RAPID CITY, SD (Aug. 1, 2018) – Carlos Beatty Jr. enrolled at South Dakota School of
Mines & Technology as a mechanical
engineering major. It wasn’t long before he migrated to industrial engineering,
drawn by the major’s “versatility.”
“It has more of a focus on business and psychology,”
he says. “It’s the best to prepare you for the business world, hands down.”
Industrial engineers are sometimes called the
engineer’s engineer. Most people, however, don’t even know what an industrial
engineer does. This despite the fact that industrial engineering was the 7th
most popular engineering degree in 2018, and the profession is
expected to grow by 10
percent from 2016 to 2026, faster than the average for all other
occupations.
Industrial engineers are essentially trained to
“manage the system,” says Paula Jensen,
a lecturer in the IE
department at SD Mines. They apply science, math and engineering
methods to operations, ensuring the success of a company by solving problems
and eliminating waste. They often oversee efficiency and output. By using
engineering processes, industrial engineers solve the complex problems that
industries face, Jensen says.
“Industrial engineering is not as focused as the other
engineering degrees,” says Beatty Jr., a 2013 industrial
engineering and engineering management graduate of SD Mines. “You
touch on a little of everything in IE. You’re a jack of all trades.”
Jensen says industrial engineers have a broader scope
of education, with less laser focus on a specific engineering specialty. They
need to have good interpersonal skills and the ability to understand and apply
what’s found in the data to increase efficiencies. “It’s an inch deep and a
mile wide,” Jensen says. “It’s very broad. You’re going to do so many cool
things in IE.”
SD Mines offers the only undergraduate degree in
industrial engineering & engineering management in the state of South
Dakota, with its recent IEEM graduates earning an average starting salary of
$60,239. Overall job placement rate of IE graduates from Mines is currently 100
percent. SD Mines industrial engineer graduates work for companies such as John
Deere, Target, American Express, GE and Polaris.
For Beatty, 27, getting an IEEM degree led to a master
of business administration degree from the University of South Dakota in
Vermillion, SD, and currently a job in a post-MBA corporate leadership
development program with Fiat
Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) in Michigan. Prior to his current
position, he worked as an operations associate engineer for Peabody
Energy in Wyoming, and as a corporate planning engineer for DENSO
Manufacturing in Michigan.
He knows fellow industrial engineer graduates who are
investment bankers, brokers, business owners and in research development with
chemical companies. Tim Cook, the CEO
of Apple, has a degree in industrial engineering.
“We’re all over the place and at the end of the day,
it’s what you want it to be,” Beatty says. “You can go anywhere you want.”