Industrial engineering is a branch of engineering that concerns the development, improvement, implementation and evaluation of integrated systems of people, money, knowledge, information, equipment, energy, material and process. In lean manufacturing systems, Industrial engineers work to eliminate wastes of time, money, materials, energy, and other resources.

Industrial engineering is also known as operations management, systems engineering, production engineering, manufacturing engineering. In healthcare, industrial engineers are more commonly known as management engineers or health systems engineers.

Where as most engineering disciplines apply skills to very specific areas, industrial engineering is applied in virtually every industry. Examples of where industrial engineering might be used include shortening lines (or queues) at a theme park, streamlining an operating room, distributing products worldwide (also referred to as Supply Chain Management), and manufacturing cheaper and more reliable automobiles.

The name "industrial engineer" can be misleading. While the term originally applied to manufacturing, it has grown to encompass services and other industries as well. Similar fields include Operations Research, Management Science, Financial Engineering, Supply Chain, Manufacturing Engineering.