Executive Summary of - Institute of Industrial and Systems ...



Summary of

Industry Advisory Board (IAB) Survey 2008

The purpose of this survey is to help focus the IAB group’s interests.

The survey covered three categories:

1. Questions related to Industrial Engineers at your company

2. Questions related to industry and the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE)

3. Questions related to industry and university IE departments

The questionnaire was sent via the IIE_IAB yahoo group link to the 80 people listed in the member directory. Fifteen of the members answered the survey, 19%, making it statistically deficient but still providing a substantial amount of information.

Conclusions offer ideas for possible IAB involvement

1. Business areas under-represented in the survey can be added to the IAB invitation list.

2. The IAB draws from the highest ranking individuals in an organization as well as across the industries and services including education and consulting.

3. There is also a great deal of difference in percentage of industrial engineers promoted to senior management. Opportunity to fund or buy research on what percentage of IEs goes into senior management positions.

4. There is a great deal of difference in the way companies promote industrial engineering. Compiling the different ways might be a worthwhile exercise for research mentioned above. Should there be special promotions to help with this?

5. There is an opportunity to change negative perceptions into positive ones.

6. IEs typically stay longer than seven years at a company.

7. Respondents provided a list of ways IIE can help the industry overall that can be discussed/ranked to determine any opportunities for the IAB members to help implement.

8. IIE training is used by respondents slightly (53%) higher than not used (47%). The survey did not ask why nor ask for suggested programs.

9. Most companies pay for IIE dues (67%).

10. Most companies send IEs to the IIE conferences (86%).

11. Most of your companies participate in IIE conference presentations (71%).

12. Your companies support a local IIE chapter slightly more (57%) than not (43%) with most of you stating people from your company attend local chapter meetings. Some have no local chapter nearby.

13. The majority of respondents believe that IIE focuses more on academic than on industry.

14. A high number of respondents (40%) agree that IE is poorly marketed by IIE and offered some ideas to consider.

15. The IIE publications are considered highly useful by 60% of the respondents with suggestions for improvement offered by many.

16. Most respondents actively participate in university events (54%) with a little over one-fifth (21%) actively serving or (14%) partially serving on the university’s industry advisory board. If not actively involved in a local IE department, many respondents’ companies offer financial support to IIE events such as a regional conference and also recruit on local campuses.

17. There is a general positive attitude toward the new IEs entering the workforce.

The following take each question and either plot results for quick assessment or describe the results.

1. Please select your business and industry area.

Manufacturing, broken out into five areas, comprises the bulk of respondents to the IAB survey, 42%.

There was no representation from the following industry areas, either because the representative did not complete the survey or there is no one representing that area on the IAB.

If the latter is the reason, there is an opportunity to add representation from these areas.

Accommodation and Food Services

Administrative, Support, & Waste Mgmt Svcs.

Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing and Hunting

Construction

Finance and Insurance

Management of Companies and Enterprises

Manufacturing: Apparel / Textile

Manufacturing: Furniture

Manufacturing: Metal / Plastics / Rubber

Manufacturing: Paper / Wood

Manufacturing: Petroleum / Chemical

Manufacturing: Printing

Military

Real Estate and Rental and Leasing

Retail Trade

Transportation

Utilities

Warehousing

Wholesale Trade

2. What is your primary job function?

The majority of respondents (73%) are at the manager or senior manager level of their organizations.

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Category

Questions related to Industrial Engineers at your company

3. What primarily do industrial engineers do at your company?

This was an open-ended question with the following responses. There was a little overlap in answers, but not enough to group them.

• Basic IE functions

• Commercial Support: Create sourcing solution for new products by Coordinate and provide financial analysis for various sourcing alternatives; train/coach commercial leaders on how to create a CI culture

• Consult with clients

• Consultants

• Continuous improvement activities involving both operations and commercial processes

• Create lifelong memories

• Improve Processes within the Institution

• Lean - both manufacturing, transactional across all industries

• Make product industrialization from design phase to production phase

• Operational improvement

• Plant engineering

• Plant support - Traditional productivity improvements; lean/six sigma; train/consult plant management on building a CI culture

• Process Improvement projects & direct support to Production (usually production scheduling & production status information).

• Productivity improvement and reporting, lean manufacturing implementation, line balancing, ergonomic assessments, plant layout, some throughput simulation

• Quality and Manufacturing

• Research

• Supply Chain – Management - Strategy: Create supply chain solutions for business needs by coordinating and providing key financial analysis of alternatives; CI Business relationship managers - coaching/training organizational leaders on how to create a CI culture within business areas

• Systems analysis

• Teach

4. What percentages of IEs go into senior management positions at your company?

No one actually had the exact answer, but made educated guesses, with the majority (33%) estimating that less than 10% of industrial engineers at their companies advance into senior management positions. Next highest (20% of respondents) were 11% to 30% advancing into senior management positions.

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Here are some of the comments in this area:

“My company has 150,000 employees, I'm not sure where I would even find the information about how many directors, executive directors & vps started as IEs or have IE degrees. I do know a few of them started as IEs.”

“Only a small percent maybe 5 percent of our IEs go into senior management. But many of our current senior managers have IE backgrounds somewhere in their career (maybe as many as 20%).”

“Our CEO is an IE. More than 25%....”

“Relatively high. Most managers either come from technical background (engineering), or from finance….”

5. How well is industrial engineering understood at your company?

Based on the respondents’ answers, industrial engineering is understood well at their companies. “Well enough” was at 53% and “excellently” at 20%, with total combination for those two areas as 73%.

6. How well is IE marketed at your company?

The industrial engineering profession is either marketed well or not at all as an equal number of respondents (33%) were at both ends of this scale.

7. What are some of the strengths of the IE contributions to your company?

The following are in ranked position with the strength mentioned the most often at the top.

• Productivity/process/quality/performance improvement

• Problem solving skills

• Team thinker/cross functionally oriented

• Cost reduction

• Lean principles and/or tools

• Leadership skills

• Understand operational implications/strategic

Your comments include the following:

“Introducing lean principles and tools such as value stream mapping”

“Leadership skills - we are looked to provide leadership on cross functional initiatives.”

“ Finance/business skills - we are highly valued as neutral business analysts who understand the operational implications.”

“Good project management skills. Several important IE projects have saved the company a lot of money (or avoided costly errors). Excellent analysis provided in a variety of areas, often on short notice. IE partners with everyone to help make a project team cross-functional. Great past benchmarking studies. Significant role on supplier on-site visits (usually resolving delivery problems).”

“IE is an integral part of our company. They are sought out in all areas as all engineering disciplines.”

“Excellent communication skills, problem solving abilities, overall process orientation, leadership”

“Human factors is probably the strongest area”

8: What, if any, are weaknesses or areas for improvement in the way IEs are used at your company?

Most comments split to the negative side of the equation. Here are the responses.

POSITIVE

“More LOBs could utilize us but we do not have the resources to support everyone.”

“(IEs are) the correlation to information flows, integration, components, architecture, data design, and cross engineering understanding.”

NEGATIVE

“There is some feeling that IE as a function is not needed, that with a little training anybody in the line organizations can do what we do (and would do it better).”

“Underleveraged advanced analytical tools such as minitab….”

“IE not visible as a profession.”

“New degreed IEs are often not challenged enough their first 1-2 years. They may be given too much production control and status activity that keeps them from having time to learn how to do process improvement projects. Limited marketing of the IE skills (within the company) outside of the production areas. Most IE managers are not degreed IEs (most are business majors), not sure how to best utilize the degreed IEs that report to them.”

“Could be used more for Lean”

“Business management still looks at business through a 'financial' lens, not a systems or time-based lens.”

“Sometimes used to help people get things done because they know how to - but not always the best use of their time. Not used as much in creative solutions. Often involved in too much short term versus long term.”

“Viewed as a minimal commodity.”

9. How long do IEs typically stay at your company?

IEs typically stay longer than seven years at the respondents’ companies.

Category

Questions related to industry and the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE)

10. What can IIE do more of to help industry overall?

Here are your comments.

• “Create workshop or webcast meeting among industrial leaders and academic world.”

• “Insure that the IE profession is promoted to young people to encourage them to major in industrial engineering. Advertise/Promote the benefits to the government and businesses. Enlist IE's to solve the nation's healthcare crisis.”

• “Continue to improve efforts to market IE to corporate America.”

• “Increase visibility and establish relevancy to current vocational specialties (SSBB, Lean, project management, supply chain mgmt, outsourcing, procurement, etc.).”

• “Help focus more on industry issues, particularly at the IIE Conferences, and on many of the IIE National Committees (most seem run by University Professors). Do more to Market IEs and IIE (such as during National Engineers Week) and to large corporations.”

• “Communicate the value of IEs. Still quite naive in the market”

• “Enhance the image of the profession”

• “Education in techniques”

• “Keep the IE curriculum up to date and strong professors.”

• “Promote the industry at universities and trade shows.”

• “clarification of the benefits the role provides”

• “innovate more in the healthcare industry, and support career paths to senior executive positions”

• “Continue to develop and promote the profession so that people value to skill sets of IE's”

• “Market great examples of success.”

11. Does your company utilize the training that IIE provides?

Yes 53%; no 47%

Your comments:

Yes 53%; no 47%

• “Not often, though. A few have taken the PE Exam refresher course; there is some attendance at the annual conference.”

• “Honestly, do not find that much value in it for our application’

• “Pre- IIE Conference training and special adapted training (developed by IIE, specific for our company) has been very helpful.”

• “On an individual basis, not corporately”

• “Intro to Health Care seminar”

• “Most work and training is contracted out.”

12. Does your company pay for IIE annual dues?

Yes 67%; no 33%

Your comments:

• “In recent years (last 2-3 years). Prior to that No, we paid our own dues.”

• “…and SHS dues….”

• “I've been doing this since the early to mid 90's.”

13. Does your company send your IEs to the IIE Conferences?

Yes 86%; no 14%

14. If so, do you frequently have presenters or panelists at the IIE Conferences?

Yes 71%; no 29%

Your comments:

• “Simulation Competition.”

• “Not frequently enough, we should do more of it. Conference attendance is infrequent - anytime the economy is bad, we don't even bother asking for permission to attend.”

• “We could have more; but it can be challenging due to legal”

• “Not "frequently", although I have recruited two quality-related managers to speak at the OpEx Conference 2008.”

• “We try to get about 8-10 presentations approved from our company (for the Solutions portion of the Conference). We have a central person (with staff) that coordinates all of our IIE Conf. presentation submittals (within the company - we have a fairly involved & time consuming approval process with our Communications & Legal departments).”

• “very infrequently”

• “Breakthrough Management Group (BMG) does come / attend IIE conferences.”

15. Does your company support a local IIE chapter?

Yes 57%; no 43%

Your comments:

• “Individuals attend or are active in the local chapter, but there is no formal company support.”

• “Although we could do more

• “Yes, sort of. We have a lot of local IIE Chapter members from our company, but the company does little to help or promote the local IIE Chapter beyond what individuals do for the chapter. The local chapter supports the IIE University chapter but our company has no contact with the local IIE student chapter.”

• “Don't know”

• “we don't have a local chapter”

16. How balanced is IIE regarding industry focus vs. academic focus?

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17. Comment on your response to the prior question if you like.

• “A lot of IE graduates go to work for financial sector - they lose their link with IIE once they are in the banking industry.

• “As a business leader, I have not interest in all of the research papers presented...maybe I should, but I'm looking for practical advice”

• “Fellow awards continue to be dominated by academia. IISE initiative pro feedback has been dominated by academia and con feedback by industry.”

• “Comment is to say that more pro-active involvement in current "non-manufacturing" focus of American Business would help IIE regain relevancy.”

• “The IIE conferences seem like two separate groups - and the research portion dominates the solutions portion of the conf. The conference proceedings handout has a tiny solutions section in the back of the handout. Most national committees seem run by university professors.”

• “it is not well understood in the market outside of manufacturing”

• “Too much academic influence on the BOT, need to be more in touch with the membership, which I expect is largely industry based”

• “Many it is that the academic community is more involved.”

18. On a scale of 1 to 5 with 1 being poor and 5 being best, how effective is IIE Headquarters in providing services to your company?

Most respondents (47%) chose the middle ground on this question – neutral with 27% selecting the highest rating of “satisfactory.”

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19. On a scale of 1 to 5 with 1 being poor and 5 being best, how effective is IE marketed by IIE?

A high number of respondents (40%) agree that IE is poorly marketed by IIE. Comments offer some suggestions.

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20. What could be improved? Here are your comments.

• “Outreach beyond people already inside the profession.

• “Focus on higher level communication; US World Reports, WSJ, etc.”

• “More pro-active involvement in the current "non-manufacturing" (outsourced) base of American Business would help IIE regain relevancy.”

• “Need to Market IE beyond the IIE membership - to include more companies and more senior executives.”

• “Need to benchmark how other engineering societies market their professions.

• May need to use an outside Marketing agency.”

• “More active partnering with National Engineers Week groups (Discovery-E, JETS, & ASEE). “

• “Maybe let the IIE Fellows take this Marketing activity on, initially?”

• “The reach and the message. Although we don't have an answer, we do need to modify awareness of the profession”

• “Other than my talking about it, IIE is not advertised that much inside the company”

• “I'm a Lean practitioner and any education on team improvement, Lean accounting or Lean thinking (systems thinking) would be very useful at the educational level.”

• “more educational sessions / teleconferences / webinars outside of the Annual Conference”

• “I have heard examples of the "ball" being dropped.”

21. On a scale of 1 to 5 with 1 being poor and 5 being best, how useful are IIE’s publications?

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22. What could be improved?

• “I prefer more practical articles.”

• “More focus on more pro-active involvement in the current "non-manufacturing" (outsourced) base of contemporary American Business.”

• “Not sure how easy it is to do historical searches on past topics (from either IE magazine or Industrial Management magazine online) - but that might be useful. I don't read the publications regularly (due to time constraints at work and at home) - but I keep the actual magazines around so I can do an occasional information search on past topics. Over the years I have gone from regularly reading all articles (30 years ago), to scanning all articles & reading some (20 years ago), to glancing at only a few articles (10 years ago), to now only using magazines for informational searches, sporadically. However, when I finally do read an entire article, it’s usually only those that are related to my current projects. I regularly have access to over 10 major publications (some monthly, some weekly, & some daily), plus daily Internet information through my company (industry related newspaper articles) - so technical reading is a rare luxury these days.”

• “IEs as it relate to other industries and disciplines outside of manufacturing. We do see awareness in healthcare, but rarely finance, information systems, etc. “

Category

Questions related to industry and university IE departments

23. How are IEs at your company involved with a local University I.E. department? Mark all that apply.

Most respondents actively participate in university events (54%) with a little over one-fifth (21%) actively serving or (14%) partially serving on the university’s industry advisory board.

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Your comments:

• “Our Sr. IIE Chapter IEs work with Student IIE chapters”

• “Faculty Members - We are a University”

• “There are no IE programs near my employer.”

24. How is your company involved nationally with other I.E. Universities?

Financial support

• “Financial support regional conference.”

Recruiting efforts

• “Only for recruiting….recruiting and mentoring through key academic advisors”

• “Regular hiring events at many IE schools. Manager alumni visit their alma mater school (usually a senior manager, not an IE manager). An active IE Summer Intern program from many U.S. IE schools. Local company IEs usually on University's Industry Advisory Board for many of our U.S facilities.”

• “Recruiting and our IBM Academic Initiative in donation, monies and professors. Research and training.”

• “recruiting, hiring interns and full time”

• “Via recruiting and special speaking opportunities, support for student conferences”

Other connections

• “Only a little through some VP connections”

• “Cooperate with other institutions in area”

25. How well are new IE graduates (BS, MS & PhD.) meeting your company’s expectations? What could be improved? (This was an open-ended question.)

Positive

• “Pretty well. Need all to have co-op experience...very helpful to not have to teach them everything related to being employed”

• “Meets or exceeds. Continue to improve communication and presentation skills. Also finding some universities dropping core IE skills e.g. work measurement which we find valuable.”

• They do well once understood.

• IEs meet the expectations well

• Well trained in theory, lacking in hands on experience

• Excellent!

• more healthcare industry knowledge

• In general, there has been an improvement in this area. Main issue is QUANTITY!!!

Needs improvement

• “Unaware of any special hiring of IE's specific to "Tradition IE Roles".

• “Most are OK - but require a lot of on-the-job training. Most new IEs have not had a very useful Intern work experience (either not doing IE work while an Intern or did not Intern anywhere). Weak at working as a Team and Project Management skills, and basic Time Management skills. Often can take over two to three years to teach these basic skills to newly hired IEs (regardless of which IE school they attended). “

• “New IEs don't seem to apply their Senior Design Project learning experience very well, to any new projects. “

• “Sometimes a poor attitude can keep up to half of our new IE hires from being as productive as they could be (not forming useful partnerships or collaborating enough on their initial assignments). “

• “Recent, significant problems with latest Gen. Y IEs wanting to "run before they know how to walk" (many are not willing to take the time to learn enough basics and how we build products to earn a promotion based on good project work - they want the promotion given to them after some time spent on the job, whether they deserve a promotion or not).”

• “leadership skills”

This concludes the survey results document.

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