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Industrial engineering is an engineering discipline which, because of its multidisciplinary nature, has played an important role in the development and
optimization of different systems at macro and micro levels. In this paper, the
results of research to study the position and trend of Industrial Engineering research
in recent years are described. The data from a sample of 7114 IE-related articles
from international journals during the last 27 years were used for the analysis. The
results showed that the development of IE in many countries has a strong correlation
with their industrial and economic development. However, IE research topics are
spreading into other management and engineering disciplines and there is thus a
need to redefine the discipline and its specific areas of interest. Based on a
prediction made using time series analysis, the most favorite fields of IE research in
future will be on subjects related to information technology, intelligent systems,
optimization, quality, and supply chain management.
Keywords: Industrial Engineering; research; journal papers; trend analysis.
1. INTRODUCTION:
Industrial Engineering is a relatively new discipline that adopts a systemic approach
to solve different problems whether related to manufacturing or services. The
Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE) defines Industrial Engineering as follows:
Industrial Engineering is concerned with the design, improvement and installation
of integrated systems of people, material, information, equipment and energy. It
draws upon specialized knowledge and skills in the mathematical, physical and
social sciences together with principles and methods of engineering analysis and
design to specify, predict and evaluate the results to be obtained from such
systems [12,15].
The Industrial Revolution was the starting point for the birth and initial development
of the industrial engineering profession. The studies of Fredrick Taylor, who is by
some considered as the father of IE, together with other pioneers such as Henry
Gant, Frank and Lillian Gilberth, and Henry Fayol established the initial building
blocks of Industrial Engineering [12].
The World War II was another milestone in IE history. The increasing needs of
manufacturers for higher efficiency in production systems led to creating new
methods such as time study, methods engineering, operations research, and quality
control. The enhancement of computers created an opportunity for industrial
engineers to improve the effectiveness of IE techniques by applying the technology
for industrial engineering problems such as simulation, machining process control,
linear and non-linear models, management information systems, layout planning,
and statistical quality control.
Development of information technology has opened a new vision in front of
industrial engineers in recent years. Almost 2 decades ago, Davenport and Short [2]
explored the implications and applications of IT on IE functions and predicted that
the industrial engineers of the future, regardless of their formal title or the
organizational unit, will focus on IT-enabled redesign of business processes.
According to Koelling et al [7], tremendous advances in computing, information, and
communication technology are dramatically, and permanently, altering the
landscape that constitutes what is known as "work". Du Preez & Pintelon [11] believe
that industrial engineering is caught between the Industrial Revolution and the
Information Revolution and is confronted with choosing between pragmatic
improvements in productivity and the opportunistic modeling and reshaping of the
networked `virtual enterprise and `extended enterprise to become more
competitive in a global marketplace. Believing that the two societies (industrial and
information) might have conflicting characteristics, they urge careful repositioning
of industrial engineering to ensure that the benefits that can be obtained from the
two societies are maximized.
Together with the recent growth of nontraditional industries, particularly
information technology and service-related industries, the percentage of industrial
engineers working outside of the traditional manufacturing industries have exceeded
the percentage of those working inside this field, and so the types of roles and
responsibilities of Industrial Engineers are subject to change [3]. While the borders
of IE, as an interdisciplinary subject, are broadening, there is a concern that the
to Industrial Engineering were considered for the study as they well represent the
active research. Due to the limitations of access and data processing, a sample was
selected with the following criteria:
Country: No limitation was considered regarding the country in which research has
been carried out. For those papers with more than one country, the first authors
country was taken into account.
Date: Although IE history has a 50-year background, the majority of publications
have been during the last 3 decades. For this reason, publications between 1980 and
2007 were considered for the study.
Department: It is obvious that all IE related research are not necessarily undertaken
in IE departments. In fact, because of multidisciplinary nature of IE, many subjects
related to this discipline are taught and researched in other departments like
System Engineering, Manufacturing Engineering, and Management Science. Hence,
no limitation on the department was considered in the study. For joint research
between different departments, the department of the first author was taken.
Topics: IE research comprises a variety of managerial and technical subjects.
Through a survey of keywords in the publications, themes of IE conferences, and
ideas of experts in this field, the main topics were identified. Table 1 shows the IE
topics and their corresponding subjects (keywords).
Main Topic
Production Management
Information
Technology
Systems
Subjects
Lean
Production,
Agile
Production,
Maintenance, Reliability, Total Productive
Maintenance, Kanban System, Production
Planning
and
Operations Research
Information
Technology,
Knowledge
Management, Information Systems, MIS
Mathematical Programming, AHP, MCDM,
Simulation, Genetic Algorithm, Tabu Search,
Simulated Annealing, Heuristic Algorithms,
Decision Support Systems, Chaos Theory,
Constraints Theory
Project Management
FMS,
CIM,
GT,
Methods Engineering
PERGAMON-ELSEVIER
LTD
Journals
Reliability Engineering & System Safety
Applied Ergonomics
Data & Knowledge Engineering
European Journal of Operational Research
International Journal of Production Economics
Journal of Operations Management
Knowledge-based Systems
SCIENCE
Through searching the papers, items like title, author, journal, department,
university or institution, country, year of publication, and subjects were derived and
stored in the database. Other considerations were:
1. Date of publication was considered as the date of research
2. In identifying the subjects, the keywords matching the specified keywords
of this research were taken into account.
3. In a few papers, items like the country and the department were not
identified; these cases were regarded as missing data.
4. ANALYSIS OF DATA AND DISCUSSION:
Out of 11500 papers investigated, 7114 papers were found appropriate for the study.
The data derived from the papers were analyzed according to the specified
categories. The following sections describe the main results.
4.1 Overall trend of IE research:
Figure 1 depicts the trend of publications on IE related subjects during the last 3
decades. The increase of publications in the 90s comparing to the previous decade is
quite significant while the 2000-2007 period shows slight increase. The increase can
be attributed to the development of IE profession in many countries, the recognition
of its role in the companies, and the expansion of IE in non-manufacturing areas.
Availability of electronic journals in recent years is also a parallel but important
factor as it has facilitated the publication process.
5000
4337
4500
4000
Number
3500
3000
2493
2500
2000
1500
1000
274
500
0
1980-1989
1990-1999
2000-2007
Decade
North
America
1775
West
Europe
1652
East
Asia
1527
Scandinavia
245
West
Asia
187
Oceania
141
East
Europe
128
South
America
83
Africa
61
USA
Taiwan
Britain
Canada
Number
1467
476
429
269
South
Korea
228
Japan
China
Spain
Turkey
Germany
222
193
176
170
169
during 1990-2000 has significantly increased while the relative contribution of North
America has decreased. This trend has been continued during 2000-2007 in which
main Taiwanese papers have been published. The position of Turkey in the Top-10
list with the third position in Europe is also interesting and illustrates its increased
focus towards the development of IE research; this is again in line with the industrial
development of this country in recent years.
60
50
40
percent
30
20
10
North of
America
West
Europe
1980-1989
50.6
30.4
7.2
3.4
1990-1999
38.8
25.7
22.1
4.7
2.9
2000-2007
25.5
29.7
29.8
3.8
2.2
3.6
East Asia
Skandina
West Asia Oceania
Via
East
Europe
South of
America
Africa
1.7
0.7
2.6
1.7
0.5
2.4
1.7
1.3
subsets
Industrial Engineering, Industrial & System
Engineering,
Mechanical&
Industrial
Engineering,
Industrial
Engineering&
Operation
Research,
Industrial
&
Manufacturing Engineering, Manufacturing
Engineering,
Production
Engineering,
Industrial Psychology, System Engineering,
Decision Science, Other
Industrial
Management,
Technology
Management, Production Management, IT
Management, Information Management & MIS,
Economy,
Financial
&
Commercial
Management, Accounting & Marketing, Other
Electrical Engineering
Mechanical Engineering
Computer Engineering
Computer
Engineering,
Computer Science, Other
Mathematics
IT
Engineering,
Other Departments
1200
1000
Number
800
600
400
200
0
industrial
engineering
management
mechanical
engineering
electrical
engineering
computer
engineering
mathematic
Other
1980-1989
44
42
18
10
1990-1999
519
437
41
141
56
2000-2007
950
1128
93
44
425
128
14
other. Due to the role of modern mathematics in new IE techniques, the research in
mathematics departments have also increased in recent years.
From the above results it can be concluded that the proportion of research on
selected topics in IE departments is decreasing. This supports the hypothesis that
the role of IE has been weakened during the last years and there is a danger that
other disciplines may subsume the IE discipline.
4.3 Topics:
Using the grouping in Table 1, the papers were analyzed according to the main
topics of IE research; Figure 4 shows the results. As seen, research on operations
research, intelligent systems, and quality management has had the highest
frequencies. This may be due to the diversity of these subjects as well as their
applications in other fields of science and engineering.
Other
30
Project Management
233
IT
459
Subject
564
Method Engineering
798
SCM
866
Production Management
973
Quality Management
1191
Intelligent System
1735
OR
2581
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
Number
10
35
30
Percent
25
20
15
10
5
0
OR
Intelligent
System
SCM
1980-1989
30.4
17.3
1.8
14.6
1990-1999
26.9
13.2
14.8
13.8
2000-2007
27.5
21.5
12.7
11.7
7.9
IT
Advance
Production
Systems
Project
Management
8.5
4.1
13.7
2.6
9.9
4.7
9.2
2.8
0.6
7.6
3.6
2.3
0.2
Quality
Production
Method
Management Management Engineering
Other
11
Subject
50
51
58
68
74
86
97
107
112
112
120
136
166
193
235
498
100
200
300
400
500
600
Number
1400
1200
977
1000
Numer
800
652
578
600
559
376
400
370
358
126
200
22
0
OR
Intelligent
System
Advance SCM
Pro Sys
IT
Project
Mgt
Other
Subject
12
run test were carried out [5]. Figure 7 shows the results for 10 years using Minitab
software.
900
OR
800
Intelligent Systems
700
IT
600
Number
Project Management
500
Method Engineering
400
Quality Management
SCM
300
Production
Management
200
Advance production
systems
100
0
1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016
Years
13
Operations research and intelligent systems were the two topics that have
had the highest level of interactions with other IE topics
14
[9] Malik, M.A.K. (1994) Developing countries: Industrial Engineering and its use.
Industrial Engineering, 26(3), pp. 51-52.
[10] Masin, I. & Vytlacil, M. (2001) Industrial engineering in the Czech Republic.
Work Study, 50(5), pp. 194-196.
[11] Du Preez, N. & Pintelon, L. (1997) The industrial engineer- caught between two
revolutions. Production Planning & Control, 8(5), pp. 418-430.
[12] Salvendy, G. (1992). Handbook of Industrial Engineering. John Wiley & Sons.
[13] White, J.A. (1985) Strengthening the Role of Industrial Engineering in Education
and Society. Industrial Engineering, 17(12), pp. 46-52.
[14] Xu, W. & Wang, R. (1996). Applications and development of industrial
engineering in China. Computers & Industrial Engineering, 31(3, 4), pp.537-542.
WEB REFERENCES:
[15] www.iienet.org
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