编者注：应网友需要，提供Industrial engineering’s new tagline这篇文章的翻译。Industrial engineering’s new tagline是一篇著名的文章，IIE主席Allen Soyster ，在他2005年IIE年度会议的演说中，提出工业工程的新定义：工业工程就是设计和改善系统，这篇文章针对这个定义给出了解释。因有些句子甚为难懂，可能翻译的不好，请见谅。
Industrial engineering’s new tagline
By Behrokh Khoshnevis, Joe H. Mize, Gerald Nadler, and F. Stan Settles
像大多数工业工程师一样，我们是这个职业的信徒和从业者。然而，与其他人一样，我们难于简明扼要地解释我们是做什么以及我们对社会是多么地重要。如果我们说我们的工作是设计和改进系统，那么对学会(指IIE，国际工业工程学会，编者注。)所产生的不利影响将会被消除。
IIE主席Allen Soyster ，在他2005年IIE年度会议的演说中，给学会带来一个宏大的挑战：IIE的愿景是什么？是什么驱动了IE经济引擎？我们能成为这个世界上最好的什么角色？
自从这个行业诞生100多年以来，同样的问题一直困扰着我们。此外，如果Soyster的挑战能引起有效的回应，一些附属的问题将会更容易回答：
- 我们如何转达高中生和他们的职业顾问IE专业是做什么的？
- 我们如何才能提高工业工程师从事的职能领域里工业工程的形象？
- 当我们正面临着新的挑战，在一个不断变化的世界，国际工业工程学会如何更好地代表我们以及更好地为会员服务？
- 对这些问题的回答是如此不令人满意以至于今天的IIE，也许是IE专业，面临着一个重大的生存危机。这个专业必须采取具有前瞻性的和对自身积极的看法，主动出击，建立其基础和价值，并提供这些问题令人兴奋的答案。
Soyster提出了一个观点，我们认为将会把工业工程与IIE往前推进。我们希望提供背景资料来解释他的“口号”或推广声明：工业工程关注设计和改善系统。
- 设计：构思，架构，并建立产品、工艺或系统;一种积极的基于未来推理的方式;规划和开发需求和可执行的成果;创新;在所有的规划和设计行业嵌入工业工程。
- 改善：认识到最好的或正确的答案是不可能的;将不断改善的机制明确地纳入业务系统的设计和流程中;调查效率;消除浪费;最大限度地提高质量。
- 系统：一组相互作用和相互依存的元素，共同采取行动来实现目标或目的，对工业工程来说指那些涉及人、信息和经济因素的组织。系统的定义依情况而论。系统在不同程度的定义的例子，包括生产货物或服务企业系统，一个制造工厂，一个工厂的部门，一个工作单元，一项具体的工作;信息和知识管理系统;战略规划系统;服务过程系统和人力资源管理系统。
背景
由三条主线交织的背景描绘的道路带给工业工程与国际工业工程学会各种挑战和问题：工业工程运用在哪里，从工业工程中能产出什么成果，工业工程师能给工业工程实践带来哪些技术形式。
工业工程运用在哪里？工业工程起源于19世纪末的制造业，直到本世纪中叶仍然主要集中在车间。 20世纪50年代以来，工业工程可运用的地方成倍增加在社会各阶层-教育、金融机构、医疗保健、教堂、智囊团、军事、慈善组织、自然资源开采、政府机构以及在各级和实体的大多数职能领域。
奇怪的是，工业工程在这些领域的过度应用使人很难认识到它的价值。大多数人在人事和组织关注的具体职能或领域出名，如市场营销、会计、信息和知识管理系统、生产、经营、公共工程、医疗保健服务等。工业工程师在所有这些领域获得如此多的专业知识，但是他们把他们的IE技能放在潜意识层面，因此不继续强烈地认同这个专业或专业组织。
从工业工程中能产出什么成果？工业工程刚开始的的动机是提升效率。具体方面的效率，如时间研究、动作类型和报酬，是IE先驱的研究重点。当原始产出被发现受到材料和库存的影响时，成本被考虑了进来，然后质量被认为是整体效率的一部分。提高生产率和减少浪费是效率结果如何表达的最新体现。
随着工业工程被运用的领域不断扩大，许多IE工程师都期待参与早期决策，关于功能领域流程如何建立，而不是只关注提高现有流程生产率和质量。很快，组织认识到工业工程应参与产品和服务的发明、设计和规划，与参与生产产品的过程一样。
换句话说，工业工程应做到的预期成果，套用德鲁克的话，是计划到做正确的事情，并制定如何把事情做对的方法。
工业工程师能给工业工程实践带来哪些技术形式？任何应用行业都开发和倡导了一系列特定的技术，尽管其中的一些与其他领域重叠。工业工程技术以过去成功做法的公式开始，如泰勒的时间研究和的动作分析。各种技术，自那时以来不断增加-工程经济学、质量控制、通用统计、运筹学、计算机编程、模拟、决策分析、人机工程学、质量圈以及这些技术特殊功能的修改，如调度和生产控制、设施选址和规划、交通分析、供应链、大规模定制和精益生产。当然，出现了新的技术，如晶体管、计算机、光纤、无线能力往往改变了该技术的定义和使用的方式。
工业工程专业的这些技术中一个最典型的特点是，大多数开发这些技术的人都不是IE！也就是说，工业工程是“在曲线背后” ，经常不得不带着抱怨地引进这些技术，尤其是在第二次世界大战期间开发的运筹学技术。自那时以来，我们每个人都很难找出任何工业工程首创的技术。Soyster列出了14个有竞争性的专业协会，还有更多的在这些技术上基础上出现的技术。工业工程技术的这一特点是工业工程一直无法确定其独特性的一个重要原因。
尽管很多技术被认为是一个专业的标志，但是他们不是这个专业创造的。由IIE开办的研讨会、会议、出版物和建立在技术基础上的定义，没有一个全面的专业参考框架，加剧了困难。例如，医疗、建筑和其他工程专业，有其独特的工具，但他们每个都在广阔的范围内识别自己。爱因斯坦说： “直观的思想是一个神圣的礼物，理性是一个忠实的仆人。我们建立了以仆人为荣的社会，却遗忘了礼物。 “工业工程，与其他行业一样，必须树立直观的和创造性的思想，不仅仅”以忠实仆人为荣“。
我们的客户需要什么？
尽管可能有其他的方式分类“客户” ，我们将集中于两大类：(1)聘用工业工程师的组织;(2)高中生和他们的职业辅导员，是我们要吸引到工业工程上面的对象。
在19世纪末，公司和组织力求提高效率，然后在过去这些年增加了上文所述的其他成果。请注意，当一个新的成果添加进来，每个早期成果都没有被放弃;早期成果只是认为有必要，但还不够。例如，戴尔公司仍设法提高工作的时间效率，即使变化可能小到四秒钟，精益生产或精益管理继续列入效率提高的努力方向。
许多组织想要的可能来源于一时的被称为组织弊病解决方案的管理潮流。短暂的时髦-如自动化、全面质量管理、最佳实践、六西格玛和低级程度的决策-最终失去其优势，而仍然留一部分组织要求的生产率和质量的改善或提高效率。这将仍然是重要的，但有一个明显的转变，就是重视保持竞争性和建立在成本、时间、投资回报率和质量测量上的市场领导者。
新重点的导火索就是所谓的创新。这是一个重要的转变，包括生产率和质量改善类型的增加，创新精神的一个集中体现是通用电气的Jeffrey Immelt，他在杰克韦尔奇后继任。这是由于一个词的影响，这个词可以在许多组织的职能单位找到;毕竟，创新可能会导致职能领域的改变，如市场营销、分销、财务和客户关系以及新产品、生产过程和服务方法。
这个问题对于工业工程来说很简单：让我们把工业工程放在通过突破性创新来设计和改进系统的领导地位，以集成的方式达成我们的组织客户希望的成果，无论是营利性，或是非赢利性，或政府。
高中生试图决定他们将在大学里学习哪一个专业，这个问题现在被表达为一个他们能够理解的框架，在这里他们可以在他们选择的社会工作环境里运用他们的科学和数学技能，可以让他们常常表达的企业方面的兴趣发展下去，并提供了一个重要见解是，集成了人与社会因素的技术对社会更有可执行性。对我们来说，给一个高中生提供这种观点是必须的，并应被专家们视为一个“不花脑筋的事情。
工业工程和IIE应该是什么
“工业工程关注设计和改善系统”的提出，首先作为一个专业愿景的声明，第二，作为IIE战略方向的基础理由(吸引和留住成员)。这发言为工业工程与IIE提供了以下重要的优势，相对目前的正式定义来说：
- 发言或定义的长度和清楚性。“设计和改进系统”只有4个字，而工业工程目前的定义冗长和混淆。这三个关键词的阐述提供了IE在世界上的作用的基本意义和现实意义的解释。这个解释，将用于回答可能发生的问题，如有人想要知道一个或所有的关键词的含义。从书面上而言，这篇文章开头附近的斜体声明将让读者找到任何他们想要的细节。
- 市场化。因为我们发言的表达是有启发性和可理解的，我们相信，通过我们的不断努力，它们将更好地服务于IE专业和IIE，以吸引高中学生，说服IE毕业生加入IIE，并留住IIE会员。
- 教育。把重点放在设计与改善可以说服教育者主要从设计的角度教授工业工程课程，甚至设立以设计为导向的IE总课程。强调在总课程和教学方法中以分析方向进行是限制的。
- 组织。这个提议为我们的所有成员组织有益的出版物以及发展有吸引力和有意义的在更多目的背景下的研讨会提供了良好的理由。
- 公共关系。这个提议提供了一个更容易理解的关于IE在世界上的作用描述。因此：
- 我们可以与公众更好地沟通，我们可以给经理和管理人员提出更多更有说服力的关于工业工程的案例。
- 这是一个公认的和直接的给公众、选民、人力资源部门和高中学生解释该专业的方式。
- 它在所有工业工程活动中引进一种持续的创造方向重点和基于成果的集合，它还是一个积极的，而不是防御性的让人们参与开发成果的方式。
- 它提供了一个能够集成多种技术和知识实体的能力，并建立与其他学科坚实的联系，包括其他工程分支。
- 它可以作为一个框架，这个框架可以为这个专业的未来研究开发主要课题，开发以设计为导向的技术，在一个组织所有职能领域中扮演一个主要的IE角色。
本文的目的是支持和解释主席Soyster的“口号”或针对21世纪里IE的发言。作者认为这是一个对现有的官方定义的改进。我们鼓励IE从业者，IE的教育工作者和IE学生来评估这些观点，在把IE推进到其在社会中的合适地位这个计划中共同合作。
英文原文：
Industrial engineering’s new tagline
By Behrokh Khoshnevis, Joe H. Mize, Gerald Nadler, and F. Stan Settles
Like most industrial engineers, we are firm believers in and practitioners of the profession. Yet, like others, we have had difficulties in succinctly explaining what we do and how important it is in society. The adverse impact this difficulty has on the Institute and the profession can be stemmed if we state that we design and improve systems.
IIE President Allen Soyster, in his address at the 2005 IIE Annual Conference, presented the Institute with a grand challenge: What is the IIE passion, what drives the IE economic engine, and what can we be best at in the world?
The same questions have haunted the profession since its inception more than 100 years ago. In addition, some ancillary questions would be more easily answered if Soyster’s challenge elicits effective responses:
How can we convey to high school students and their career counselors what the IE profession is all about?
How can we enhance the image of industrial engineering in the functional areas in which IEs practice?
How can IIE better represent all of us and better serve its members as we are faced with new challenges in an ever changing world?
Responses to such questions have been so unsatisfactory that today IIE, and perhaps the IE profession, face a major crisis of existence. The profession must adopt a forward-looking, positive vision of itself so it can go on the offensive in establishing its basis and value and provide exciting answers to these questions.
Soyster presented a perspective that we believe will move industrial engineering and IIE significantly to the fore. We want to provide background for and explanation of his “tagline” or thrust statement: Industrial engineering concerns designing and improving systems.
Designing: Conceptualizing, architecting, and creating a product, process, or system; a positive mode of future-based reasoning; planning and development of needed and implementable outcomes; innovating; embedding industrial engineering within all the planning and design professions.
Improving: Recognizes that the best or right answer is never fully attained; mechanisms for continuous improvement are incorporated explicitly in the design of business systems and processes; finding efficiencies; eliminating waste; maximizing quality.
Systems: A set of interactive and interdependent components that act together to achieve an objective or purpose, specifically for industrial engineering those that involve human, information, and economic factors. System boundaries are situation-dependent. Examples of systems defined at varying levels include an enterprise system to produce goods or services, a manufacturing plant, a section within a plant, a work cell, a specific job; information and knowledge management systems; strategic planning systems; service process systems; and human resources management systems.
Background
Three interwoven threads of background trace the path that leads to the challenges and questions about industrial engineering and IIE: Where is industrial engineering practiced, what outcomes are expected from the profession, and what techniques form the skills IEs bring to an industrial engineering practice.
Where is industrial engineering practiced? Industrial engineering originated in manufacturing near the end of the 19th century and remained focused primarily on the shop floor until the middle of the 20th century. Since the 1950s, the areas where industrial engineering is practiced on a regular basis have increased exponentially in all segments of society – education, financial institutions, health care, churches, think tanks, military, charity organizations, natural resource extraction, government agencies – and at all levels and in most of the functions of the entities.
Paradoxically, this explosion of areas of industrial engineering applicability has contributed to the difficulties in recognizing its value. Most people associate themselves with and “make their mark” in specific functions or areas of human and organizational concern, such as marketing, accounting, information and knowledge management systems, manufacturing, operations, public works, health care services, etc. IEs practicing within any of these arenas gain so much expertise in them that they put their IE skills at a subconscious level, and thus do not continue to identify strongly with the profession or its professional organization.
What outcomes are expected from the profession? The motivations and stimuli at the start of industrial engineering were efficiency driven. Specific aspects of efficiency, such as performance time, motion patterns, and pay, were the focus of the pioneers. Costs were added to the efficiency mix when the initial outcomes were found to be affected by materials and inventory, and then quality was identified as part of overall efficiency. Productivity improvement and waste elimination are the latest incarnations of how the efficiency outcome is expressed.
As the arenas of industrial engineering practice expanded, many practitioners were expected to take part in earlier decision making about how the processes in the functional area were to be set up rather than only be concerned with improving the productivity and quality of existing processes. It didn’t take very long for organizations to recognize that industrial engineering should be involved even in the invention, design, and planning of the products and services as well as the processes to produce those outputs.
Put another way, the outcomes expected of industrial engineering should be, to paraphrase Peter Drucker, to plan to do the right things as well as develop ways to do things right.
What techniques form the skills IEs bring to its practice? Any applied profession develops and advocates a particular set of techniques, however much some of them overlap with other fields. Those in industrial engineering started with formulations of successful past practices, the time studies of Taylor and the motion analyses of Gilbreths. Various techniques have been added since then – engineering economics, quality control, statistics in general, operations research, computer programming, simulation, decision analysis, ergonomics, quality circles, and many function-specific adaptations of these, such as scheduling and production control, facilities location and planning, transportation analysis, supply chains, mass customization, and lean manufacturing. Of course, the emergence of new technologies, such as transistors, computers, fiber optics, and wireless capabilities very often change the way the techniques are defined and used.
One of the most telling characteristics of these techniques for the industrial engineering profession is that most were developed by people who did not claim they were IEs! That is, industrial engineering was “behind the curve” and often had to be pulled, sometimes screaming and complaining, into adopting most of them, especially the operations research techniques that were developed during World War II. Each of us is hard pressed to identify any techniques since then that arose solely in industrial engineering. President Soyster listed 14 competing professional societies, and there are more that arose based on these techniques. This characteristic of industrial engineering techniques is a major reason industrial engineering has been unable to establish its uniqueness.
However much techniques are considered a hallmark of a profession, they do not a profession make. Offering seminars, conferences, publications, and definitions based mainly on techniques, as is done by IIE, without an overall frame of reference for the profession, exacerbates the difficulties. The medical, architectural, and other engineering professions, as examples, have their distinctive tools, but they each identify themselves in broader terms. Einstein said, “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” Industrial engineering, similar to other professions, must foster the intuitive and creative mind and not only “honor the faithful servants.”
What do our customers want?
Although there may be other ways to classify “customers”, we will focus on two broad groups: (1) organizations that employ industrial engineers and (2) high school students (and their career counselors) who we would like to attract to industrial engineering.
Companies and organizations at the end of the 19th century sought efficiencies and then over the years added the other outcomes described above. Note that each of the earlier outcomes was not discarded as a new outcome was added; the earlier outcomes were just considered necessary, but not sufficient. For example, the Dell Co. still seeks time efficiencies on jobs even though the change may be as small as four seconds, and lean manufacturing or lean management continues the inclusion of efficiency efforts.
Much of what organizations want may stem from the management fads of the moment that are touted as “the” answer to organizational ills. The flavor of the month -- such as automation, total quality management, best practices, Six Sigma, and lowered levels of decision making -- eventually loses its top billing while still remaining a part of organizational requirements for productivity and quality improvement or efficiency. These will remain important, yet there is a perceptible shift in emphasis toward being competitive and a market leader beyond only cost, time, ROI, and quality measures.
The outcome marker for this new emphasis is called innovation. It is an important shift to include with the broadly incremental nature of productivity and quality improvement, as epitomized by the innovation initiatives added by Jeffrey Immelt at General Electric when he succeeded Jack Welch. It is a word that impacts and could be sought in many functions of an organization; after all, innovation can lead to changed functional areas such as marketing, distribution, finance, and customer relationships as well as new products, manufacturing processes, and service delivery methods.
The issue for industrial engineering is thus simple: Let’s put industrial engineering in a leadership role for designing and improving systems via breakthrough innovations that achieves in an integrated way all the outcomes our organizational customers want, whether for-profit, not-for-profit, or governmental.
High school students trying to decide what program to take at a university would now be presented with a framework that they can understand, where they can apply their science and math skills within the societal work setting they choose, that lets their very often expressed entrepreneurial interests develop, and that provides a major insight to the reality that technology needs integration with people and social perspectives to become workable for society. To us, providing this perspective to a high school student is needed and should be considered by the profession as a “no-brainer.”
What industrial engineering and IIE can be
“Industrial engineering concerns designing and improving systems” is intended, first as a statement of the profession’s mission, and, second, as the underlying rationale for IIE’s strategic direction (attracting and retaining members). This thrust statement offers the following important advantages to industrial engineering and IIE relative to the current official definition:
Length and clarity of thrust statements or definitions. "Designing and improving systems" consists of only four words, whereas the current definition of industrial engineering is lengthy and confusing. The elaborations of the three key words are offered to explain their intent and to speak directly to the fundamental meaning and relevance of an IE’s role in the world. The explanations would be used to answer questions likely to arise when someone wants clarification of one or all of the key words. In written format, the italicized statements near the start of this article would allow readers to seek whatever elaborations they may want.
Marketability. Because the expressions in our thrust statement elaborations are enlightening and understandable, we believe that they will better serve the IE profession and IIE in our ongoing efforts to attract high school students, to convince graduating IEs to join IIE, and to retain IIE members.
Education. The emphasis on designing as well as on improving should convince educators to teach industrial engineering courses with primarily a design perspective and even to set up design-oriented IE curricula. Emphasis in a curriculum and in teaching techniques with an analysis orientation is limiting.
Organization. The proposed thrust statement provides a sound rationale for organizing useful publications for all of our members, for developing attractive and meaningful seminars presented in a context of the larger purposes of the profession.
Public relations. The proposed thrust statement provides a more understandable description of an IE’s role in the world. Consequently,
We can better communicate with the general public, and we can present a more persuasive case for industrial engineering to managers and executives.
It is a recognizable and direct way of explaining the profession to the public, constituencies, human resources departments, and high school students.
It introduces a continual emphasis of creativity diversion and outcome-based convergence in all industrial engineering activities and is a positive rather than defensive way of involving people in developing outcomes.
It provides an ability to incorporate diverse techniques and bodies of knowledge, and establishes a firm role relationship with other disciplines, including other branches of engineering.
It can serve as a framework for developing major topics for future research that advance the profession, for developing design-oriented techniques, and for portraying a major IE presence in all the functional areas of an organization.
The purpose of this article is to support and explain President Soyster’s “tagline” or thrust statement for the profession in the 21st century. The authors believe it is an improvement over the current official definition. We encourage practicing IEs, IE educators, and IE students to assess these ideas and cooperate in a plan of moving the IE profession to its appropriate role in society.
