How can an IE be involved in innovation of engineering products?

College Majors Engineering Majors
1

I am currently a junior in Industrial Engineering major at Purdue, going for a minor in electrical and computer engineering, and a minor in computer science. I am going for a software engineering specialization under my IE belt. I’m trying to deal with the idea of “Imaginary Engineering” because that’s not what I want to be. I want to imagine and actually make the products
I was a transfer student. I applied to Industrial Engineering because it seemed that Purdue’s rank and reputation for IE major had been outstanding and I was not sure which engineering discipline that was my passion. Now, I’m thinking of changing major to computer engineering but it’s still 50:50 due to the following reasons

  1. I had been a technical person who likes to create things. So, I have been using Computer Aided Design (CAD) using Solidworks and CATIA for an aerospace project that I'm involved in. This is an expression of my interest in designing hardware. This made me feel like to change my major to computer engineering.
  2. Part of IE program that I like is their skill in developing algorithms. I really love technology and that's the reason I am pursuing software engineering and a minor in CS. Even some of the professors in IE department have research on different machine learning algorithms.
  3. In future, I wanted to build my own start-up (what I have in mind for my first start-up is a smartphone company that develop transparent -glass- smartphones). I thought I would need more skill of a deep and technical engineering discipline. However, my mum told me that IE's skills are very important. Creating a product without the capability of sustaining the efficiency of the business would end up with catastrophic events for the investors and company. it's true like Apple. under Steve Jobs, Apple almost lost its sustainability until Tim Cook arrived and started to close some of the company's physical asset. (and now Apple had been making money more than analyst predicted).
  4. I'm just having hard time to understand or believe why people kept saying that IEs are imaginary engineers. I heard this because we all know some IEs tend to be individuals who just wanted good grades, not passionate in learning, and IEs student had to take classes in different departments, which is like a community burden for other engineering discipline due to these individuals learning attitude (I heard some even cheat, which was even worse that their negligent and disrespectful learning attitude towards professors). However, that's not me. I'm pretty much passionate about learning, especially, technical courses like the electrical and computer engineering courses (not only that, I almost enjoy all the classes that I take in different departments). This is kind of disappointing for an IE student who had been working hard keeping a good academic performance. How can we do things if we don't have the respect of others in school, especially, among engineers who might be the people in our team during the professional career.
  5. I do want to work in tech companies with my software engineering specialization. This made me lean to keep working toward my IE

Now I’m confused and I am considering changing my major. What are your thoughts on this?

2

Well, if your goal is to design products targeted at consumers directly, then industrial engineering is probably not the ideal course of study for you. Which field is ideal for you depends on what sorts of product components you wish to design.

3

There are some pretty good options actually… If you’re interested in high tech product design, you can take classes related to Human Computer Interaction / Human Factors Engineering. Check out research and prof names:

https://engineering.purdue.edu/IE/research/HF

At the undergrad level there are some interesting classes, and more in grad school, both inside IE and in places like Psychology, Comp Science, or ECE.

Understand that innovation from an IE’s point of view can be process, user interface, optimization of existing methods, etc. Also understand that the body of knowledge is pretty big. With your CS / ECE background HF / HCI is a natural.

My background is not too far off. With undergrad and grad CS degrees I spent a decade writing HMI code and realized there was a lot more to it than pretty graphics. I attended Purdue in the 1990’s and did an MS IE focusing on such things. I’ve spent the last couple decades designing user interfaces for consumer electronic products, and now I work on the overall user experience (UX) part.

Caveat: I had to learn a lot of the cookbook products for UX / UI design on my own (Photoshop, Altia, a myriad of UI design tools) but the theoretical background I got from theoretical classes was very valuable.

4

Thanks for the sharing! it just gave me a new perspectives on the IE classes side.

In the end I do want to be involved in hardware products. Perhaps I will take master in computer engineering and stick to current IE. meanwhile for a job in between my transition from undergrad to grad school, I might take your advice.

5

You’re welcome. As a transition job, look for ‘Systems Engineer’ type positions esp with your knowledge of ECE coming out of the undergrad program. Systems guys generally understand all aspects of the product, as they are the interface between the customer and the product team. They talk to the customer to collect requirements, create and track requirements for the specific teams (software, hardware, mechanical, UX, testing) and if you buy them enough beers they actually help with bench troubleshooting. There is a lot of revolving doors between Systems and Hardware or Software or UX with the right skills.

Systems was popular for defense and aerospace applications initially but as consumer electronic products get more complex they are needed there as well.

6

hmm still a grey area right there for me. not sure if systems engineering is for me but from the way you said it, it sounds like the integration of different discipline.

It is more about creating the requirements right? but since you mentioned system engineer cover all aspect, I guess I need to do further research into it.

7

Systems is often seen with Industrial. Georgia Tech and Virginia Tech programs , for instance, are in departments of Industrial and Systems Engineering.

8

Understood. Thanks!