Question

How does an industrial engineer relate to an electrical engineer? How do they interact in the work place? What is the importance of an electrical engineer in an inxstudrial engineers career?

Answer 1

Other engineering disciplines apply skills to very specific areas: Electrical Engineers are concerned with electrical systems and designing circuits, Mechanical Engineers are concerned with mechanical systems and building devices,Industrial Engineers figure out how to do things better. They make significant contributions to employers by saving money while making the workplace better for fellow workers. Industrial Engineering is the branch of Engineering most closely related to human resources in that we apply social skills to work with all types of employees, from engineers to salespeople to top management. One of the main focuses of an Industrial Engineer is to improve the working environments of people – not to change the worker, but to change the workplace. They work to make others work better. Writing and presentation skills are very important for us. They measure employee aptitude and motivation to encourage communication, morale, and leadership.

Industrial engineering is focused on using different tools to solve problems and improve on a current system whatever it may be. Unlike other engineering branches what they create is something that is not physical although,they have knowledge on ergonomics that would help in product design, other than that what we create are ideas of systems or processes to improve on the way things are currently being done by using tools like statistical analysis or operations research. They have basic engineering knowledge, math, physics, chemistry, thermodynamics etc, but they’re also taught management, finance, human behaviour , ergonomics, so we can see a problem as a whole and be able to give a more comprehensive solution to various problems in any type of operation.

To give an example of an industrial engineer at work. Let’s say someone comes to us and ask us to make a study and analyze their current business operations we would use our research skills into finding all possible facts about the operations then for example we find that based on historical records this certain machine was able to produce 100 units in 1 hour then 5 months later they could only produce 50 units an hour, all factors being the same then we would ask a mechanical engineer to find out if there is something wrong with the mechanical parts of the machine that made it produce less than before or maybe its an electrical problem maybe the power being provided isnt enough to power the machine so we’d ask an electrical enginewr to check it out. We would need to know roughly what other engineers are capable of, enough to know who we need to address the problem, but leave the specifics to them. In that sense we are like the General Practitioners of the Engineering field

Electrical Engineering is a fascinating field, and one which could make your time at uni a challenging, enriching and rewarding experience. Just as the world needs its Doctors, Nurses and Teachers, Electrical Engineering is something which we simply couldn't do without. If you like the idea of creating electrical systems which could help millions of people on a day to day basis, like the systems used in phones, or computers, then read these reasons to study Electrical Engineering.

Electrical Engineers have good Graduate Prospects

Electrical Engineers enjoy high starting salaries

Global opportunities

Electrical Engineers are always in demand

Electrical Engineers are at the forefront of future technologies