My whole high school career, I was entirely stem focused. I devoted my time and energy into solely math and science based classes, and was positive I wanted to be a chemical engineering major. However my desire to attend University of Miami overcame my disappointment at the lack of a chemical engineering major. I enrolled in the 2018 fall semester as a mechanical engineer, still very unsure of whether or not I was passionate about that particular engineering field as I was about chem E. After meeting with my advisor, and doing extensive research on mechanical engineering, as well as experimenting with skills needed for that specific field, I came to the conclusion that it was not for me. As of Spring of 2019, I em enrolled as an industrial engineer.
Industrial Engineering is the advanced intersection of business and stem worlds. Industrial engineers use business administration, management, and economics, along with the more traditional engineering skills like coding, sketching and spreadsheeting. Industrial engineering was most appealing to me because of the flexibility of the job market within it. Industrial engineers mostly tend to work with production/operational systems and maintaining those systems or even building them. The University of Miami states possible career paths for industrial engineers in “Airlines, Transportation/ Logistics, Power Utilities, Healthcare Systems, Publishing, Amusement Parks, and Space Systems. ” Industrial engineers often are development orientated and have vast knowledge of systems and how they work. With my undergraduate degree in industrial engineering, I hope to enter the business world working for a manufacturing firm.
An example of what an industrial engineer might do is to help design procedures to optimize the use of facilities such as in a hospital or an airline. I have always been interested in the design and benefit of prosetics and mechanical devices and how the design process could be further improved to not only benefit people with missing limbs, but also to develop a technology that ease elderly people or paralysis victims. An issue that is relevant to this topic is the issue of elderly people dying fast because of their inability to exercise and pick up their feet. My own grandmother has to shuffle her feet because of the weight on her knees and she is minimizing the amount of fitness she is getting, thus affecting herself. An industrial engineer could design an manufacture a mechanical device to attach to the calves of elderly people to help this problem. (This is an entirely original idea, (could be entirely unrealistic as well).
One useful skill I am learning within the field of industrial engineering is advanced excel spreadsheeting. It allows users to organize any information they need and is especially relevant in the business world because of the statistical formulas and graphing that it provides. (A great use for an accounting firm). Luckily, in the modern day era, business understand the value of engineers with these types of skills. Many small business especially recruit engineers because they understand how tech oriented they are. Although I am not completely sure of what I want to do in life, I see industrial engineering as a perfect Segway into the business world.
