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Mechanical vs Industrial Engineering

A

amicold

Platinum Member
Long story short, I'm a little behind the times on my education. I am in my early 20s, I went to school for two semesters and have been working dead-enders since. I'm now enrolled again and doing what I was supposed to have done right out of high school. Can anyone explain the differences here? I only have a year's worth of gen-eds under my belt and another year and a semester of pre-reqs for either discipline before I really need to decide.
 
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I'm currently majoring in mechanical engineering. I would say if you have a difficult time choosing which engineering major then ME is the way to go since it is so broad. The way it was explained to me was that Industrial is primarily in manufacturing and deals with streamlining processes and making the manufacturing process more effecient. ME deals more with the actual engineering of tangible things.

tl;dr
Mechanical engineers design the products that industrial engineers make more efficient.
 
Industrial Engineering was referred to as Imaginary Engineering, when I was in school.

It got no respect and was one rung up from being a Business major.
 
IME an ME could do IE work with a bit of training and experience. The opposite might be true but the perception doesn't reflect that.
 
As others have said, mechE is a broad subject and allows you to springboard into many different fields, most of which start at a very good payscale. Once you get your foot in the door with a company and industry, you can then use the degree to do just about anything.

Source:
Graduated 2011 MechE, work as product manager now for an oil & gas equipment supplier.
 
Most of you seem on target with what I've read online. IEs are not real engineers, ha. I asked because one of my professors seems to be under the impression that IEs are more than glorified business majors. Thought maybe AT would have some real world experience for me. Thanks to all I appreciate it.
 
depends on what you're good at I guess.

I'm just a lowly Journeyman Tool & Diemaker, but I work with EE's and ME's everyday and am basically the Jarvis to their plans I guess.

Not that lowly really, bit of a joke.

Even help em out with suggestions on improving things a lot of the time 🙂
 
amicold said:
Most of you seem on target with what I've read online. IEs are not real engineers, ha. I asked because one of my professors seems to be under the impression that IEs are more than glorified business majors. Thought maybe AT would have some real world experience for me. Thanks to all I appreciate it.
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I wasn't going to chime in about it too much earlier as I really don't know much about IE's, but I imagine it is more manufacturing process's and statistically oriented.

Probably like a CPA Engineer, if I'm not mistaken.
 
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