Senior design is a course that most engineering students has to undertake before graduation. It’s like the last of all last courses that will prove if students are worthy to be ‘True Engineers’. Or so they say.
Mine was titled “PMU Main Lounge Project” , which ended 2 days ago. My teammates and I (Scott, Alex, Pete, and Matt the Canadian) were given the opportunity to spearhead the renovations and the process of redesigning the main lounges of the university, which are the West Lounge, East Lounge and a room called PMU 118 (a room for functions such as weddings). Our scope of renovations ranges from ‘bigger’ stuffs such as layout drawings and flow management to ‘smaller’ stuffs such as furniture, lightings, or carpet specifications. It was absolutely an interesting project indeed. Never thought that IE tools can also be used in the architectural field, in a mathematical way.
Often, I will always hear about funny statements tied up to Industrial Engineering. Things like, “IE = Imaginary Engineering” or “the easiest engineering” , or about IE graduates that has to work in factory for the rest of their lives and etc. At first, I kinda thought so too. The fact that IE doesn’t use as much concepts from physics or chemistry as to mechanical or electrical engineering do, had carved a perception of people’s minds that IE is a much simpler engineering compared to the rest.
O yeah, that might really be the case. However, the professors that I took my classes from had taught me great lessons of what IE is. An IE can work in many other fields besides just plain manufacturing. Health care systems in hospitals, air traffic control at airport, consulting firms, accounting firms are a few common examples of where IE principles can be applied. Do you know how Air Asia was able to trim down its cost and offer traveling at really cheap deals? Those low cost airlines are using IE principles to makes these happen too. The project that I worked on had also at least told you a little bit of something regarding the things I learn in class.
So what’s next for me? I wanna learn and be exposed to as many fields and industries as possible, and find ways to apply the things I learn. I’m interested especially on things such as costs and optimality. Even tho’ the knowledge that I posses might not be as much as that of a PhD student, but at the very least I was made aware by IE that to get huge profits, it doesn’t necessarily call for higher sales. Trimming your cost down is also another way to broaden the profit gap too.
-lte-
