Don stresses industrial engineers’ role in solving decision problems

A Professor of Industrial and Production Engineering in the Department of Mechanical
Engineering, Lagos State University, Prof Elkanah Oyetunji, has stressed the importance of
industrial engineers in decision making.
Oyetunji, who delivered LASU’s 55th Inaugural Lecture entitled, “Decision Problems: Of the Analyst and the Decision Maker,” stressed that industrial engineers used Mathematics
and science to develop economic solutions to technical problems, while using scientific
advancements to create commercial applications in order to meet consumer needs.
According to him, decision problems were complex by nature and so a problem would be considered easy to solve if it had a “polynomial time solution” and difficult if it did not. The lecturer acknowledged that the role of effective and efficient decision making in any
organisation could not be overemphasised, as proper decision making helped in utilising the available resources towards achieving the objectives of an organisation.
“Decision making helps an organisation to face and tackle new problems and challenges.
Quick and correct decisions help to solve problems and accept new challenges”, he said. Oyetunji suggested that there should be continuous interactions between the analyst and decision makers as the process ultimately improved the quality of final solution to the decision problem as well as building human metric of participation.
“Focus should be on both effectiveness and efficiency of the decision problem. An efficient
process doesn’t waste any time or resources while an effective process produces a desired effect or contributes to a desired goal,” he said.