Encroaching Ethical Issues

A company looking to improve their processes with speeding up systems, perfecting quality assurance, or increasing profit margins may want to consider hiring an Industrial Engineer. The company, however, must also consider the ethics of the Industrial Engineer. Industrial Engineers are encouraged to follow the Code of Ethics created by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology. To read the list of fundamental principles and fundamental canons go to http://www.iienet2.org/Details.aspx?id=299.

One of the main focus points of ethical codes across multiple fields is safety. A large portion of Industrial Engineers work with the relationship between man and machine; therefore, safety maintains a particularly high status. In some cases, Industrial Engineers have compromised those ethical standards to simply please the company they are working with. In the engineering world, this is highly looked down upon. A potential injury or death of a worker should not be compromised for a slight increase in profit. With the current economic times, too many companies are deciding to sway on the ethics they uphold to maintain their business. An Industrial Engineer endorsing the Code of Ethics should come to realize that there may be potential to jeopardize the very first fundamental principle which is “Engineers uphold and advance the integrity, honor and dignity of the engineering profession by using their knowledge and skill for the enhancement of human welfare…”. Industrial Engineers, or any engineers, must have the professional strength the hold their ground when ethical issues are being threatened.

A particularly large amount of cases in which workers have been harmed in an industrial setting can be seen in large manufacturing facilities where conditions of the building and the working environment are not upheld. The engineers may not be to blame in each case, however, it should cause an engineer and a company to rethink making drastic changes to a facility layout or work space. Those tragic cases should also cause a company and its Industrial Engineering committee to consider the current working conditions and if any improvements need to be implemented.

An organization that has been started to regulate the saftey of employees in the workplace is Occupational Saftey and Health Administration (OSHA). OSHA is the main federal agancy that enforces saftey regulations for companies. The federal government became aware of the fact that eomployees were suffering from injuries and health problems because there was not a set standard for each organization. Since 1970, OSHA has worked its way into the typical workplace of the employee to analyse and regulate saftey and health. The positive results from OSHA can been seen in the decreased number of work-related deaths from 2010 with 4,690 to 2011 when 4,609 deaths occured. The decrease may be due to better education or saftey at work, more enforcement of the regulations, or more concern for the employees within each company. However, we do know that with the help of the Industrial Engineers working to improve saftey at with OSHA are leading a path in industry for a safer work environment. More information, statistics, and cases from OSHA is accesable through https://www.osha.gov/index.html.

With the help of OSHA, more and more companies are beginning to see the clear line between efficiency and saftey. Also, for those companies that choose to continually push the limits are repromanded by OSHA and in some cases fined substancial amounts to compensate for the poor status of their saftey regulations. OSHA has taugh companies that saftey comes as the main concern when first trying to improve efficiency. When a worker is in the slightest amount of danger, the company is required to have saftey training sessions to make  health issues aware to the employees. Efficiency is no longer the number one priority when an employees health or saftey is at stake. The laws and regulations laid out to clearly define the boundary the saftey needs that must be met before efficiency changes to occur are found at https://www.osha.gov/law-regs.html.
 

Many companies have started a great leap forward in positively changing their working conditions. These companies have started seeking Industrial Engineers to start various safety and process and improvement teams. As the industrial marketplace prospers due to new technologies, Industrial Engineers are needed to guide the company along the path to both increasing profit and maintaining safe working conditions. That is why it is utterly invaluable to have an Industrial Engineer that has studied and upholds the core principles and canons of the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology.

In the end, a company and an engineer need to evaluate their ethical code and the codes of those they are working with. The concern for economic growth within the company should be the driving force to continually improve working conditions, speed up systems, and improve quality assurance all while maintaining the proper perspective of the Code of Ethics for engineers. That is why it is important for all types of engineers to be aware of the encroaching ethical problems pushed aside by many companies and be able to endorse the Code of Ethics.