This blog post examines whether industrial engineering undergraduate education has properly established its current identity and direction, focusing on issues in the curriculum and career pathways.
“Conducting the orchestra of engineering,” “The business department of the engineering college.” Such expressions are often used when introducing industrial engineering. As these phrases suggest, industrial engineering is not confined to a specific field but comprehensively covers diverse areas across the entire industrial landscape. Specifically, industrial engineering is a discipline that aims to solve problems arising in nearly all fields related to industry—such as production, manufacturing, quality, services, IT, and management—by learning methodologies to improve the components of industry and the ‘systems’ they form, and applying these to real-world industrial settings. While this characteristic provides the positive aspect of offering a broad perspective, it also carries the negative aspect of potentially remaining in a middle ground due to a lack of specialization in specific fields. Therefore, undergraduate education in industrial engineering must cultivate a diverse perspective while simultaneously developing the depth necessary for students to later enter their desired fields. However, current undergraduate industrial engineering curricula do not sufficiently meet these needs and fail to properly instill a sense of identity in the major among students. This leads to undergraduate students’ skepticism about their major and low graduate school enrollment rates, presenting a serious problem at the undergraduate level. Therefore, to resolve these issues, it is necessary to clarify the direction of undergraduate education.
First, education regarding identity is needed—specifically, what industrial engineering is as a discipline and what careers it enables. The reality is that it is difficult to clearly answer the question “What is industrial engineering?” and even those who have long worked in the field offer differing definitions. While having diverse perspectives on a single major is important, this variety can be confusing for students encountering it for the first time. This confusion is likely to foster skepticism about industrial engineering itself. This problem is significant not only for undergraduate students but also for high school students exploring their career paths, as the lack of a clear explanation of industrial engineering often leads students to consider only specific subfields when choosing their major. For instance, during the peak popularity of technology management, many science students entered industrial engineering programs hoping to pursue business within a technical field. More recently, with the rise of big data, an increasing number of students mistakenly believe industrial engineering deals solely with data science. Therefore, clear explanations and education about what industrial engineering is and its specific subfields are essential, along with appropriate promotional efforts. For instance, the Association of Industrial Engineering Department Chairs in the US promotes the field through various means, such as using the slogan “Industrial Engineer makes a difference” and producing promotional videos explaining the roles of industrial engineering majors, which are published on YouTube. Such efforts are necessary.
Next, curriculum improvement is essential. Industrial engineering is a discipline that covers diverse fields, and undergraduate curricula include numerous required courses to allow students to experience multiple areas. While this approach has the advantage of explaining the overall philosophy and methodology of industrial engineering, it also has disadvantages: an overemphasis on diversity leads to insufficient depth in the subjects studied, and content overlap between courses, without proper coordination, reduces learning efficiency. This negatively impacts both students who wish to study diverse fields and those who want to delve deeply into specific areas. To address this, the curriculum should be redesigned: reduce the number of required courses, teach core content efficiently, and broaden the range of electives. This approach allows for the simultaneous pursuit of both diversity and depth in learning. Furthermore, existing courses must be improved to cover both traditional core areas of industrial engineering—such as production, manufacturing, and quality management—and subjects reflecting the latest industrial trends, including mathematics, information systems, services, finance, and management, in a balanced manner. This requires greater investment in curriculum research. As key industrial sectors evolve rapidly, schools must continuously strive to research and develop courses that keep pace with these changes to provide necessary education.
Finally, opportunities are needed to gain diverse experiences and explore future career paths through connections with companies or graduate schools. Students often lack opportunities to experience how the methodologies learned in class are actually applied, frequently realizing their importance only after graduation when entering the workforce or upon entering graduate school. Particularly for industrial engineering, which focuses intensively on real-world industry, providing opportunities to understand how concepts learned in school are utilized in companies is crucial and holds significant value. Furthermore, research experience gained through graduate school connections can greatly benefit undergraduate industrial engineering students. Undergraduate industrial engineering programs often lack defined major tracks, and since individual professors typically specialize in one field, interdisciplinary connections are limited. This makes it difficult to obtain comprehensive information when preparing for graduate school, leading students to rely on superficial online information or anecdotes from peers. However, such information is inevitably less accurate and detailed. Therefore, providing research experience and opportunities to understand field trends can address these issues.
Industrial engineering has achieved significant progress across diverse fields in a short time and remains a discipline with boundless future potential. Yet, without adequate undergraduate education, students risk ending up in an ambiguous position—lacking both broad and deep understanding. To prevent this, we propose establishing a clear identity that can definitively answer the question “What is Industrial Engineering?”, developing a curriculum that pursues both breadth and depth, and expanding experiential learning through collaboration with graduate schools and industry. These improvements will enable the cultivation of industrial engineers who possess both a broad perspective and specialized expertise.
