An AHP Model for Classification of the Professional Competencies of Iranian Industrial Engineers

The presence of new environment within the late of 19th century that recognized with time speed, competition, quality and cost pushed academia to establish a new collection of systematic decision tools for effective managing industrial enterprises. In respect of this growing need Industrial Engineering was introduced as a new academic discipline in which the main educational concentration was on developing a scientific process for systematic analysis of real options under different conditions. The complexity and economics of large scale companies within the multi-nations commercial environment of those days put relatively a number of courses from various disciplines such as mathematics, statistics and probabilities, management science, economics and general engineering on the educational package of Industrial engineering. Since this collection to suit the changing environment a number of revisions has been located so far. The main purpose of this study is to provide an integrated model for homogeneous classification of the capabilities of graduates from Iranian Industrial Engineering departments based on the market requirements. This model consequently unified a framework for revising the structure and the content of Industrial Engineering in respond to ongoing changes within managerial environment. In this paper, first, with an extensive review of the educational content evolution within Industrial Engineering, an integrated model for evaluating Iranian industrial engineers’ competencies is designated, and then the consequence expected specialties with three distinguished components of knowledge, vision and skills were architected. Based on the proposed model, by using an Analytical Hierarchy Process, the main industrial engineers’ capabilities were recognized by Analysis, Design, Decision Making, Planning and Control abilities. The validation of the model with a 95% level of confidence comes from a Delphi survey within the academia. As a result is shown that in the field of industrial engineering the abilities, of analysis, design and decision-making are more important than the abilities of planning and control.