The industrial engineer - Caught between two revolutions?

The industrial engineer is caught between the Industrial Revolution and the Information Revolution. He is confronted with choosing between pragmatic improvements in productivity and efficiency of a single operation and the opportunistic modelling and reshaping of the networked 'virtual enterprise' and 'extended enterprise' to become more competitive in a global marketplace. The different extreme of the industrial engineering timeline is depicted in Diagram 1. It implies that the two societies (industrial and information) might have conflicting characteristics which require careful repositioning of the industrial engineer to ensure that the benefits that can be obtained from the two societies are maximized. The development of industrial engineering is presented. An evaluation of the nature of the much publicized information revolution and its impact on society is made. The trend of industrial engineering research based on publications in four journals and the Internet is reported. From these results the similarities and differences of the two revolutions and the characteristics of the two societies are compared. The authors identify some opportunities and some threats for the industrial engineer and conclude that a combined approach is applicable and necessary. The industrial engineer cannot afford to ignore the key concepts of either of the two societies.