Estimation of the ‘Know-how’ level in industrial engineering students and professionals

Abstract

This document characterizes the level of performance for the actions of the 12 units of competence and the 40 Elements of Competence that constitute the proposed competences for the industrial engineer in Colombia at the level of recent graduates, and graduates with experience greater than 36 months. The Competence Map for the Industrial Engineer was defined by the Colombian Association of Engineering Faculties, ACOFI, in 2020; such competencies are defined only for some of ACOFI's 18 engineering branches.

The description of the competencies in the competency units is done by the development of actions on specific objects. Therefore, doing, that is, verbs, are directly associated with the definition of competence based on knowing how; and objects with context the 12 competency units describe actions such as “manage”, “research”, “direct”, “create” and “manage”. The 41 Elements of Competence communicate verbs or actions such as “Formulate”, “Evaluate”, “Manage”, among others These actions are executed on specific objects of industrial engineering, among others: Projects, people, commercial activity, finances, productive systems, leadership, logistics, processes, productivity, quality, productive systems, technology and problem definition and research

Therefore, to estimate the level of competence proposed in the guidelines, a multiplicative model is assumed in which competence is equal to the product of the action and the context. The interest of this text is to estimate the level of actions or verbs that are taken from the results obtained for a presample in 8 Higher Education Institutions, IES, of Higher Education Institutions, IES, participants in the Network of Deans and Directors of Industrial Engineering, REDIN, from the Center Node, within the Colombian Association of Engineering Faculties, ACOFI.  This measurement is made using the Psigma Corp. Psychometric test battery, known as SDX, which estimates the level for 29 competencies associated with the verbs identified in the actions of the Competency Units and the competency elements.