Volume 1, Issue 1
can earn a living just by attending them. We
have lengthy waiting lines in our hospitals, local
zoo, admission offices, car parking, restaurants,
shopping centers, banks and now even worse
we have it at “Tandoors” (a local cooking service,
where “roti” a food made from wheat is baked for
the poor at a low cost). Every day I sit and ask
myself how could I improve these systems and
be able to make them more productive for my
society. Especially for the hospitals in my local
town, we need a lot of extensive research work
and dedication to solve various issues regarding
hospital management, patient care, data management, its availability and quality.
Pakistan is the 4th largest cotton producer in the
world, according to the “Leading producer countries” in Wikipedia. Our agriculture industry is
well known in the world. This region is blessed
with four seasons of the world with a good balance for the taste of all, especially the summer.
This environment thus produces a huge variety
of fruits and vegetables. Having said this, we still
suffer because we have a very poorly organized
and unproductive supply chain for this food to
reach out to our own people. In the local fruit
markets, the prices are going up day by day due
to the severe lack of supply chain management.
Water waste percentage is very high in the country because the system still follows archaic method of flood irrigation which wastes 50 to 60 per
cent of water. The most recent floods were such
a big calamity because no one was prepared for
them in the first place. Every year statistical analysis and departments of weather tell us that we
might have a bigger level of floods next year but
still this news goes unheard because I believe
we have less “industrial engineers”.
Water logging and salinity is increasingly becoming a source of problem in most parts of the
country. Old methods of cultivation and harvesting are the bad source for extensive low yield.
Page 32
These are all in remote areas where there is
little or no communication and awareness
for the farmer who is the actual person behind the wheels. So, this looks like a job for
an Industrial Engineer who is packed with
analytical, management and engineering
techniques.
Talking about electricity , we are suffering
from electricity blackouts which range sometimes from 14 to 16 hours daily. In most of
the remote areas we have even total electricity failures this is because our operations
are being left unmanaged. The electricity
shortages have left the industries jammed.
Managers do not have the knowledge today
how to schedule the various processes so
that it may still be able to cut the loss and be
somewhat profitable. Many factories have
been subsequently closed down. The role of
a super IE does seem very prominent here
taking the lead and creating scheduled tasks
with ideas and creative solutions to the declining graph of the companies. And I am
sure we will!
Lastly, it is not my degree that gave me
eyes of an industrial engineer rather it is the
membership of IIE that led me to study my
world with new spectacles. This view is very
different that I had in mind at the time of admission. The new vision has touched my inner human who wants to search out ways to
bring out ease for the society by creating a
different set using the same elements but
arranging them in a more productive way.
This is indeed a profession that has the best
integration of man, money and machine.
And for IIE and all IE community in the world
I would say, “Pakistan, a heaven for Industrial Engineers!” because there is a lot of work
to do and only industrial super engineers
can save the world in this region.