Video Transcript

Jacob, Host at Logistics Degree:
Question: What does industrial engineering entail and what will be a few different types of jobs within that field of supply chain?

Nathan, Logistician:
Answer: Industrial engineering is super cool. And it’s very technical. It’s probably the most technical role or function within supply chain, generally very math focused. So things are going to be doing our time studies, factory layouts and statistics. That’s the core of industrial engineering. And typically the job title is just an industrial engineer. Sometimes you could get a data scientist or data analyst.

Alexander: Supply Chain & Procurement:
Answer: I think industrial engineering is a little bit more the hands on more of the definitely as in the world, the engineering side of the supply chain. So I actually started as an industrial engineer for my first year and a half in college and decided that I was a little bit more business minded, a little bit more operationally minded and math minded too. So I ultimately switched to supply chain and then business analytics too. But in my time, industrial engineering, it felt like we were really focusing on a lot of actually manufacturing the products and not necessarily the R&D behind it, but how can we make the manufacturing itself more efficient and keep the quality the same? So in a normal company, like for instance, my micro company in the medical device industry, the industrial engineers, most of their roles are to, I guess, be that liaison between supply chain and research and development teams. So the research and development teams would say, hey, we made this new product. It’s great. You know, it does everything it needs to do, but it’s a little on the more expensive side. There’s a lot of different steps that needs to be take to manufacture this. And it feels like it may take us two months to manufacture just one. So the industry engineer comes in and says, hey, let’s find ways to manufacture this product in two weeks using half the costs. Yeah, the idea and then this is also where a little bit of a project manager steps in too, because they’ll manage the project itself of, let’s say, making that product more efficient. That would be part of being self. There’s a project manager, but there’s an industrial engineer on the team who focuses solely on the manufacturing side. How can we make this product more efficiently? How can we manufacture more efficiently? And then you have procurement on the team too. It says, OK, let’s source these materials for lower costs. And this is kind of where everything kind of plays together again into a single project team. But industry engineers really focused on more of that manufacturing efficiency side.

Corben, Supply Chain Manager:
Answer: So industrial engineering, that is where you’re focused on how can you make oftentimes an assembly line process more efficient? And so that’s going to be heavy emphasis on mathematics and how do we reduce waste in our supply chain. So we started making 50 of these items. Well, 46 of them came out good, but four of them have to be wasted or trashed for whatever reason. Why? how do we prevent that? How can we reduce that waste and move the 46 and ultimately, hopefully 50 through there even faster? What does industrial engineering entail and what would be a few jobs within that field of supply chain? So industrial engineering, that is where you’re focused on how can you make oftentimes an assembly line process more efficient? And so that’s going to be heavy emphasis on mathematics and how do we reduce waste in our supply chain. So we started making 50 of these items. Well, 46 of them came out good, but four of them have to be wasted or trashed for whatever reason. Why? how do we prevent that? How can we reduce that waste and move the 46 and ultimately, hopefully 50 through there even faster?


Haley, Logistics Project Manager:
Answer: I actually had the opportunity a couple of years ago when I was in school to do an internship down in South America where they were doing a lot of industrial type of engineering. And the first thing that comes to mind with that is we visited like the Goodyear tires company. And when I think of like engineering and industrial engineering, it was kind of getting into how all of those parts are made and all of the components that go into making the end product. So engineering being the actual creation of something and how that relates back to supply chain is getting all of the components together.