In this blog post, we will look at whether undergraduate industrial engineering education is properly establishing its identity and direction, focusing on the problems in terms of curriculum and career paths.
“The orchestra of engineering” ‘The business of engineering.’ These expressions are often used to introduce industrial engineering. As these expressions indicate, industrial engineering is not limited to a specific field, but rather covers a wide range of fields across the industry. Specifically, industrial engineering is a discipline that aims to solve problems that arise in almost all areas related to industry, such as production, manufacturing, quality, service, IT, and management, and to learn and apply methodologies to improve the components of the industry and the “systems” made up of them. Thanks to these characteristics, industrial engineering has the positive aspect of providing a broad perspective, but there is also a negative aspect in that it may be stuck in the middle because it is not specialized in a particular field. Therefore, undergraduate education in industrial engineering should provide students with a broad perspective and a deep understanding of the field so that they can choose their desired career path later on. However, the current undergraduate curriculum for industrial engineering does not fully meet these needs and does not instill in students a proper sense of identity in their major. This can lead to a sense of skepticism among undergraduate students about their major and a low graduate school enrollment rate, which can be considered a serious problem from an undergraduate perspective. Therefore, it is necessary to clarify the direction of undergraduate education to solve these problems.
First, education is needed on the identity of industrial engineering, that is, what industrial engineering is and what one can do by majoring in it. It is difficult to clearly answer the question “What is industrial engineering?” and even those who have been working in the field of industrial engineering for a long time give different definitions. While it is important to have different perspectives on a single major, for students who are new to the field, these different perspectives can be confusing. This is likely to cause skepticism about industrial engineering itself. This problem is not only important for undergraduate students but also for high school students who are exploring their career paths, as the lack of clear explanations about industrial engineering often leads students to consider only certain fields. For example, when technology management was popular, many students who wanted to study business management in science went on to study industrial engineering. Recently, with the rise of big data, more and more students are thinking that industrial engineering only deals with data science. Therefore, there is a need for clear explanations and education on what industrial engineering is and what its sub-fields are, and it should be promoted accordingly. For example, the American Association of College of Industrial Engineers promotes industrial engineering in various ways, such as by promoting the slogan “Industrial Engineers Make a Difference” and by producing and posting a promotional video on YouTube explaining the role of industrial engineering majors. Such efforts are needed.
The next thing needed is to improve the curriculum. Industrial engineering is a discipline that covers a wide range of fields, and the undergraduate curriculum includes a number of required courses to give students experience in various fields. This curriculum management method has the advantage of being able to explain the philosophy and methodology of industrial engineering as a whole, but there is also a disadvantage in that the depth of the subjects studied is lacking due to the focus on diversity, and the efficiency of learning is reduced due to the duplication of content between subjects but not being coordinated. This has a negative impact on both students who want to study a variety of fields and students who want to study a specific field in depth. To solve this problem, instead of reducing the number of required courses, we need to develop a curriculum that efficiently teaches core content and expands the range of elective courses to pursue both diversity and depth of study. In addition, existing courses should be improved to cover a balanced range of subjects that reflect the latest industry trends, including subjects that reflect the latest industry trends, such as mathematics, information systems, services, finance, and management, as well as the core areas of traditional industrial engineering, such as production, manufacturing, and quality control. To this end, more investment is needed in curriculum research. As the major sectors of the industry are changing rapidly, schools must make continuous efforts in research and curriculum development so that they can provide the necessary education in line with these changes.
Finally, students need opportunities to gain diverse experiences and explore their career paths through connections with companies and graduate schools. They often do not have the opportunity to experience how the methodologies they learn in class are applied in practice, and thus often only realize their importance after graduation or after entering graduate school. In particular, as industrial engineering focuses on real-world industries, it is important to provide opportunities to understand how what is learned in school is used in the business world, and this has great value. In addition, research experience through collaboration with graduate schools can be of great help to undergraduate students majoring in industrial engineering. In the undergraduate program of industrial engineering, there is no specific major track, and one professor often takes charge of a single field, which makes it difficult to connect between fields. As a result, it is difficult to obtain integrated information when preparing to go to graduate school, and students rely on formal information provided on the Internet or on the stories of others. However, such information is bound to be inaccurate, and it is difficult to obtain detailed information. Therefore, we will be able to solve these problems by providing research experience and opportunities to understand trends in the field.
Industrial engineering has made great strides in a short period of time across a wide range of fields, and it is a field with endless potential for future development. However, if proper education is not provided during the undergraduate program, there is a risk of being placed in an ambiguous position with neither a broad nor a deep understanding. To prevent this, we have proposed establishing an identity that can clearly answer the question “What is industrial engineering?”, a curriculum that pursues diversity and depth at the same time, and expanding experiences through collaboration between graduate schools and companies. Through these improvements, we will be able to train industrial engineers with a broad perspective and expertise.
