Connecting Industrial Engineering, Informatics, Pragmatic Knowledge Management Systems

Industrial engineering and informatics are closely related disciplines, but they begin from different perspectives. Industrial engineering starts with work, processes, systems, and optimization. Informatics starts with information, knowledge, people, and digital systems. A useful way to think about their relationship is: Industrial engineering optimizes how work flows. Informatics optimizes how information flows.

Industrial engineering designs how people work. Informatics designs how people interact with information. Pragmatic Knowledge Management Systems design how people create, share, preserve, and evolve knowledge.

Industrial engineering is concerned with improving work systems. Informatics is concerned with improving information systems. A Pragmatic Knowledge Management System is an enabling knowledge infrastructure that helps practitioners in both disciplines capture, organize, connect, preserve, and reuse knowledge generated through their activities.

Industrial Engineering

Industrial engineering is an engineering profession that is concerned with the optimization of complex processes, systems, or organizations by developing, improving and implementing integrated systems of people, money, knowledge, processes, information and equipment. Industrial engineering is central to manufacturing operations.

Industrial engineers like Frederick Taylor who was the first person in recorded history who deemed work deserving of systematic observation and study, Frank and Lillian Gilbreth who pioneered time and motion studies, W. Edward Deming who was the father of lean manufacturing. These ideas are now packaged as "Lean manufacturing", "Six sigma", "Lean Six Sigma", "Total Quality Management", "Agile". While many of these ideas originated with manufacturing of physical products, they are just as applicable to things like the manufacturing of information and the performance of services.

And so, industrial engineering originated in manufacturing, but today it is the discipline of designing, analyzing, and improving systems of work. In many modern organizations, industrial engineering, informatics, and knowledge management increasingly work together to improve how work, information, and knowledge flow through the enterprise.

Today, industrial engineering is often described as the engineering of systems and processes, regardless of whether anything physical is being manufactured. Industrial engineers work in hospitals to help optimize emergency department patient flow. Likewise, industrial engineering techniques, philosophies, principles, and practices can work for accounting, reporting, auditing, and analysis.

Informatics and Digital Livability

Informatics is the discipline that sits at the intersection of information, people, and technology. Informatics is concerned with the practical application of computational systems to help people create, manage, communicate, and use information effectively. While information technology focuses on building and operating technological systems, informatics focuses on how people interact with those systems and how information can be organized in ways that create meaningful, useful, and productive experiences.

At its core, informatics is about understanding how people will "live" in the digital realm within a particular domain of knowledge. Whether the domain is healthcare, accounting, education, finance, engineering, or government, informatics seeks to ensure that digital environments make sense to the people who use them. Informatics is concerned not only with the processing and management of information, but also with how information is presented, understood, shared, and transformed into knowledge and action.

Organizations use informatics to improve decision-making, optimize business processes, enhance productivity, and create information systems that align with human needs. Informatics bridges the gap between technical capability and practical usefulness, ensuring that technology serves people rather than forcing people to adapt to poorly designed technology.

The Chef Analogy

An analogy can help illustrate the role of informatics.

There is a significant difference between a line cook and a chef. Both can prepare a meal, and both may have access to the same ingredients, recipes, and kitchen equipment. A line cook follows instructions to produce a dish. A chef, however, understands how ingredients, tools, timing, presentation, and the dining experience come together to create something memorable.

In a similar way, information systems can store data, process transactions, and execute predefined functions. Informatics goes further. Much like a chef transforms ingredients into an exceptional dining experience, informatics transforms information, technology, and domain knowledge into a meaningful and successful human experience. The focus is not merely on whether a system works, but on whether it helps people accomplish their goals effectively, efficiently, and confidently.

The Architect Analogy

A second analogy comes from the construction industry.

There is a difference between a framer and an architect. A framer knows how to use a hammer and construct walls according to a blueprint. An architect designs spaces in which people can comfortably live and work. The architect considers where to place doors, windows, hallways, electrical systems, plumbing, lighting, and common areas so that the building functions naturally for its occupants.

Likewise, software developers and technologists may build individual digital components, but informatics focuses on designing the overall environment in which people interact with information. Informatics asks questions such as:

How should information be organized?
How will users navigate the system?
What information is most important for decision-making?
How can complexity be reduced?
How can technology adapt to human behavior rather than forcing humans to adapt to technology?

Just as architecture improves the livability of physical spaces, informatics improves the livability of digital spaces.

Informatics as Digital Architecture

Viewed this way, informatics can be understood as the architecture of the digital world. Information is the raw material, technology provides the infrastructure, and people are the occupants. Informatics designs the relationships among these elements so that digital environments become places where people can learn, make decisions, collaborate, solve problems, and create value.

The ultimate purpose of informatics is not simply to build systems that function, but to build digital environments in which people can thrive. If architecture makes buildings livable, informatics makes the digital world livable.

Technology builds the house; informatics makes it a home.

Pragmatic Systems

A pragmatic system is one of the five types of systems. A pragmatic system is a system that connect semantic meaning to real‑world state, evidence, operations, and constraints. Pragmatic systems ground semantic meaning in real‑world state, evidence, and operational change; they add truth‑in‑time, verification, and actionable reality to the semantic layer.

While industrial engineering relates to work systems and how work should be organized and optimized; and informatics relates to information systems and how information should be organized and used; pragmatic systems relate to accumulated knowledge and how that knowledge should be created, connected, retained, and reused.

Connecting These Ideas

Industrial engineering focuses on the design and improvement of systems of work. Informatics improves the information environment supporting that process, the "digital livability" of the information used by the system. A pragmatic system treats knowledge as a living ecosystem rather than a collection of documents. A pragmatic information system operationalizes the information. A pragmatic system is where digital concepts become operational, verifiable, and grounded in the real world.

* * *

Industrial engineering focuses on the design, analysis, and improvement of systems of work. It seeks to optimize how people, processes, and resources work together to create value.

Informatics focuses on the information environment that supports those work systems. It improves the "digital livability" of information by ensuring that information is organized, accessible, meaningful, and useful to the people who depend upon it.

A Pragmatic Knowledge Management System (PKMS) treats knowledge as a living ecosystem rather than a collection of documents. It captures, connects, contextualizes, and preserves knowledge so that it can be continuously reused, refined, and shared.

A pragmatic system operationalizes knowledge by connecting digital representations to real-world activities, decisions, and outcomes. It is the environment where digital concepts become actionable, verifiable, and grounded in reality.

Accounting & Audit By Design Framework

Accounting & Audit by Design (A&AD) Framework contemplates connecting industrial engineering, informatics, pragmatic systems, and the needs of accounting, reporting, audit, and analysis by design. The connected whole is a holistic system by design. The ability to circumvent the system is significantly reduced. The ability to audit the system is built into the foundation of the system. Provenance, traceability, and trackability are just there; by design. Stated succinctly:

Industrial engineering improves how people work, informatics improves how people use information, and pragmatic knowledge systems ensure that knowledge can be trusted, reused, and connected to real-world outcomes. When these complementary disciplines are applied to accounting, reporting, auditing, and analysis through the Accounting & Audit by Design (A&AD) Framework, they enable the creation of systems in which auditability, traceability, provenance, and process quality are not merely controls added after implementation, but are rather intrinsic characteristics consciously embedded within the architecture itself. As a result, these qualities become inherent by design, engineered into the system from the outset and sustained throughout its operation. Not added as an afterthought.

With this approach, the number of shadow spreadsheets will be reduces and preferably would be reduced to ZERO if possible and the number of industrial processes would increase. Processes would be fixed rather than defects remediated or the consequences of defects dealt with. Current defect rates of around sigma level 3 or 4 would be reduced to sigma level 6. (That is a reduction from somewhere between 6,210 to 66,807 defects per million opportunities to 3.4 defects per million opportunities.)

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