NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF
INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING
PGDIE-42
INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING ASSIGNMENT
IE Assignment submitted by:
Venkata Karthik Menti
Roll No: 102
Venkata Karthik Menti
Roll No: 102
The Industrial Engineer as
Organizational Leader:
An Assessment of Contemporary Industrial
Engineering Skills
David H. Olszewski
General Dynamics Land Systems
Ft.
Hood, TX
James C. McHann, PhD
Walsh College
Troy, MI
1. Introduction
The transformation of Industrial
Engineers into techno-managers is in part due to their special skills, which
give them unique insights into the kind of leadership and management needed in
organizations today. This shift provided the opportunity for industrial
engineers to acquire new skills that took them off the shop-floor and propelled
them into the boardroom.
While industrial engineers are
certainly still vital to manufacturing operations, the macro changes in the
nature of the economic environment, along with the corollary and necessary
changes in how organizations must be led and managed in this new economic
environment, has created the need and the opportunity for the industrial
engineering profession to evolve.
The lead author of this article
is engaged in a doctoral dissertation study of contemporary industrial
engineers to determine which skills are seen as having greater value in today’s
Knowledge Age. A quantitative analysis utilizing an electronic survey and the
Analytic Hierarchy Process pairwise comparison technique will establish
priority between technical and managerial industrial engineering skills. Once
data is collected, statistical analysis in the form of ranking and hypothesis
testing can be used to determine significance and skill mix. This paper serves
as a brief look into the history and shift in the role of an industrial
engineer and serves as a basis for further study.
2. Characteristics of the Industrial and Knowledge Ages
After
millennia of agrarian-based society, the Industrial Revolution began in Great
Britain in the later part of the 18th century. Even during the Industrial Age,
the transfer of knowledge was very important, and knowledge concerning new
innovation spread by several means. Workers who were trained in a specific
skill often moved to new employers or were tempted to new organizations.
Toward the
end of the Industrial Age, Frederick Taylor, one of the world’s first
management consultants and an engineer, identified two primary problems of
production. These problems included lack of standardization in all areas and
poor management practices. Scientific management is characterized by a search
for efficiency and systemic management thought. During his time in management,
Taylor introduced the concept of the time study—“one of the key techniques of
scientific management”. As a result of his work, academia incorporated
scientific management into the curriculum of several major business schools,
including Wharton, Dartmouth, and Harvard.
Even as the
era of the machine, the factory, and the efficient production practices of
scientific management continued to dominate the organizations of the Industrial
Age, the knowledge portion of the work also continued to increase. At some
point in the mid-1900s, the importance, power, value creation, and wealth
production of knowledge and other intangible assets increased beyond that provided
by financial capital, machines, and other tangible assets: the Knowledge Age was born
In the
Knowledge Age, knowledge becomes “the preeminent economic resource—more
important than raw material; more important, often, than money”. “Knowledge has
become the primary ingredient of what we make, do, buy, and sell.
This change
in organizational focus has required a corresponding change in the way
organizations are managed. Knowledge production by knowledge workers is not
managed quite like widget production by machines is managed. For example, the
philosophy of the biological sciences dominates the management approaches that
work best in the Knowledge Age. This philosophy views knowledge, people, and organizations
as living systems.
3. The Difference between the Industrial and Knowledge Ages
There are
many important differences between the economic dynamics, and effective
management approaches, of the Industrial Age and the Knowledge Age. The living
system of the Knowledge Age has begun a major shift away from Industrial Age
thinking.
Beyond shifts
in focus, there are shifts in management styles. During the Industrial Age,
“the work of every workman is fully planned out by management at least one day
in advance, and each man receives in most cases complete written instructions,
describing in detail the task which he is to accomplish, as well as the means
to be used in doing the work”
During the
Knowledge Age, the focus of operations has turned to the whole rather than the
parts. “Managers now must supervise many people. They must manage across
functions and they must be agents of change, champions of the latest
re-engineering or reorganization, even if they have had nothing to do with
creation of the plan or disagree with it”
Beyond
working as a whole, the Knowledge Age differs from the Industrial Age in the
area of autonomy. There was little to no empowerment during the Industrial Age.
In fact, “the empowerment movement is an effort to break the enduring shackles
of Frederick Taylor’s scientific management”.
The treatment
of the worker during the Knowledge Age is revolutionary. Workers are human capital
and owners of knowledge “who need control over learning processes and
participation in the creation and communication of wisdom”. Some Industrial Age
organizations cannot make the transition and die, and their death only draws
further attention to the importance of intellectual capital, knowledge workers,
and the critical need to learn how to lead and manage them effectively.
4. Different Leadership and Management Approaches for Different Economic
Ages
4.1 Old and New Leadership Competencies
The competencies needed to excel in the
industrial and knowledge ages differ in emphases. The “leadership philosophy
begun by Deming in Tokyo in 1950 is the first fundamentally new management
philosophy since 1840”, and Deming’s approach to leading and managing
organizations laid important foundations for the new management in the new age.
In order to survive in the old
organization, one needed several attitudes or competencies. First, part of a
manager’s responsibility was to control the workforce. Forcefulness was seen as
necessary to getting people to respond. Next, on the softer side of
forcefulness, managers were expected to serve as the motivators to the workers.
From here, the competencies of decisiveness, wilfulness, and assertiveness
played important roles in Industrial Age management approaches. Leaders in this
time could not show weakness, ignorance, or indecision. Another competency of
this time was the result and bottom line focus of the organization. Bosses held
people accountable for maximizing profits and minimizing costs. Managers also
kept everyone task-oriented.
The new competencies important to
management in the Knowledge Age are different. They are based on very different
premises, assumptions, and beliefs about people and organizations. The new
competencies are covered generally in W.E. Deming’s System of Profound
Knowledge. The first competency is the ability to think in terms of systems and
knowing how to lead systems. By thinking on the systems level, the organization
is able to avoid overly simplistic interpretations and solutions to complex
problems. In addition, the ability to understand the variability of work in
planning and problem solving is very important in the Knowledge Age; an
accurate understanding of data is required to successfully run the knowledge
organization. Next, there is a new focus on understanding people, our behaviour
and how we learn, develop, and improve. It is clear that people are no longer
motivated through a combination of promised reward and threat of punishment.
4.2 The Growth of Industrial Engineering
Industrial engineering found its roots
in the scientific management movement, which paved the way for the Knowledge
Age. Following his development of time studies, Frederick Taylor provided the
major thrust for “an era characterized by a search for efficiency and
systematization in management thought”. During the latter half of the
nineteenth century, the final stage of the Industrial Age focused on
technological advances, changing power sources, evolving labour-management
relations, and a need to bring these factors together with some sort of
management practice
Devoid of training in management,
Taylor relied on his own observations as to how things should be done. He
brought his experience on the worker side of things into his management roles.
He understood ineffective incentives and estimated worker output at only
one-third of what he thought was possible. Taylor sought to overcome output
deficiencies by careful investigation and the setting of performance standards.
Taylor determined what workers should be able to do with the equipment and
materials, and this became the beginning of scientific management.
After Taylor’s death, Henry Gantt began
to develop different ideas on the role of the industrial engineer and the firm
as an institution. Gantt moved past concern for simple factory matters and
sought reform at all levels. According to Gantt, “the industrial engineer, not
the financier nor the labour leader, would be the new leader, because only the
engineer could cope with the US problem of production as the creation of
wealth”.
The works of Taylor, Gantt, and the
Gilbreths formed the foundation of the industrial engineer’s traditional role.
However, the contributors also alluded to much more. They all recognized the
importance of the human factor. Additionally, they recommended that the
industrial engineers assume their rightful place in management where the human
contributions to the workforce could find a voice and actively contribute to
organizational efficiency. The introduction of scientific management altered
the path of the Industrial Revolution and the Industrial Age.
5. The Effect of the
Knowledge Age on Industrial Engineering Skills
During the Industrial Age and the era of scientific management,
industrial engineers proved that they “are talented at cutting costs, producing
efficiencies, and improving productivity” [18]. By aptitude, training, and
experience, industrial engineers are adept at systems thinking, at how to
generate knowledge within organization, and at how to use knowledge effectively
and practically to improve continuously the performance of any organization.
The creation and sharing of knowledge, and skills in leading and
managing people, are required of effective managers in the Knowledge Age. The
attributes associated with engineering success in this age include creativity,
communication, basic business and management skills, leadership aptitudes,
professionalism, and life-long learning.
The technical skills an industrial engineer acquires through an engineering education and on-the-job means are necessary and fundamental. These skills are numerous and include ergonomics, time studies, simulation, project management, material handling, and general problem-solving. While these skills serve industrial engineers quite well, they do little to propel them into general management positions or into the boardroom.
The technical skills an industrial engineer acquires through an engineering education and on-the-job means are necessary and fundamental. These skills are numerous and include ergonomics, time studies, simulation, project management, material handling, and general problem-solving. While these skills serve industrial engineers quite well, they do little to propel them into general management positions or into the boardroom.
Today, more and more industrial engineers are acquiring management
skills in order to take advantage of expanded opportunities being afforded them
in the Knowledge Age. These skills include communication, collaboration,
strategic thinking, negotiation, and many others. The leadership and management
required in the Knowledge Age requires just the type of technical, systemic, operational,
and organizational skills industrial engineers have traditionally mastered and
the managerial skills they are acquiring today.
At the academic level, curricula can be altered to include teaching in
the critical managerial area in addition to the standard technical skills. At
the organizational level, industrial engineers can focus on acquiring critical
managerial skills. Additionally, the organization can recognize the value of
having industrial engineers in positions of leadership. Industrial engineers
can provide valuable insight into the organization and can help the
organization succeed in the ever-changing Knowledge Age.
6.
Conclusion
Overall, a shift in emphasis is occurring in industrial
engineering skills from the traditional technical skills to more managerial
skills. This shift is due in large part to the transition from the Industrial
Age to the Knowledge Age. This article adumbrates a quantitative research study
for a doctoral dissertation, which will show that this transition has and is
occurring.
Today, industrial engineers are making a very successful
transition to the management side of the organization. Their technical skills
provide a firm foundation upon which managerial skills are quickly being built.
This article summarizes a research study on the mix of these skills, which
anticipates that the industrial engineers of the future can more clearly focus
their efforts on leading organizations as they add managerial skills to their
technical skills.
Title
The Industrial Engineer as Organizational Leader:
An Assessment of Contemporary Industrial Engineering Skills
Author
Publication title
Proceedings of the 2010 Industrial Engineering Research Conference
A. Johnson and J. Miller, Eds.
Document URL
http://search.proquest.com/docview/733014297?accountid=49672
Copyright
Copyright Institute of Industrial Engineers-Publisher 2010
Last updated
2011-06-03
Database
ABI/INFORM Complete
