industrial Engineering
Texas Tech University
Lubbock, TX 79409-3061
Industrial engineers in the future will use
high-technology systems which will largely affect the ways of their doing work
as well as impact of their work. This
paper addresses some of these main facts
and duscusses the potential impacts on the industrial engineer of the
future.
Major development in computing,
information, and communications technology
are dramatically, and permanently, changing the ways how we work and also the future that
industrial engineers will work
with. That is, industrial
engineers must design systems of people, machines, materials, capital, and so on, in a world that will be drastically
different from the one we see today. In
addition to this, the current education
and tools of industrial
engineers are itself out dated
for today's needs, not to mention the future. The main issues which will affect
the systems are organizational restructuring, Client/server computing models.
In this paper, Author has discussed what changes Industrial Engineer profession
will undergo in the next 10-20 years.
Before that however, let's consider what industrial engineers do.
According to Author,” "Industrial engineers
design, improve, and
install integrated systems
of people, materials, information, equipment, and energy.”
The most important aspects among these are improvement
and integration. Industrial
Engineer works in all occupations:
agricultural, manufacturing and service. These activities
have not changed much in the past. But the way of doing these activities have changed.
And these changes are being brought about, either directly or indirectly, by
one thing , Computer or Information technology.
Author has discussed few of most important technologies
that will affect industrial engineers.Let us analyse them.
Tools
For Collaboration: Indistrial
Engineers will have to use new types of
collaborative tools like groupware.They will begin to use strong
automated information system.Organzation culture will be more flexible and they
need to be cross functional Thus,
technology will introduce cultural
change, which in
turn will promote technology . Planning may become very
difficult, and will at the very least become quite different. The use of internet will increase tremendously. The
platform-independence of technology will
reduce resistance to multi-platform organizations. So, now
Unix,.net,Java all can coexist together. There will be a huge increase in the
use of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI).
As industrial engineers look for
ways to improve supplier-vendor relationships,
and increase communication, we will
find EDI to be
an indispensable tool.It will require some sort of security
standardization though. Teleconferencing will reduce the amount of travel and compresses video tools
are becoming usable, and increased
bandwidth will allow
use of this technology to skyrocket.
Technical
and Information Computing: The
power of computer will increase day by day .So many of work will tend to be
more automatic than manual. Information needs will be met in an effective and
efficient manner through these systems. Technical
computing will prosper, allowing
industrial engineers to solve problems
that heretofore have been too difficult.. In
addition, this computational
improvement has led
to advances in
the use of
scientific visualization techniques.
Other engineering
disciplines have realized the
value of these tools
in identifying trends and
patterns in data that couldn't be seen
otherwise.
No
Time or Space Barriers: Because
of advancement in technology there will not be any geographical or time
constraints.
IMPACTS
ON INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERS:
Author has analysed the impact of technology on
different aspects of Industrial Engineers in the following way:
Products/Services
Issues: Customer will
be of prime importance and all the irtual
products will be customer oriented, requiring continued focus
on quality. Organizations must become highly responsiveness
to customer needs and they need to efficient as well. Lead time for the product
should be very short.
Infrastructure
Issues: Organizations
will "go virtual." There will
be an increased demand for industrial engineers to use their human factors
skills in designing new infrastructures.
Management
Issues: Hiring employees,
job classifications, quality control will be very important issues for
management. The labour force of the future may be built on a
"just-in-time" basis. The virtual workplace will require totally
different management procedures. Personnel
selection and placement will become more challenging. Employees may feel isolated. Performance measurement and evaluation will
be increasingly difficult. Traditional industrial
engineering tools and techniques may not be useful in this new
environment. How will effective work
measurement be conducted? Trust will have to be at the highest level in virtual
settings. The organization cannot
succeed in partnerships without trust.
Since employees may be
"just-in time" or on a consulting
basis, what will happen to culture, identity, loyalty, and a sense of
community?
Training
and Skills Issues: The new
environment will require working in teams.
The work place is getting “flatter and team- cantered. A greater percentage of employees will be
doing knowledge work. Industrial engineers will face
increasing pressure to
become more "general" because
the environment will
change rapidly and require different kinds of skills. It is certain that Industrial
engineers will require expertise in computer and information technologies.
Conclusion: The
profession of industrial engineering will have to evolve considerably with the
changing trends and technology if we are to meet the challenges that lie ahead.
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