General Introduction
The Woodworking Industrial Engineering Department, which is the only department within the Vocational Technology School of our university, was established in 1973 under the Hacettepe University Rectorate in order to train industrial engineers with planner, researcher and managerial qualifications needed by woodworking/furniture organizations which aims to produce products in accordance with world quality and standards. The program has been the only undergraduate department in Turkey where graduates of industrial vocational high schools or technical high schools, who graduated from woodworking and furniture-decoration departments, can receive engineering education related to their profession, from its establishment until 2009. In addition to this feature, since 1995, all university candidates, whether they graduated from vocational high schools or not, have shown great interest in the program.
Woodworking Industrial Engineering has two basic dimensions: "Woodworks" and "Industrial Engineering":
Woodworks produces wood as a result of mechanical and industrial processes, the main raw material of which is wood; It can be defined as the process of transforming intermediate products such as timber, veneer, plywood, plywood, particle board and fiberboard into products suitable for the use of the end user, mainly furniture and wooden structures. The other inputs in this process; adhesive, paint-varnish (top surface applications), flooring materials, accessories, machinery and so on. industrial products are also located within the Woodworks area.
Industrial Engineering, on the other hand, is an engineering field that aims to develop and maintain systems that make effective, effective and efficient use of all variables and production factors that are effective in production so that the products and services that are considered to be produced can be obtained at the desired quality, in the determined time and at the lowest cost. In order to achieve this goal, the management of the production system such as product and process design, facility planning, production system design, cost analysis, production planning and stock control, quality management, maintenance planning, investment management, work-study and performance evaluation, optimization, supply chain management and takes advantage of all the elements of control. Additionally, Industrial Engineering; is also closely related to other business subsystems such as finance, sales and marketing, customer relations, R&D, workforce planning, remuneration, and accounting (human resource management).
In light of these statements, Woodworking Industrial Engineering (WIE); can be defined as “the engineering discipline that designs and manages sustainable industrial systems by using the production system design and sub-systems related to the management and control of this production system, aiming to manufacture solid wood or wood-based materials and composite products consisting of them with the desired quality, in the specified time and at the lowest cost".
Woodworking Industrial Engineering discipline is separate from Industrial Engineering departments with its specialized industry dimension in the woodworking and furniture context.
In addition, Woodworking Industrial Engineering is separate from Forestry Industrial Engineering departments with its structure oriented towards the end product. Because, while Forestry Industrial Engineering is only about the production of wood and wood-based industrial products as materials, Woodworking Industrial Engineering is concerned with the production of products for final consumers, using all kinds of wood or wood-based materials and their composites.
When the attached course contents of the Woodworking Industrial Engineering undergraduate program are examined, 60% of the courses are in general engineering theory. 43% of them include basic engineering courses and 17% of them include Industrial Engineering courses. 28% of the AEM undergraduate program consists of professional courses covering the woodworking industry and furniture industry. As in other engineering disciplines, 12% of this program is standard service courses. This structure; makes it clear that Woodworking Industrial Engineering has a compatible undergraduate program with other engineering departments.
Woodworking Industrial Engineering is the equivalent of the discipline known in English as “Wood Products Engineering” or “Wood Products Industrial Engineering”. The basis of the Woodworking Industrial Engineering undergraduate education given in our college is organized according to the principle of "It is not possible to have a process done without knowing it". In this direction, the undergraduate education program was shaped according to the main subjects such as construction/project for the final product, materials science and technology, production management and marketing, and was further supported with industrial internships.