The article presents induction heating and its application range, discusses factors significantly affecting the course of an induction heating process and characteristic phenomena such as electromagnetic induction, skin effect and proximity, enumerates the advantages and downsides of modern numerical and experimental methods as well as characterises (giving emphasis to FEM) and compares numerical methods used during designing induction heating systems and devices. The article also contains an overview related to FEM-based commercial software applications used for analysing issues connected with the simultaneous presence of electromagnetic and thermal phenomena.