Abstract
This is a report on the history and current status of production planning and control activities in South Korea with regard to Industrial Engineers' (IEs') role. One of the main characteristics of Korean global companies is that they make good use of IEs not only in their production but also in higher strategic fields like supply chain management. In these companies it is well demonstrated that instead of adding small part of IE skills to traditional engineers, it is much more competitive to have IEs work with them as a team since IEs are fully proficient in every kind of productivity and quality improvement tools. It is also observed that IEs become more productive when they have good domain knowledge in their own industries like semi-conductor, automobile, telecommunications, steel, shipbuilding, etc. So teaching the basics for manufacturing processes to IE students seems very important for their future career development.
