Industrial Engineering is essentially a philosophy with a materialistic and a human aspect.
The materialistic aspect is based on the conception that business of enterprise can only succeed if it renders a real service. To serve people, then, industry must make products that people can buy. The only way a service or product can get wide distribution is by making its cost low. The main obstacle to low cost is waste — waste of time, of material, of energy.
If methods of tasks are not evaluated for the time taken, some or many tasks may use the complicated and time consuming elements. The basic aim of the Industrial Engineer is that of saving time. Eor this, he uses the strictly objective approach compounded of two elements which are ANALYSIS and MEASUREMENT respectively. They bring imagination, discovery and ingenuity down to rational terms.
Through ANALYSIS of tasks, a vast lot of isolated and apparently unrelated pieces of information and phenomena are uncovered within the task as well across tasks. These are brought together, sorted out and compared. Theories are evolved regarding elements common across tasks and further observations are made until some practical solution that takes less time is found. Typical of the analytical phase are the several techniques of method study ranging from the flow process chart to the micro-motion study. Here, analysis is used to eliminate waste of time and effort. The job is simplified: back-tracking is avoided, unnecessary handling is eliminated, short cuts are taken, the design is changed to save material.
Using MEASUREMENT procedures are evaluated in terms of time and cost. Time study is industry's tool for measuring the productive capacity of its human and mechanical resources. It is the measurement of work and one of its end result is a number which expresses the time that should normally be taken to complete a given task. Time study is concerned with the question: "How long should it take ?" along with "How long does it take ?" That is a vastly different matter which calls for skill, judgment and careful training. Not only the time taken has to be recorded accurately but the effect of working pace on that time has to be appreciated. This is called "performance rating".
We might say that through his techniques, the Industrial Engineer creates time. In the present instance, the "fait accompli" is the steady increase in the productivity per individual and per unit of resource in industry. where. It is safe to say, on the basis of all available data, that production per average individual is increasing at the rate of about 3 percent per year. It is what makes possible the shorter hours and higher wages.
Where will it lead us, no one can foresee or dares to foretell. Yet, an article published in "Business Week" June 1952, is quite revealing. It deals with the astounding results and implications of farm mechanization. In the span of a generation, over two million men have been dropped from farm employment and, yet with almost no increase in tilled acreage, our (North America's) farm output has increased by 40% and our output per worker by 60%. Since 1920, the output per man hour has doubled.
The Industrial Engineer, His Philosophy and the Scope of His Activities
Walter Delaney
Relations Industrielles / Industrial Relations, Vol. 9, No. 2 (MARCH 1954), pp. 149-155 (7 pages)
https://www.jstor.org/stable/23066854
DELANEY, Walter, B.A., Waste and Humidity Controller, Dominion Textile Company Lim
No comments:
Post a Comment