Track: Engineering Management

Abstract

The changing role of a University of technology’s (UOT) Industrial Engineering (IE) graduates reflects the changing industry demands and will define the environment in which Industrial Engineers (IEs) function and what IEs define as work. In today’s economy, IE education must respond to the changing needs of industry in order for IEs to remain competitive and relevant. Evolution of IE education must be congruent to the changing IEs industry landscape, i.e. ability of Industrial Engineers to cope with managing complex systems met in specific industrial technology problems needs to be addressed when educating Industrial Engineers. The future of IE can be summarized by the increase in the implementation of multidisciplinary application of computational IE modeling and simulation tools to real-life situations. Therefore, academic training content of Industrial Engineers must be a reflection of these changes. The focus of this paper is on the future of IEs as experienced and projected by academic institutions (UOT) and Industry. A preliminary investigation based on a qualitative research approach suggests that engineering curriculum in UOTs cannot remain the same as it was for the past decades and not respond to the challenges of globalization and diversity and provide a foundation necessary for the IE profession to remain competitive. Findings of this research will reveal the newly envisaged Industrial Engineer and the pedagogy commensurate to produce the new UOT Industrial Engineer. A qualitative research method is adopted to explore and explain the evolution of IE education, the commensurate change in industry demands on IEs and requisite Industrial Engineering practice.