Several commercial operations take place at the intersection between trade and engineering – for instance product development, process design, materials management, technical sales, logistics, B2B customer service, asset and facility management and human resources.
Fast-moving markets result in shortened product lifecycles across industries and the need for rapid market introduction of new technical solutions. In order to reduce the time to market, companies use refined technologies or conduct concurrent engineering. As well, manufacturers increasingly parallelize numerous steps of their previously sequential process chains. To achieve such aims, companies require professionals and leaders who understand these issues from both a business and an engineering perspective.
Industrial engineers are active throughout the sectors of the economy. Graduates with such a background take on positions, in which specialized knowledge is required, most often in the manufacturing industry. A further popular career choice among industrial engineers is management consulting.