Industrial and production engineering (IPE) is an interdisciplinary engineering discipline that includes manufacturing technology, engineering sciences, management science, and optimization of complex processes, systems, or organizations. It is concerned with the understanding and application of engineering procedures in manufacturing processes and production methods.[1][2] Industrial engineering dates back all the way to the industrial revolution, initiated in 1700s by Sir Adam Smith, Henry Ford, Eli Whitney, Frank Gilbreth and Lilian Gilbreth, Henry Gantt, F.W. Taylor, etc. After the 1970s, industrial and production engineering developed worldwide and started to widely use automation and robotics. Industrial and production engineering includes three areas: Mechanical engineering (where the production engineering comes from), industrial engineering, and management science.
The objective is to improve efficiency, drive up effectiveness of manufacturing, quality control, and to reduce cost while making their products more attractive and marketable. Industrial engineering is concerned with the development, improvement, and implementation of integrated systems of people, money, knowledge, information, equipment, energy, materials, as well as analysis and synthesis. The principles of IPE include mathematical, physical and social sciences and methods of engineering design to specify, predict, and evaluate the results to be obtained from the systems or processes currently in place or being developed.[3] The target of production engineering is to complete the production process in the smoothest, most-judicious and most-economic way. Production engineering also overlaps substantially with manufacturing engineering and industrial engineering.[4] The concept of production engineering is interchangeable with manufacturing engineering.
As for education, undergraduates normally start off by taking courses such as physics, mathematics (calculus, linear analysis, differential equations), computer science, and chemistry. Undergraduates will take more major specific courses like production and inventory scheduling, process management, CAD/CAM manufacturing, ergonomics, etc., towards the later years of their undergraduate careers. In some parts of the world, universities will offer Bachelor's in Industrial and Production Engineering. However, most universities in the U.S. will offer them separately. Various career paths that may follow for industrial and production engineers include: Plant Engineers, Manufacturing Engineers, Quality Engineers, Process Engineers and industrial managers, project management, manufacturing, production and distribution, From the various career paths people can take as an industrial and production engineer, most average a starting salary of at least $50,000.