6/28/2020 7 Most Common Job Responsibilities of an Industrial Engineer

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by Zubin Ajmera — 3 Comments

7 Most Common Job Responsibilities

of an Industrial Engineer (for the
first several years)

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6/28/2020 7 Most Common Job Responsibilities of an Industrial Engineer

You apply for an Industrial Engineer (IE) job – Give interviews – Accept
an offer – Start working in a week. What next?

As an industrial engineer, there would be several responsibilities you’ll be

performing in your job or an internship. I’ll share the 7 most common ones
today which almost every IE or its specialization roles in either Logistics &
Supply Chain, Manufacturing, Consulting, etc. performs. The good thing
about these job assignments is that they require little ‘technical’ knowledge
from your end (atleast for the first few months) and focus heavily to outline
you the overall company structure and your job type in detail. Let’s have a
look at each-

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6/28/2020 7 Most Common Job Responsibilities of an Industrial Engineer

1) Training
This will be one of the most important things right after you join in the
company. Back when I joined Mu Sigma (a data analytics consulting
firm), the training was for almost 4-5 weeks which included certain
assignments, sessions and projects. Your training will be comprised
of some set of assignments to complete based on your profile and work
requirements.

Mentorship

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Most likely, you will be assigned what companies call a ‘mentor’. This might
be or might be not the same person as your manager. The company where I
am currently working had an employee giving me the training information
because of the startup size and culture, so it greatly depends on the company
size. The role of this mentor is to provide you with extensive work information
on your job. Some of these will include-

Explaining job responsibilities and assignments

Type of tools and software you’ll work on
Providing an overview of the company policies
Assessing your skills and analytical abilities

2) Data Collection

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6/28/2020 7 Most Common Job Responsibilities of an Industrial Engineer

Much of your work will also be tied to gathering data from various resources.
This can broken down to

Plant facility: data on number of departments, number of employees,

plant size and space
Production lines: number of units of products made, timings of shifts,
understanding the exact process of the system
Company information: type of people you’ll be working with (senior
management, project directors), their roles and duties
Work information: type of projects you’ll be working on, whether you’ll
work in a team, getting detailed data on your tasks for future.

Generally, this is called as conducting time and motion studies. Advanced

studies are done with specific softwares like Quetech

[optin-cat id=386]

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3) Meeting Senior Management

We discussed upon this in the previous point, but there is more to this. Apart
from project managers and the upper management team, you’ll also be
meeting or having sessions/meetings with the HR department. This will briefly
include information on your work schedule (typically it is a 8 hour job-40
hours/week) , payroll, company policies, additional benefits (if any.), etc. The
meetings with project directors and managers will provide things including-

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6/28/2020 7 Most Common Job Responsibilities of an Industrial Engineer

Management structure and portfolio: How it works, who is responsible

for what, which titles people belong to
Current scenario: What the company looks like today, future plans, future
expectations from your work
Problems/Solutions: The type of problems company (or the specific
department you’ll be working) faces, solutions in hand and plans to
design it
Opportunities: Opportunities for cost savings, how can the company
achieve it, strategic planning and execution

4) Working on a Group Project

Most likely, you’ll be assigned a group project under the direction of 3-5
people. Depending upon the nature of the job, this project will be aligned to
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6/28/2020 7 Most Common Job Responsibilities of an Industrial Engineer

the work you will do in future. I have broken down this as per the different
phases of the project which will bring more clarity-

i) Initial Analysis and Overview

Let’s say you work in a manufacturing facility: The project can be

improving the downtime of manufacturing of a nail polish (enamel)
production line (downtime, in the simplest terms, means the total amount
of time the production line is not working.) Your tasks might include data
collection of various factors from different resources-

Number of bottles produced per hour/day/week/month

Understanding the total time it takes to produce a bottle
Other parts (like bottle cap, bottom label, glass) and how are they
involved in the process at what stage
Let’s say you work in a consulting firm (and Macy’s is one of their
clients.)The project might be evaluating and providing revised
guidelines to Macy’s to open up a new store in New York (which will
ensure they have more sales there.) Your tasks can be something like-

Preparing the complete current documentation of the client in detail

Analyzing different factors- where are the sales coming from, what
is being sold more, what type of promos/discounts are working, on
which days sales are the highest, which categories
(shirts,tshirts,jeans,etc.) are sold the most,etc.

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Doing a thorough cost analysis and providing if there is any

opportunity for savings

ii) Group meetings and discussions

This will go on a continual basis where you’ll be meeting people connected to

this project. From managers, directors, project executives, part-time
employees, there is no set of people associated. As long as they can
contribute to this project and provide any useful data, they will be involved.
Here on, you will discuss points like-

what you have learned so far

what is the status
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what can be improved

what should be the next steps

Based on these meetings, there is a constant interaction with team members

and timely delivery of the project is maintained.

iii) Final Deliverable

Once the project reaches the conclusion, one is expected to submit a final
report of the entire work executed and what the result is. Ideally and in most
cases, you’ll either have insights or accomplished what was expected. There
can be other cases too, where the project is on a continual basis, or your part
of the work is completed and someone else will be handling the project going
forward.

5) Data Analysis and Visualization

This type of work mostly starts after the training and your initial project. I
would say a good time frame to estimate would be 2-4 months after your day
1. Majority of this analysis would come from working on several analytical
tools. We mentioned some basic industrial engineering tools before, but apart
from that, there will be company specific tools or softwares. For eg-

Mu Sigma has their own specialized product tool called MuPDNA

Revlon has an internal tool structured with the help of C- Sharp
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Obviously, you would be given a brief training on these softwares before you
actually start doing the analysis part. For the most part, this would involve-

Extracting information
Viewing numbers and figures
Representing what you learnt in the form of charts and graphs
Providing recommendations and areas that needs improvement

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You’d have heard that industrial engineers “crunch data” or “analyze complex
systems” or probably similar verbiage, the above mentioned points mean
more or less the same.

6) Completing Timely Deliverables

This is a further extension to the above point. Based on your role, you’ll be
expected to accomplish certain assignments by a certain time frame (eg:
some tasks should be completed once a week, some once a month and so
on.) These assignments can be divided into mini-tasks which are more or less
your daily activities as discussed above. From here on, you will be doing
either or both of the below-

Scheduling and completing similar tasks which you have done so far
Taking on new projects/issues and working accordingly as they come

7) Results: Reporting to Manager

Although you’ll be in interaction with your manager on an on-going basis,
there will be specific meetings and discussions on the projects you have
worked so far and the kind of results you’ve gotten. This usually is done on a
semi-annual basis or even quarterly basis. This further lays out the road for
the next steps and assessment of your work so far with the company.

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8) Travelling (Optional)
This is an optional job function and seen majorly in consulting companies
where you will travel to client sites on a weekly or a monthly basis. Not all job
roles would be conditioned to travel. Similar to above, the job responsibilities
will be very much similar for this job task.

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6/28/2020 7 Most Common Job Responsibilities of an Industrial Engineer

Of course, there will be many other responsibilities in working as an industrial

engineer role. Depending on your job, title, company, location, etc. situations
will vary. The 7 tasks above are the most common and you’ll encounter, if not
all, but some in your job.

Which, out of the 7 above, sounds the most exciting to you and why?

photo credit by Jake at flickr

Filed Under: Blog

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