Here's how you can excel as an Industrial Engineer in a globalized economy.

As exigências do mercado de trabalho mudaram significativamente nas últimas décadas. Se antes a forma??o acadêmica tradicional e a experiência prática eram suficientes para garantir estabilidade e progresso profissional, hoje, essas qualifica??es s?o apenas o ponto de partida. A digitaliza??o, a automa??o e a globaliza??o têm impulsionado a necessidade de adapta??o constante. De acordo com o relatório “Future of Jobs” do Fórum Econ?mico Mundial, cerca de 50% dos empregados precisar?o de requalifica??o até 2025 devido à evolu??o das fun??es e das competências demandadas.

As a Filipino Industrial Engineer, I have been very active in participating conferences both physical and virtual to pick up the emerging trends and best practices across IE. This allow me to have a global perspective about the practice and gives me added value as a professional. Since Industrial Engineers are also Systems Engineers that do look in the bigger picture, having a global mindset gives you the advantage.

I have published a study on the integrated use of DMAIC for OEE improvement. This is now available for access of manufacturing organizations across the globe. By publishing best practices around Industrial Engineering as well as researches of course provides context for being a global Industrial Engineer. I have also published about 4 e-books internationally under Bookboon Ltd.

I have been learning and practicing Industry 4.0/5.0 in past couple of months. Integrating Industrial Engineering with Industry 4.0/5.0 concepts will definitely up your playing field and be able to create more value to your respective organization and/or community. The use of emerging technologies like Cloud, IoT, Machine Learning, AI, etc will definitely help in making processes safer, faster, cheaper, and #significantlybetter to operate.

In my recent talks, I have discussed how Industrial Engineers can play their significant role in our global drive for sustainability. Here are some roles IEs can play. 1. Design of processes to be more effective and resource efficient. 2. Integration of waste elimination and variation reduction in process management. 3. Benchmarking and implementation of sustainable best practices. 4. Integrating the circularity in their Industrial Engineering function from planning to sourcing to making to delivering to returning. I hope I have shared some POVs on how IEs can be champions of sustainability contributing to the global landscape.

As an Industrial Engineer in the Philippines, our professional organization, Philippine Institute of Industrial Engineers (PIIE) has certifications issued to Industrial Engineers which are the Certified Industrial Engineer (CIE) and Professional Industrial Engineer (PIE). I have been into both programs to make sure that I am recognized as a practitioner here in the Philippines. Furthermore, I have been attending relevant training and certification programs to my areas of practice such as Lean Six Sigma, Design Thinking, Analytics, Project Management, Productivity, Quality, etc. By engaging in a state of continuous or lifelong learning, I have reaped a lot of significant benefits. I would highly recommend my fellow IEs to do the same.

Communication and collaboration are two critical skills needed to make project management effective. While delegation is one of the skills that is hard to practice, it is also one that is essentially needed along with communication and collaboration. If you can delegate some tasks, you can focus on effectively managing projects.