It has been almost a year since the declaration of COVID-19 as a pandemic and in this challenging time, many businesses are pressured to survive along with the consequences brought by the pandemic.
Having said this, the Industrial Management Engineering Society (IMES), an organization in De La Salle University – Manila formed to unite the different courses studying Industrial Engineering courses, once again held the Industrial Engineering Convention (IECON) online.
This convention is specialized for future Industrial Engineers, providing its participants with various learning opportunities filled with insights and essential information that will maximize their potential as future industry leaders in building and sustaining businesses as we pivot towards the post-pandemic world.
IECON-2021 was held online on May 7-8, 2021 via Facebook Live, where there were 21,588 FB Live Views for Day 1 and 11,574 FB Live Views for Day 2. Participants included students, faculty attendees, and professionals from nationwide and around Southeast Asia. There were also 3,855 Registered Participants who came from 193 different schools and 20 countries namely the Philippines, Pakistan, Tunisia, Jordan, Kuwait, United States, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, Singapore, China, India, South Africa, Bangladesh, Canada, Sri Lanka, Hungary, Colombia, Japan, Qatar, and Germany.
Various distinguished professionals and advocates were featured as speakers for the event. They instilled different learnings to the audience and some takeaways that they have left for their audience were the following:
- [Keynote] Benjie Yap – Chairman and CEO of Unilever
“ When you make decisive actions and ruthless prioritizations and when you care for the people, they care for the business in the end.”
- [Keynote] Vin Perez – COO of Ninja Van
“Some of you may be thinking that oh you need this grade or this line for this resume, but it’s not as simple as that”
- [Main] Patrick Pesengco – Chairman and President of Philippine Vending Group “It’s harder to do it right, than to do it with shortcuts.”
- [Main] Charlie Villasenor – Chairman and CEO of PASIA
“I learned that being able to adapt is one of the strengths of becoming an industrial engineer.”
- [Main] Ramon Jocson – EVP and COO of BPI
“The best enabler for digital transformation in 2020 was not a person but the virus, COVID caused all of this.”
- [Breakout] Karen Perez – Head of HR Center of Excellence & Head of Operations of Shopee
“The Philippine Economy internet economy grew 6% year on year, first to the previous year around 7.5 billion dollars”
- [Breakout] Harold Lim – Team Lead of Konstrukt of Boysen
“Versatility is not getting better at what you do, it’s doing what you’ve never done before and being good at it.”
- [Breakout] Randee Latonio – NBS Business Development Advisor of Shell “I believe that what you’re doing and what you are learning in IE gives you an edge in the business world. I encourage you to use it to contribute value to the society. There’s a saying that goes, Engineers make things, but Industrial Engineers make things better.” I encourage everyone, let’s go, and let’s make things better.”
- [Breakout] Mic Gutierrez – Project Commercialization Manager of Mondelez International
“Don’t just memorize the text, but actually internalize them”
Aside from the distinguished speakers, the event also featured multiple games and gimmicks as asynchronous activities and different participants won various prizes coming from the event’s sponsors and partners. This gauged the participants’ interest and also contributed to a lot of engagement for the event. Overall, IECON 2021 was a combination of having fun yet acquiring in-depth knowledge of how we as individuals can contribute more to society as individuals and as aspiring Industrial Engineers.
To wrap up, this event brought together students and individuals from all around the world who are interested in innovation and progress. This event also instilled hope for advocacies and for start-up businesses even amidst the pandemic. It also explored how Industrial Engineering can be used by several businesses in different industries as the world transitions into the post-pandemic scenario. The project heads, central committee members, and the team behind the event thank everyone for their warm support and commit to continuing to create worthwhile events like this where interaction between people is limitless and the knowledge and understanding imparted are useful not just in the corporate world but also in individual lives.
