Monday, October 18, 2021

Supply Chain Industrial Engineering Process Charts

 

Lesson 169 of  Industrial Engineering ONLINE Course.

Lesson 168 Supply Chain Industrial Engineering


Supply Chain Industrial Engineering


Industrial engineering has to be extended to the supply chain. There can be supply industrial engineering committee at the supply chain level to extend IE and promote IE in the entire supply chain. Each supplier's process can be studied along with the study of the process of the part or assembly into which the input from the supplier is flowing.


When studying a Tier-1 supplier process, if it is decided to extent IE to Tier-2 supplier, it can be extended similarly with the cooperation of IE persons from Tier-1 supplier.


Operation process chart for material input

Industrial engineers can prepare operation process chart for material input to part operation process chart and do productivity improvement for integrated supply chain - internal processing. - Narayana Rao





The present format of the operation process chart requires a horizontal line to indicate material part input. It can be used now to document the operations and inspections in the supplier's plant.

For each operation, the details of the machine/equipment used, the cutting tools and accessories used, the speeds and feeds (depth of cut), the operators used, the time taken by the equipment and men have to be recorded. Actually process chart is a high-level chart that makes sure that every operation and inspection done are recorded first so that in IE evaluation no operation or inspection is missed. The detailed investigation of the operation is based on operation analysis sheet (Maynard's form). In the case of work of operators, for each operator, two-handed process chart or operator process chart needs to be created. If the operator is moving around, then the movement needs to be recorded or tracked using flow diagram and string diagram etc. In industrial engineering work, improvements need to be carried at the plant level or even enterprise level down to the element level like changing a cutting tool or even a cutting tool holder and changing depth of cut. So information required for the analysis at a particular level has to be captured by using the right charting or mapping tool or data form.

Flow process chart for material/part input


Industrial engineers can prepare flow process chart for material/part input to part/assembly operation process chart and do productivity improvement for integrated supply chain - internal processing. Similar to the operation process chart, a horizontal line can show the flow process chart of the supplier's plant.



 

Do improvement of processing operations and inspections first. Develop the proposed operation process chart. Get it approved. Then create a possible flow chart based on existing transport arrangements. Subject it to process and operation improvement. Create a new better proposed flow chart. Get it approved. New equipment decisions are plant level or factory decisions. To take them, there is a necessity to consolidate improvement ideas from multiple processes and operations, so there is bound to be a lag between process improvements and equipment improvements. Each time, a new equipment is bought, there will be a necessity to reengineer the processes. Reengineering project can be given to the basic engineering groups. Industrial engineers also receive training in reengineered processes to carry out the continuous improvement.


It will be interesting to start the flow process chart with the material or part in the stores. The amount of time the material or part is in the store needs to be recorded in this operation or activity. Then a transport operation will be there to move the material to the shop floor. There may be temporary delay. Then the part is moved to the work bench. A processing operation is done and it may be self inspected. It can be inspected by the supervisor of the shop. Once again there can be temporary delay. Each operation of different categories needs to be recorded in the flow process chart. The details of the operation, along with machine/equipment/accessories used and operators employed have to be recorded in the operation level charts and analysis sheets.


Industrial Engineering Methods and Techniques Relevant for Supply Chain Productivity Improvement

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Supply Chain Industrial Engineering

8 Apr 2013

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSEWec1GrIQ

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Automation of Operations in Flow Process Chart







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Supply Chain Engineering - Supply Chain Industrial Engineering - Supply Chain Management


Supply Chain Engineering - Georgia Tech View

(Content accessed on 5 September 2020 - https://www.isye.gatech.edu/research/isye-fields-of-specialization/supply-chain-engineering )

A supply chain is a set of organizations that work together to design, produce, and deliver a product or service to a market, beginning with procurement of raw materials and ending with distribution of finished products or services to end-users or consumers.

The effectiveness and efficiency of supply chains are to planned in supply chain design managed by supply chain management team and process.

Research is needed to support supply chain activities:

Designing, synchronizing, and optimizing capacities and flows in global supply chains.

Integrating technologies,  processes, and people  to achieve supply chain objectives.

Improving technologies,  processes, and training people.

Developing competitive advantage from outsourcing and collaboration.

Providing supply chain oversight and control.

For engineering departments special interest include manufacturing, warehousing, and freight transportation.


Research Areas in Supply Chain Engineering

In the manufacturing area, concepts and tools for the analysis and design of highly capitalized factories, factory system modeling, virtual prototyping of manufacturing and assembly processes,  and designing workflow in operations.

In the freight transport area, planning for  freight transportation capacity to support global and national trade, creating capacities to manufacture and maintain transport equipment,  assessing and mitigating the impact of variability and uncertainty in freight transportation systems, optimizing freight movements across multiple lanes and modes, and effectively interfacing between modes of transportation at ports, rail yards, and trucking terminals are important research areas.

In the warehousing area, the research areas are the design and layout of distribution centers and cross-docks, order picking processes and algorithms, and distribution network configuration.

In areas of data based algorithms, research is needed in  practical solutions for large-scale scheduling problems, scheduling scarce resources under complex constraints, addressing practical scheduling issues including variability and uncertainty, and integrating collaboration and optimization in developing schedules.


(C) Narayana Rao K.V.S.S.  2020

5 September 2020


Updated on 19.10.2021

1 comment:

  1. The process was discussed in a training program on 4th Septembere 2020 and there is support for the idea that IEs have to extend their effort to supply chain by studying the process of each supplier.

    ReplyDelete