What are some real life career paths that I can take if I obtain a degree in Industial Engineering.

Ashton,
The wouldn't doubt what Wael said - heck, he has an actual source to share the info. But, I did want to take a minute to try and answer your question.

I graduated as an Industrial Engineer, but I have to say, very few people actually hold the title of "Industrial Engineer" that graduate with the degree. I've been seeing more and more of them in demand in the business world doing process improvement work. For example, I work for Southern California Edison (electric utility), and have applied my process improvement & systems-thinking skill sets here quite a bit - very much in demand. My title though is "Senior Business Analyst". I also know of Project Managers & quite a few managers at the company with IE backgrounds who focused in on optimization work in the office (heavy excel modeling). Within the business world, I see a lot of demand in reporting analytics and actually in consulting for process improvement (I know a recent USC graduate that was an IE and now working for the Boston Consulting Group). You can take a look at my LinkedIn for a little more info on what my career path has been so far, but what I was told once is that Industrial Engineering is the engineering major that's on the fast-track to management. Since IEs are focused in on the thinking about system-wide solutions to make things more efficient, they are very much in demand outside of the traditional manufacturing & logistics worlds. Examples of that career path are folks who are Production Managers in manufacturing plants (I know someone who works at Naked Juice with that title that was an IE) or logistics companies (I also know a Supervisor at UPS that was an IE). There's also been more and more demand for IE types of folks in the healthcare system with finding inefficiencies - Kaiser is pretty big on hiring IEs, and other companies are catching on, as well.

Anyways, hopefully that gives you a start in understanding the potential of the degree. The thing I've loved about it is because it's so broad, and having "engineer" on your resume does certainly help in the business world.

Inustrial engineering is one of the highest paying engineering degrees. You can work at almost any company. The only thing you need to think of is what industry you want to work in.

I don't recommend a career in industrial engineering for one reason. The outlook for growth 1%! In other wards, it is going to be challenging to find a job when graduate. If your heart isn't completely set on industrial engineering, I advise to find some different career.

http://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/industrial-engineers.htm