Chromeboy

Hey, I'm currently going to attend UCF with Industrial Engineering as my planned major. I want to make sure that it is the best major for where I want to be after I graduate in 5 years.

I want a job involved in the development of products for entertainment, essentially gadgets. Involvement in New Product Development is a big want for me. Being on the team who creates, or markets the product to the public seems to be the path I want to be on at this time.

I chose Industrial Engineering because it seemed to be applicable in a wide variety of fields. I also liked that it was referred to as a marriage of the engineering and business aspects of industries.

My question: Is Industrial Engineering the right major I should be taking to end up with a job like I described above?

Chromeboy

help a bro outttt

nshah9617

For product development, I think ME or EE (especially for gadgets) is a better choice.

PurdueEE

First of all, you need to figure out what you might want to do. You mention that you want to design products or market them like it's almost the same thing. It's not. Not even close. Let's assume that you want to design products.

The typical IE is not necessarily going to be doing the bulk majority of the design work. He or she MAY be involved in the design process to inform the design team of potential limitations or to figure out some process change that will be required for an upcoming product (these are just broad examples as IEs do a ton of different things). See Industrial engineering - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia for a better description.

What kind of design do you want to do? What kind of products would you like to design?

Chromeboy

Sorry for not being clear in the OP. I didn't mean "gadgets", but more in the ballpark of making them easier to mass produce in industrial settings.

I understand that designing products and marketing them are not the same thing. Essentially I want to be somewhere in the middle of the groups of teams that bring new products(or systems) to the public. I'm not sure exactly what sequence of events goes into such a task so I guess I should do more research.

I'm pretty sure I don't want to get into the nitty gritty of actually hardcore designing things because thats major math. If I did though, then I'm sure Mechanical Engineering would be the correct major for it.

BTW thanks for the help.

purduefrank

At least in theory there is a lot of emphasis on cross functional work with product design teams. I have relatively little experience with actual industry application, but my gut tells me that you will definitely have to strategically maneuver yourself into such a position. From my experience, it seems like a lot of companies hire IE’s to fill roles in supply chain management, operations, and lean manufacturing. Therefore, I would say that although the coursework you take and many people will lead you to believe there is quite a bit of involvement with product design, there is really is probably a small number of these positions out there. In the classroom there are a lot of buzzwords thrown around – such as concurrent design – which aim to highlight the advantages that designing a product from concept, to manufacturing, to maintenance, to disposal, can offer. Nonetheless, my experience tells me that hiring for these types of positions is probably rather rare – as is also the case for design roles in ME, EE, and the like. In other words, the design positions out there are harder to come by.

Contrarily, there is a lot of process design in IE. You talk about an interest in being somewhere in the middle of engineering and business – and, this is actually pretty true with IE. A lot of the emphasis that I see in IE is cost savings work. In fact, most of the companies that I talk to really put a large emphasis on cost savings even in their internships. Quite of few of them will make you give a presentation at the end of the internship that touts the dollar figures you have saved the company. I know a number of IEs that supposedly have saved companies hundreds of thousands, and even millions of dollars annualized over their summer internships.

Again, I have to agree with the previous poster that product design work and business/marketing are two very different things. On top of this, my experience in IE leads me to believe that there really is not a lot of overlap between most of the IE positions and product design or marketing. In general, I think you might want to nail down a little more closely what exactly it is you want to do. Again, the normal IE tracks seem to be in supply chain management, operations, classical IE (which is a lot of simulation and process design), and lean manufacturing. There are positions in other areas but these are definitely the most common.