Saturday, January 31, 2026

Principles of Machine Utilization Economy - Taylor, Barnes, Maynard, Nakajima, Narayana Rao

 Machine efficiency in industrial plants is poor. Explained well by Harrington Emerson in 1911.

The machine end-efficiency in some plants is not over 4 per cent of the guaranteed capacity. Eight hours out of 24 gives a work time-efficiency of 33 per cent, not running half the time during shop hours gives a shop time-efficiency of 50 per cent; many machines exceed the requirements of the work put to them, as when a big planer is used instead of a shaper, this form of efficiency dropping often to 70 per cent ; and finally, machines are often run so slowly as to show a speed efficiency of only 3.5 per cent. When we reflect that there are other dependent sequences in the material inter-relations, in the work, and in the machine inter-relations, that there are dependent sequences between material and labor and machine, as when unnecessarily hard material lengthens the time of both man and machine, or when defective machine spoils material and wastes workers' time, or when unskilled man spoils material and injures machine — the marvel is not that industrial operations are so inefficient, but that, consider-ing the dependent sequences, they are in each term of the sequence so high*

https://nraoiekc.blogspot.com/2013/10/chapter-8-sixth-principle-reliable.html

You require principles of machine effort utilization. Is it not? But industrial engineering profession ignored machine effort industrial engineering for many many years.

Nakajima with his OEE model brought machine back into the analysis and improvement stream.


Principles of motion economy for human effort industrial engineering. 
Principles of machine utilization economy for machine effort industrial engineering.

Taylor's Industrial Engineering - Machine Utilization Economy 

Principles of Machine Productivity - F.W. Taylor


1. A careful study is to made of the time required to do each of the many elementary operations of machining of components manufactured in the establishment.
2.These elementary operations are then classified, recorded, and indexed, and when work is to be done,  the job is first divided into its elementary operations, the time required to do each elementary operation is found from the records, and the total time for the job is summed up from these data.
3. This method is more effective than the method of estimating the time based on time taken to do whole jobs of similar components.
4. To implement the principles, in the case of work done by metal-cutting tools, such as lathes, planers, boring mills, etc., F.W. Taylor undertook a long and expensive series of experiments  to determine, formulate, and finally practically apply to each machine the law governing the proper cutting speed of tools, namely, the effect on the cutting speed of altering any one of the following variables : the shape of the tool (i.e., lip angle, clearance angle, and the line of the cutting edge), the duration of the cut, the quality or hardness of the metal being cut, the depth of the cut, and the thickness of the feed or shaving.
5. The careful study of the capabilities of the machines and the analysis of the speeds at which they must run is to be made.
6. Defects or shortcoming in machines will be realized when the best methods of cutting metals are determined and the necessary modifications have to be made, if possible. Otherwise, replacement needs to be done at the earliest economic opportunity.
7. Systematization of many small details in the running of the machine shop, such as the care of belting, the proper shape for cutting tools, and the dressing, grinding, and issuing tools, oiling machines, issuing orders for work,  and a host of other minor methods and processes which may waste a machinist's time or machine time.
8. The care of the equipment is to be improved.

Machine Utilization Principle of Industrial Engineering - Prof. Ralph Barnes


1. Few people advocate using human labor to do work that can be done better and cheaper by machines.

2. It is suggested that the best manual method and the best combination of manual and machine method (mechanized) be developed and used as a basis for evaluating a proposed automated process.

(Restated as: Compare best manual method, mechanized method and automated method for each element of an operation and choose the best.)

3. If a large-volume fairly complex job is to be considered, a comparison would be of the estimated cost to do each element of each suboperation manually, or in machanized way, or automatically.

Ralph Barnes is the first PhD in Industrial Engineering. He wrote the popular text, Motion and Time Study.

Industrial engineers have to learn mechanization and automation that is engineering very well and use it in industrial engineering to provide increased support of machines to people to increase their productivity and standard of living.

Machine Work Study to Promote Machine Utilization Economy - Narayana Rao


Machine Work Study was proposed by Narayana Rao to emphasize the need to study the machine and its engineering elements as part of industrial engineering studies. Machine work study is related to the machine or tool and its proper use like motion study is related to the man and his motions to do work with tools or completely with hands. The issues to be covered in machine work study are already structured in books on metal cutting and machine tools. The productivity dimension of the metal cutting theory has to be covered in machine work study and methodology is to be provided for doing machine work study. Operation analysis by Maynard and Stegemerten provides the basic framework for doing machine work study.


Production Equipment Productivity Analysis. 
The choice of the machine.  Replacement analysis.  OEE analysis. Machine Work Study.
Lesson 87 of Industrial Engineering ONLINE Course.


Machine Shop Process Industrial Engineering


Machine Shop Process Industrial Engineering that includes all focus areas industrial engineering is presented in a separate article.

Productivity Science
Productivity Science of Machining - Stephenson - Agapiou
IE Measurements
Process Industrial Engineering - Process Alternatives and Economic Analysis of IE Proposed Alternatives
IEOR - Optimization in Machining Processes
IE Statistics Optimization - Six Sigma Method
Human Effort Engineering in Machine Shop
Applied Industrial Engineering in Machine Shop
https://nraoiekc.blogspot.com/2020/04/machine-shop-process-industrial.html


Improving Machine Capacity Utilization by Hemant Patil
https://www.linkedin.com/in/hemant-patil-industrial-engineer/



Principles of Machine Economy
  • Minimize the machine time in process planning.
  • Identify and minimize machine related losses during operations.

A.    Seven major losses that impede overall equipment efficiency


1 Failure losses (Breakdown) Losses due to failures.
Types of failures include sporadic function-stopping failures, and function-reduction failures in which the function of the equipment drops below normal levels.

2 Set up and adjustment losses
Stoppage losses that accompany set-up changeovers

3 Cutting blade change losses
Stoppage losses caused by changing the cutting blade due to breakage, or caused by changing the cutting blade when the service life of the grinding stone, cutter or bite has been reached.

4 Start-up losses
When starting production, the losses that arise until equipment start-up, running-in and production processing conditions stabilize.

5 Minor stoppage and idling losses

Losses that occur when the equipment temporarily stops or idles due to sensor actuation or jamming of the work. The equipment will operate normally through simple measures (removal of the work and resetting).

6 Speed losses
 Losses due to actual operating speed falling below the designed speed of the equipment.

7 Defect & rework loss
Losses due to defects & reworking

B. Losses that impede equipment loading time


8 Shutdown (SD) losses
Losses that arise from planned equipment stoppages at the production planning level in order to perform periodic inspection and statutory inspection

C. Five Major losses that impede workers efficiency


9 Management losses Waiting losses that are caused by management, such as waiting for materials, waiting for a dolly, waiting for tools, waiting for instructions etc.

10 Motion losses
Man-hour losses arising from differences in skills involved in etc.

11 Line organization losses
 Idle time losses when waiting for multiple processes or multiple platforms.

12 Distribution losses
 Distribution man-hour losses due to transport of materials, products (processed products) and dollies.

13 Measurement and adjustment losses
Work losses from frequent measurement and adjustment in order to prevent the occurrence and outflow of quality defects.

D Three major losses that impede efficient use of production subsidiary resources

                    
14 Energy losses        
 Losses due to ineffective utilization of input energy (electric, gas, fuel oil, etc) in processing.

15 Die, jig and tool losses
Financial losses (expenses incurred in production, regarding renitriding, etc.) which occur with production or
repairs of dies, jigs and tolls due to aging beyond services life or breakage.

16 Yield losses
 Material losses due to differences in the weight of the input materials and the weight of the quality products


Improvement Techniques
Source: D matrix (matrix of causal losses and their improvement techniques)
H. Yamashina & T. Kubo (2002) Manufacturing cost deployment, International
Journal of Production Research, 40:16, 4077-4091, DOI: 10.1080/00207540210157178



Individual approaches/techniques

1. Breakdown analysis
2. Setup time reduction
3. Tool life improvement
4. Startup time reduction
5. PM analysis
6. Cycle time reduction
7. Cp, Cpk improvement
8. N.V.A.A.
9. Operation method
10. Layout improvement
11. Inspection method
12. Yield improvement
13. Material saving method
14. Energy saving method


Systematic approaches

1. Operative maintenance
2. Preventive maintenance
3. Predictive maintenance
4. Quality maintenance
5. Quality assurance
6. Education and training


Improvement techniques for losses


1. Breakdown analysis

In the first step, maintenance by production operators can be implemented to prevent the forced deterioration of each facility component. 

In the second step, individual approaches such as processing point analysis and so on are adopted to eliminate causes of the breakdown. 

In the third step, preventive maintenance is implemented to do planned maintenance of facility components regularly. 

Finally, predictive maintenance is implemented using various kinds of diagnostic technology in the forth step. 

In addition to these steps, breakdown and repair rates are further reduced through improvement in skill of maintenance workers, etc. 

There are several steps and approaches in each of the improvement of activities. Therefore, the most appropriate technique corresponding to the condition of each facility must be selected. 

Improvement activities for losses associated with operators. Losses of man-hours are reduced through, for example, confirmations in operating methods, improvements in plant layouts (to reduce movementof operators), automation with the introduction of robots, etc.

Improvement activities for losses associated with material, etc. In reducing yield loss, for example, activities such as design changes increase the yield ratio. One example of improvement approaches in
indirect material loss is to reduce unit prices by decreasing the consumption of machining lubricant and other indirect materials. 

In case of improvements about die and jig losses, cost reduction is possible by, for example, extending their lives through confirming their specifications. 

Examples of improvement approaches in energy loss are to increase energy efficiency by reducing the down time of facilities, to decrease the unit price, etc.

More detailed descriptions of improvement techniques for the other losses are given in K. Okazaki (1996).


Focused Equipment Improvement for TPM Teams

Japan Institute of Plant Maintenance
Routledge, 13-Nov-2017 - Business & Economics - 142 pages

As distinguished from autonomous maintenance, where the main goal is to restore basic conditions of cleanliness, lubrication, and proper fastening to prevent accelerated deterioration, FEI looks at specific losses or design weaknesses that everyone previously thought they just had to live with. Once your TPM operator teams are progressing with their daily autonomous maintenance activities, you will want to take the next advanced step in TPM training with this book.
Key Features:

  • A simple and powerful introduction to P-M Analysis
  • hints for unraveling breakdown analysis
  • numerous ideas for simplifying and shortening setups
  • ideas for eliminating minor stoppages and speed losses
  • basic concepts of building quality into processing
  • real-life examples from a leading Japanese tool company
  • Educate and empower all your workers to support your TPM improvement activities. 

This book discusses in detail 5 of the 6 big losses discussed in TPM literature.


TPM: Collected Practices and Cases

Productivity Press
CRC Press, 13-Feb-2019 - Business & Economics - 140 pages

Equipment downtime can bring a lean manufacturing operation to a complete standstill. Total productive maintenance (TPM) is such a fundamental part of becoming lean because a machine failure at one step of a continuous flow process will halt all the steps before and after it.


16 Big Losses in Production and Ways to Minimize Them
https://www.olanabconsults.com/articles/16-big-losses-in-production-and-how-to-prevent-them




Machine Utilization Principles - Nakajima

Total Productive Maintenance - Nakajima

(Note in the Training Material for the Course Conducted by me in 1994 for ONGC in the subject of Managerial Economics and Costing for Engineers

The Definition of TPM

The Spread of TPM in Japan

How do TPM and TQC Differ?


The Basic Concepts of TPM

1. Maximizing Overall Equipment Effectiveness

2. Autonomous Maintenance
In factory automation, production workers do not have to operate machines themselves. These operators asked to oversee machines can do inspection of the automatic machines every day or week as per a plan and do routine maintenance. Specialist maintenance persons can act as equipment doctors, who periodically do expert diagnostic checks and do the required maintenance.

3. Small Group Activities in Maintenance
Similar to quality circles, zero defect movement groups and Jishu Kanri.

Program for Evolving TPM

1. Five Activities - Pillars

2.Twelve Steps to Evolve TPM


Maximizing Overall Equipment Effectiveness

Eliminating Six Big Losses

Autonomous Maintenance

Small Group Activities in Maintenance

Education and Training for Evolving TPM

‘Jishu Kanri’ activities in the Japanese steel industry Small group activities being promoted by the industry as a whole
HIDEO SUGISAWA &KAZUO HIROSE
International Journal of Production Research, Volume 15, 1977 - Issue 6, Pages 523-538
The group activities called ‘ Jishu Kanri ’ by foremen and workers in the forefront of production has been actively promoted in the Japanese Steel Industry by establishing a committee for ’ Jishu Kanri’ activities in the Japan Iron and Steel Federation, with the positive cooperation of its member companies. Nearly 8 years have elapsed since the establishment of this committee, and during this period the ability and skill of the group leaders and members in managing group activities and their awareness of problems and solutions have been greatly improved, thereby contributing much to the improvement of quality, attainment of production targets, reduction in the production costs, and improvement of safety.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00207547708943147?journalCode=tprs20

The Japan Iron & Steel Federation adopted the name "Jishu-Kanri GK) Activities" to generalize the uniqueness of small group activities in this industry. JK activities are defined as "continuous group activities in which individual workers voluntarily organize small groups, select leaders from among themselves, hold discussions on an equal footing, and with their leaders as the nuclei, take up problems at the workshop, set goals for the solution of the problems, and make efforts to achieve the goals with participation by everyone".

Workers' voluntary problem solving activities cover a wide range such as product quality enhancement, efficiency improvement, cost reduction, promoting safety at the workshop, and others. In 1983, ensuring work safety was the top of activity (27.4%). About 90% of the activities in 1993 related to four areas: 
efficiency improvement (30.8%), cost reduction (24.6%), ensuring work safety (19.6%) and product quality enhancement (14.6%).
Innovation and Jishu Kanri Activities in the Japanese Steel Industry,
YONEYAMA, Kikuji,
ECONOMIC JOURNAL OF HOKKAIDO UNIVERSITY, 24, 25-58
1995
Doc URL:   http://hdl.handle.net/2115/30527

jishu 自主, じしゅ

自 oneself
主 master, 

Jishu  - mean by himself as per his decision

Jishu kanri is managing by himself, or his decisions
https://nihongomaster.com/japanese/dictionary/word/30338/jishu#:~:text=lord%2C%20chief%2C%20master%2C%20main%20thing%2C%20principal


Hoshin Kanri

Hoshin means direction and Kanri means management in Japanese.
https://kanbanize.com/lean-management/hoshin-kanri/what-is-hoshin-kanri


https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/1179/1/012089

https://books.google.co.in/books?id=bkhKaEspqaEC




Original knol - http://knol.google.com/k/narayana-rao/ manufacturing-system-losses-idenfied-in/  2utb2lsm2k7a/ 3211



Updated on 31.1.2026, 16.10.2025, 6.5.2022,  10 Feb 2021, 24 August 2019, 20 April 2012
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Chapter 8 THE SIXTH PRINCIPLE: RELIABLE, IMMEDIATE, ADEQUATE, AND PERMANENT RECORDS - Harrington Emerson


In this age of data science and big data analytics, industrial engineers have to know that their early scholars promoted use of data for decision making through records maintained over large number of years.  Taylor's study of belt designs was based on years of data accumulated on the consumption of belts and the number of times belts were to be tightened and replaced. Harrington Emerson wrote a full chapter of the topic of maintaining records.

Important Points in the Chapter

The object of records is to increase the scope and number of warnings, to give us more information than is usually received immediately through our senses.

The object of records is to annihilate time.  To bring back the past, to look into the future, to annihilate space, to condense a whole rail-road system into a single line, to magnify the thousandth part of an inch to foot-rule measurement, to gauge the velocity of a distant star by the shifting of the lines in the spectroscope, to annihilate temperature by enabling us to read the millionth of degree or the 10,000-degree difference between moon and sun heat.

Records are anything that give information. Men have always felt the need of records, but they have not always known what they wanted nor how to secure them. In the great industrial plants one knows not whether to marvel most at the absence of reliable, immediate, and accurate records, or at the superabundance of permanent records, collected with painstaking and at great expense, but neither reliable, immediate, nor adequate.

Cost records on the other, come records of efficiency, and these are what we particularly need in the present phase of industrial life. We have not yet learned to use to any great extent the conception of efficiency. 

One of the tasks of modern scientific management, of efficiency and standard-practice engineering —two names for the same ideals — is to convert efficiency records into cost records, since the language of costs is understood by all, the language of efficiency only by the few. It is, of course, generally true that costs will decline as efficiency increases, but this is not always so.

The machine end-efficiency in some plants is not over 4 per cent of the guaranteed capacity.

Chapter VIII THE SIXTH PRINCIPLE: RELIABLE, IMMEDIATE, ADEQUATE, AND PERMANENT RECORDS

(Harrington Emerson - The Twelve Principles of Efficiency)

WHEN a child touches the red-hot end of a poker, the information, advice, notice, record is reliable and lasting, also immediate and adequate. The scar is a perennial reminder of the mistake. Many of Nature's warnings are reliable, immediate, and permanent; they reach us and other animals through the senses — we hear, we see, we smell, we taste, above all principally, we feel. There are two nerves from the brain to the eyes, two to the ears, two to the nose, two to the palate; there are several hundred between body surface and brain. Very few people allow themselves to be burned, because the penalty is reliable, immediate, and adequate; but they are not as shy about more deadly disease germs (probably a thousand people die of tuberculosis for one who is burned to death) because the result is not reliable nor immediate.

The object of records is to increase the scope and number of warnings, to give us more information than is usually received immediately through our senses. A steam boiler with water in it, a fire under it, and all outlets closed, is more dangerous than a hot poker. There is very little to indicate the imminence of disaster. It is too hot to touch with the hand, although it is conceivable that a spot in it might be so insulated as to permit the engineer to tell by feeling whether it was becoming too warm. A thermometer would give a better record; but usually there are three recording instruments, each reliable and immediate, one of them in addition adequate. The engineer watches his pressure gauge, he watches his water-level glass, and the safety valve will pop even if he has fallen asleep. It is because of these three devices, one of which is independent of the man, that there are so few boiler explosions. All around us are many natural forms of advice, of records — the word is throughout used in its largest sense.

The object of records is to annihilate time.  To bring back the past, to look into the future, to annihilate space, to condense a whole rail-road system into a single line, to magnify the thousandth part of an inch to foot-rule measurement, to gauge the velocity of a distant star by the shifting of the lines in the spectroscope, to annihilate temperature by enabling us to read the millionth of degree or the 10,000-degree difference between moon and sun heat.

Animals make and use records, reach out to each other through time and space; and the naive surprise of the doe when the stag appears does as much credit to her modesty as the trail of musk left in her footsteps along many miles and for many days does credit to her involuntary common sense. Man alone reaches out to man through millenniums; and the pictures carved in stone, the hieroglyphics pressed in brick or cut in granite, tell us more about the intimate lives and philosophies of the Hittites, of the Egyptians, than we know of our own immediate ancestors, the Germans or the Gauls —than we know of our immediate neighbors, the Indians. Pictures and writing were a great invention; the reducing of music to written form so it could be reproduced was even more marvelous, since through the eye we recreate for the ears, thus bridging the gap between the senses. The perpetuation of sound through ages in the phonograph disk, the perpetuation of movement on a long film, these are part of man's triumph through records. The phonograph disk is, next to the brain, the most marvelous, if not the most useful, record man possesses, since all the throbs, moans, triumphs, all the nuances of a hundred instruments and of a hundred voices, pulsations of the air, are recorded by the needle point in a microscopic line; and that line, that perfect record, gives us again the same air pulsations, the same great instrumental and vocal chorus.

Records are anything that give information. Men have always felt the need of records, but they have not always known what they wanted nor how to secure them. In the great industrial plants one knows not whether to marvel most at the absence of reliable, immediate, and accurate records, or at the superabundance of permanent records, collected with painstaking and at great expense, but neither reliable, immediate, nor adequate. Even if the latter have all these qualities, there is often great duplication, and as a consequence we find an immense amount of accumulation of very little value, which has cost far more than it need. An example of duplication may be found in the coal records for locomotives. Expenses of operating locomotives are generally recorded per mile, but suddenly a parallel set will crop up showing miles run per ton of coal. It has not been unusual in a great corporation's records to find a great variety of monthly tabulations, and when inquiry is made it is finally unravelled that twenty years before some president wanted a certain set of records, that his successor wanted a different set, which were started in parallel, that a third and fourth incumbent added their requests, but the old tabulations continue to be made and painstaking clerks work their monotonous lives away in neat compilation that no one has looked at, much less used, for a decade.

When the tramp piled and repiled the same cord of wood first on one side of the yard, then on the other, he was working efficiently but to no purpose; and having the soul of an artist he finally rebelled.

A clerical force may be hard at work, but it may accomplish very little and in the larger acceptance of the word it is inefficient, even as a hard-working steam engine using 50 pounds of steam per horse-power hour is inefficient in spite of its diligent consumption of coal.

There are records of all kinds, many of them essential to our continued existence. There are in a much more limited way records of cost; and between the two extremes of universal records (as the swing of the earth in its sea-sons or the slow aging of every living and inanimate thing) on the one side, and cost records on the other, come records of efficiency, and these are what we particularly need in the present phase of industrial life. We have not yet learned to use to any great extent the conception of efficiency. We are interested in what eggs cost per dozen, not in the weight of each egg; we ask the price of coal per ton, but rarely know whether it contains 10,000 or 15,000 heat units per pound; we violently resist a demand for a 10 per cent increase in wages, but we tolerate a 50 per cent inefficiency in the worker. Not one in ten thousand knows even approximately the cost of food. Its price is known, but not its value, and if a curve of food values per pound should be drawn, and above each item its price, the line would look like the record of the seismograph during an earthquake, or the record of a magnetic needle during an eruption on the sun.

The whole United States was frantic in 1896 over the money question, and not one in a thousand of the gold advocates knew that owing to violent fluctuations in supply and use gold had varied in value more than any other staple, not from hour to hour, as gold bonds and gold stocks fluctuate in value on the stock exchange, but from decade to decade. One of the tasks of modern scientific management, of efficiency and standard-practice engineering —two names for the same ideals — is to convert efficiency records into cost records, since the language of costs is understood by all, the language of efficiency only by the few. It is, of course, generally true that costs will decline as efficiency increases, but this is not always so.

A jeweller may work with the same efficiency setting on one day a $2,500 diamond in a gold stickpin and the next day setting a $0.25 bit of glass in a brass pin. Costs have varied, but not efficiency. A Japanese miner may work for $0.20 a day and an Alaskan miner for $15.00 a day. Each may work with equal efficiency, but the cost is very different. On the other hand, a farmer, from the same field, planted to the same crop, plowed by the same man, team, and plow, raises increasing crops of the same grain ; but wages, land values, and the price of horse feed might also increase so that decreased cost will not always directly flow from increased efficiency.

In the refinement essential for the control of modern operations, it becomes increasingly necessary to state efficiencies even if we talk costs.

Efficiency of Labor and Oost of Locomotive Bepaftn.
1905 1906 1907 1908 1909

_______ __________ . •



As a contribution to the solution of this problem a universal formula of cost and efficiency has been evolved which has the further advantage of showing what records are really essential and necessary, what form they ought to take and what records are useless, confusing, and to be omitted. All the necessary reliable, immediate, adequate, and permanent records can be obtained and maintained for less expense than is usually incurred for misleading, delayed, inefficient, and ephemeral records.

The costs of modern operations consist of three elements. For instance, in a recent year it may have cost to operate all the railroads of the United States approximately:

For materials $ 524,000,000

For personal services 1,021,000,000

For interest, depreciation, and other cap-
ital charges 1,210,000,000

$2,755,000,000

Omitting millions, we can set up the formula :

Total cost = Material + Per. service + Invest, charges

2,755 = 524 + 1,021 + 1,210
C (actual) =M (actual) + S (actual) + I (actual)

Let us assume that extended investigations show very inefficient use of materials, very in-efficient use of personal services and also over-equipment, and that from a practical point of view it might be possible to accomplish the same general result with $370 of materials, $780 of personal service, and $600 of invest-ment charges. 41 The formula of standard cost then becomes:

* These figures are used only for illustration, not as the expres-sion of a conviction.
C M S I

(standard) = (standard) + (standard) 4- (standard)
$1,750 = $370 + $780 + $600

The efficiency of the whole operation is :

C stan dard $1,750 - r . _ x _ „ .

C actual 2755 =e>3,5 P er cent.=Total efficiency=E

The relation of standard cost to actual cost gives the efficiency. This can be applied to each
sub-part >:

Material cost standard $370 Material

Material cost actual $524 =70 - 6 %= efficiency

Labor cost standar d ___ $780 -$ 4 <* _ Service

Labor cost actual $l,02i " efficiency

Investment cost standard _ $600 =49 6r = Investment
Investment cost actual $1,210 ' efficiency.

Actual costs can next be stated in terms of standard cost and of efficiency: —

Total actual cost^ ^ 1 s £ ndard cost = gML° =$2 7

Total efficiency 63.5 * z >'°&

Total Standard cost Standard cost Standard cost

actual s of material . of service . of investment

cost Material efficy."'" Service efficy 'Invest, efficy.

Total actual cos^+^+g =f 2>766





If we know in advance the standard or theoretical costs, if we know the current efficiencies, we can predetermine actual costs. What we all desire is to make the industrial machine as efficient as possible, to bring efficiencies up to 100 per cent, and when we do this actual costs will be the same as theoretical costs. We must first attack the problem theoretically. We must have standards and we must have efficiencies. When a pump or steam engine is tested, by every means we ascertain ideals ; we then com-pare actualities with the ideals and we ascertain efficiencies. Similarly, in the great industrial problem we set up ideals, we measure against them actual performance, and we as-certain efficiencies, and as for pumps, and for steam engines, so also do we use these efficiencies to prophesy future costs.

When actual and ideal performances are both recorded the relation in one month will generally serve to predetermine efficiencies in the next month, the relation of one year to predetermine efficiencies in the next year.

The elementary formula is, however, wholly inadequate for a real determination of efficiencies and has in fact led to most serious misconceptions and consequent mistakes.


Reference has already been made to the folly of the man who buys coal by the ton without knowing whether it contains 10,000 or 15,000 heat units per pound, who scrutinizes the cost of personal service without knowing its quality, invests in new machinery without counting its hourly cost, or without being able to keep it busy.

The cost of materials depends on two factors, the quality and the price.

Material cost=Quantity of units at price per unit.

M c =Qm Pm

What is wanted is that QP shall be a mini-mum cost.

The usual impulse and plan is to attack the price, P. This does not work. It is almost impossible to lower price, yet maintain quality. There is a constant demand for better quality and the tendency of prices is upwards. In the last ten years railroad presidents would have had great difficulty in buying steel rails at
less than $28 a ton. Q, quality, is the important factor. There is almost no limit to the re-ductions that can be made in quantity. Let us take coal as an example. The ordinary industrial-plant furnace, boiler and engine, use five to seven pounds of coal per horse-power hour.


By buying better coal, better furnace, better boiler, better engine and better service, coal consumption can be reduced to two pounds, in some instances to one.

Efficiency of production of power as to material is raised from 14 to 40 per cent up to 100 per cent. The distribution of power may, how-ever, be very inefficient. Air, water, and steam pipes may leak, there may be seven voltage drops in electric transmission. For 100 horse power produced in power house only 80 may reach the places of use. There is usually great waste in the use of power ; lights burn, pumped water is wasted, steam blows through steam hammers, compressed air is used to ventilate rooms or blow the dust out of clothes. The efficiency of use is rarely above 70 per cent. As-suming the efficiency of production to be as high as 70 per cent, that of transmission as high as 80 per cent, that of use as high as 70 per cent, we have an end maximum efficiency of 39.2 per cent. If, as often happens, produc-tive efficiency is as low as 14 per cent (the air-brake pump uses about 200 pounds of steam per horse-power hour), if the efficiency of transmission is as low as 60 per cent (I have known power steam pipes to be laid unlagged through running brooks), if the efficiency of use is 30 per cent (cities where water is me-tered use only one-third as much as those where it is furnished without check as to quantity), then the end efficiency of 14 per cent production, 60 per cent transmission and 30 per cent use is only 2.52 per cent. It is not because of price, but because of the dependent sequence of inefficiencies in quantity that QP usually admits of such very great reduction.

Materials actua^-r^gjf — ^= —

JtSJv C/ tnq XVmp

If EE'E" is only 2.5, P st could be increased 40 times without adding to cost, but a compara-tively small increase in P st doubling it for in-stance, may be the easiest, quickest and most economical way of increasing EE'E" mq to 10. per cent, 40 per cent, or even 90 or 100 per cent, as the case may be.

Therefore, in the last generation railroad executives were willing to pay more for steel rails than for iron rails, fuel consumers are willing to pay more per ton for oil than for coal, bridge builders prefer expensive wire rope to cheap cast-iron, for in each case as quality goes up, quantity goes down much more rapidly. What is true of materials is equally true of personal service. Labor, like material,
consists of both quantity and quality. The quantity of labor is measured by time, its qual-ity by what it accomplishes. The formula for personal service becomes.

S=time in hours multiplied by wages per hour S=TW

When TW seems too high there is generally an insane desire on the part of those in control to reduce W. This is naturally resisted most strenuously by the wage earner. As in mate-rials, it is not the price of the unit per hour that counts, but the quantity used. Also as in materials, there are inefficiencies of initial
quantity, inefficiencies of distribution, and inefficiencies of use. Let us assume schedules of different rates of pay for different classes of workers. I have known industrial plants to engage 600 men when 300 would have been sufficient ; I have known 12 men to be assigned to a job that 2 men could have done. There is in-efficiency of initial quantity of 50 per cent to 17 per cent.

I have known men that ought to have been earning $6 a day, in reality earning only $3 because they were in the wrong place, paid $3 for work that a $1 a day boy could have per-formed better; I have known a $75 a day ex-pert to be kept busy on clerical work that could have been done better by an $18 a week clerk. These are examples of inefficiency of distribution, varying from 17 per cent down to 4 per
cent.

The inefficiencies of use are so tremendous that their cause has to be explained. Up to about a hundred years ago, with the exception of a few windmills, a few sailing ships, and a few cumbersome water wheels, all the work of the world was done by the muscular energy of man and animal. It was used fairly efficiently, often strenuously. I have been fortunate in seeing and experiencing personally much of what was formerly the rule, as the porterage of freight and supplies over the Chilcoot pass on men's backs, 100 pounds to the man, and the killing, by overwork, of 3,750 horses out of 3,780 in the awful strenuousness, but la-mentable inefficiency, of the White Pass pack trail in 1898.

The discovery that we could use coal, oil, gas, mountain water-powers as sources of energy has changed all civilization. In the United States alone we have per inhabitant twenty times as much energy available as when I was born. The man whose manual labor it would take for over 500 years to spade up a section of unbroken prairie land, is quite inclined to think that he is using his time very efficiently if with team and plow he breaks up 640 acres in four years, when in reality with suitable equipment, mechanical tractors and gang plows, it could be done in 36 hours.

The man who would take a week carving by hand a small frame, might pride himself on turning out one frame a day with foot power, when in reality with moulds and automatic machinery he could turn out one frame a minute.

If, as I have seen, a man using a shaper over-runs the necessary stroke three-fold, if the machine's speed is only 30 per cent of what it ought to be with modern steels, if his feed is a 1/64 inch instead of a 1/16, if he takes four cuts instead of two, then his end efficiency is only 1.25 per cent. Men have not yet realized that the ages of muscular effort are passed, that work can no longer be measured in man-power or foot-power, that we no longer want the man who can spade twice as much, the man of burden who can carry twice as much, the man who can break a horseshoe with his bare hands ; but we want the man on the bridge of an oil-fired steamer, we want the crew of an oil-fired locomotive, engineer on one side with hand on power-moved lever, fireman on other side with finger on oil valve ; we want the crew
of mechanical tractors and gang plows, each man directing and superintending the evolution of as much uncarnate energy as 2,000 mien could have evolved using man-incarnated energy.

Assuming as a possibility in inefficiency of labor a quantity of 50 per cent, of labor distribution of 17 per cent, of labor use of 1.25 per cent, we have an end efficiency of 1/5 of 1 per cent. I have seen worse happen than this, for sometimes the worker did nothing at all, at other times was busy on wholly unnecessary work. As a general average, efficiency of sup-ply of work is not over 90 per cent; efficiency of distribution, if fitness for the work is in-cluded, not over 60 per cent, and efficiency of use not over 70 per cent, giving an end effi-ciency of 37.8 per cent, shading off from this maximum to nothing.

As to service, therefore, as in materials, it is quality that ought to be improved by paying
a much higher price per unit. It is not more strenuousness that is wanted; it is more effi-
ciency with less effort. As T goes down, W must go up both relatively and directly. The
locomotive engineer is paid higher wages than the Chinese coolie, and as part of his daily life
he enjoys luxuries unknown to kings a genera-tion ago, still unknown to Chinamen. The
coolie carries 150 pounds 20 miles in a day ; the American locomotive engineer and the fire-
man haul 6,000 tons 60 miles a day. Piece rates are physiologically and equitably vicious
and wrong. They put a premium on harmful strenuousness, instead of standardizing condi-
tions and operations so that greater output will follow less effort, but higher efficiency per unit
of time ; they are based on the assumption that output is dependent on muscular energy as it
was in former ages, instead of being dependent on a steadily increasing quantity of uncarnate
energy, combined with a steadly increasing quantity of incarnate energy, both directed by
a steadily increasing intelligence. 

T cannot indefinitely decrease, neither can W indefinitely increase, and experimentally we
must determine what combination of TW re-sults in minimum cost.

In the diagram on page 224, the vertical lines A, B, C, D, E are records of different men work-
ing on similar jobs but at different rates of speed. A, the slowest worker, takes 10 hours
to accomplish a task. His speed is that of a lame man only able or willing to walk a mile
and a half an hour. Nevertheless, although he may be wholly unfitted for the work and the
work not suited to him, he has to live, has prob-ably a family to support, and he is unwilling to
work for less than $0.30 an hour, and if he is wise, joins a union which will enforce this mini-
mum rate. A's standard expenses probably eat up 90 per cent of his earnings, or $0.27 per
hour, his profit above expenses being $0.03 per hour. B is a faster worker, able to walk 2.2
miles an hour. He is also given $0.30 an hour, but in view of his greater speed an extra pay-
ment of 6.6 per cent is added, making his hourly rate $0.32. His living expenses, as for the
other man, being $0.27, his net earnings or profits become $0.05 per hour as compared to
$0.03. He has increased his profits 66.6 per cent. The man C is one who can and does walk
at the rate of 3.3 miles an hour, a mile in 18 minutes. This man earns $0.32 in wages and
a bonus of 20 per cent, making his hourly earn-ings $0.38. His net profit above minimum liv-
ing cost of $0.27 is $0.11 an hour, or an in-crease above A in net profits of 267 per cent.
D is a man who can walk 4.5 miles an hour, or a mile in 13.3 minutes. This is fast walking,
but not as fast as is regularly kept up hour after hour and day after day on the Yukon if
the trail is good.

D earns $0.15 an hour above the employer's basic rate of $0.32, his profit is 400 per cent
more than that of A. This man's speed is the most economical both for the employer and for
himself. A speed greater than 4.5 miles an hour is more than the normal man ought to
keep up. E is an abnormally fast traveler, running at the rate of 5 miles an hour, the
Yukon average. His pay rises to $0.60 an hour, his profit to $0.33 an hour, the profit alone
being more than the wages earned by A or B. His profit is 1,000 per cent greater than that
of A.

E is a strenuous but not an efficient traveler. His work costs more than that of either D or
C, and he will break down if he long continues the pace. If greater speed is wanted the
method must be changed, not the strain in-creased.

... . . Tst W«t

Actual service cost= B , t E n t B m w B mi w

W must increase as E t increases, W must fall as E t falls. If this is not the law, then
there is no hope ahead, and civilization, discov-ery, and appropriation of the energies in the
universe are disasters. But it is the law. Let us illustrate by a single example. Sixty years
ago $5 of free gold to the ton, $100 of combined gold to the ton, were about the lowest amounts
that it was profitable to work.

The average rate of wages for white men was low. The time efficiencies of gold produc-
tion have been steadily improved, gravels are now profitably washed that contain as little as
$0.05 to the ton, ores are mined and smelted that contain as little as $5 to the ton. Gold
production has increased from $13,500,000, the average before 1848, to $400,000,000 per an-
num. White men's wages have doubled and 250,000 men are now employed instead of
12,500 as formerly. Those who made money from owning gold mines have invested it, de-
veloping other industries, creating still further demand for employment. Let us assume that
the gold producers of the world should unitedly demand a 2-hour day at the same wage per
hour, instead of the present 8-hour day, on the supposition, firstly, that they would thus pro-
vide work for four times as many men, and that a larger proportion of the output of the
mines would go to labor. The immediate effect would be the closing down of nine-tenths of the
gold mines of the world, 225,000 men would be thrown out of employment, other industries
would be curtailed, still further increasing the supply of labor. The 2-hour provision might
stand, but either wages would drop until low enough to make the reopening of the mines a
paying proposition, or increased efficiencies would have to be applied to mining so as to
increase the output fourfold per man-hour of work.

More than ever before would it be necessary to make motion studies and time determination and to set up standards of supply, of distribu-tion, of use as to every item of work. If wages per hour are arbitrarily increased, the increase can be safely provided for by increased effi-ciency, and in no other way. If efficiency is arbitrarily increased, wages will inevitably rise, or effort will diminish.

What is true of materials and personal serv-ice is equally true of investment charges. In-
vestment charges, like personal service, fall into time for any performance and the cost per
hour.

I = T'R

in which T' indicates time in hours and R cost per hour for capital charges.

If all the railroads of the United States are worth $14,000,000,000, it is evident that the an-
nual capital charge for interest, depreciation, insurance and taxes might be $1,000,000,000 —
that the actual capital charge per hour is $114,155. If, therefore, as a token of respect
to the memory of a dead president, all railroads should stop operations for 10 minutes at the
time of his funeral, the cost would be about $20,000 in decreased efficiency of R, but the of-
ficials would hasten to make it up by increasing the output of the subsequent hours, thereby
raising the efficiency of T.

As for materials and for service, so also we must determine which T' and R in combination
result in the least cost.

In pay for services, the natural law is that an increase ought to decrease time in larger
proportion, but in equipment it is very common to increase R unwisely and very greatly for a
less decrease in T'. The same law prevails for equipment as for materials and labor. Addi-
tions to equipment should decrease, not in-crease, costs.

Muscular energy, whether of man or animal, is available only a few hours a day, 8, 10, 12.
Uncarnate energy is available 24 hours a day. The machinery in paper mills, in glass plants,
works 24 hours a day ; an ocean steamer on the Pacific will throb steadily for twenty days, the
big generators at the world exposition in Chi-cago and in St. Louis ran for six months with-
out a stop, big pumping machinery at mines will work even longer without shutdown. There
is, therefore, double and treble investment charge in working equipment only 10 or 8 hours
a day.

This was bad enough, but there was a boom period after 1897 that owed its start to
the Yukon gold discoveries, to a European crop failure with abundant crops here, and that was
further stimulated by the sudden expenditure of one thousand million dollars in the Spanish
war. America suddenly resolved to scrap all its old equipment and modernize from top to
bottom. Every railroad rebuilt its main lines with new grades, easier curves, heavier rails
and ties, rebuilt its bridges, stations and ter-minals, rebuilt or replaced its locomotives and
cars, built new shops and equipped them with new tools. Every city rebuilt its business
blocks and its aristocratic residence section, every street-car line was rebuilt and re-
equipped. Infected by the general contagion, every industrial plant tried to increase its ca-
pacity. Paper mills doubled the width of the paper machines, thus doubling their capacity,
iron mills became tonnage-mad, textile mills increased their machines beyond the world's
output of textile fibres.

What are we going to do about it? There are three correctives, and only three. Existing
equipment will gradually wear out, the country will gradually grow, but during the period of
readjustment those plants that are inefficient will be crowded to the wall and prematurely
die. Not only are American plants subject to high equipment charges because running so
few hours a day, but even for the 8 or 10 or 12 or 24-hour day, they are over-equipped and
much of the machinery lies inactive.

We have again and again found that ma-chines were not in operation over half the time
of a 9-hour day. When in operation they were inefficient. It is not so long ago that a loco-
motive-tire lathe would be run 18, even 30 hours, to turn up a single pair of tires, work
that on the same machine ought not to take over 3 hours.

Machine Efficiency

The machine end-efficiency in some plants is not over 4 per cent of the guaranteed capacity. Eight hours out of 24 gives a work time-efficiency of 33 per cent, not running half the time during shop hours gives a shop time-efficiency of 50 per cent; many machines exceed the requirements of the work put to them, as when a big planer is used instead of a shaper, this form of efficiency dropping often to 70 per cent ; and finally, machines are often run so slowly as to show a speed efficiency of only 3.5 per cent. When we reflect that there are other dependent sequences in the material inter-relations, in the work, and in the machine inter-relations, that there are dependent sequences between material and labor and machine, as when unnecessarily hard material lengthens the time of both man and machine, or when defective machine spoils material and wastes workers' time, or when unskilled man spoils material and injures machine — the marvel is not that industrial operations are so inefficient, but that, consider-ing the dependent sequences, they are in each term of the sequence so high*

Actual investment cost=



EV E"f E ,u r E ,m r



It is a law that it usually pays to increase quality of materials, that it usually pays to increase quality of labor, that it usually pays to increase quality of equipment, provided materials are efficiently used, labor efficiently used, equipment efficiently used. Equipment has hours about half those of labor when it ought to work as long as materials, be constantly on the job.


This relation of rate per hour to time is gen-erally lost sight of. It is because it has been lost sight of that over-equipment is the rule in America. Materials, service and equipment are worked up to the general cost formula :

Total cost=Materials+Service+Investment charges.
Total cost= QP +TW+ T'R

Usually only the greatest of industrial man-agers realize that Q is more important than P ; that T is more important than W, that R is more important than 1", and that minimum total cost is realized when QP is minimum, TW the minimum, and T'R the minimum.

For all the operations or for any single unit

Total actual cost= g**? + ^Ljfi + ^-^

Eq B P Et Ew Bt' Br

This formula shows what records are wanted, namely, the six items of standard cost and the six or more items of corresponding efficiencies. No manager, no accountant, knows where he stands unless his records show him as to every operation :

The standard quantity of material

The efficiencies of material use

The standard price of material unit

The efficiency of price

The standard quantity of time units required
The efficiencies of time
The standard rate of wages for work of the
character done
The efficiency of wage rate
The standard quantity of time for equipment
The efficiencies of time use of equipment
The standard equipment rate per hour
The efficiencies of equipment use
The formula is equally applicable to a totalized operation costing one mill, as the page of  a periodical, or to the operation of all the rail- roads of the United States as one great unit.

Records as to each detail, aggregated into records as to the whole, are one of the efficiency principles; records as to each item and every item today, records as to each and all items throughout a long period of time. He who has records of quantity and price — efficiencies of both, of every unit of material used, whether ton of rails or pint of oil ; who has records as to time and wage rate for every operation, and
the efficiencies ; who has records as to time and investment charge per hour for every operation — he is in a position to apply the other practi-cal principles and thus bring actual up to ideal. Records of this kind are simpler, cost less to keep up, than the usual industrial and cost
records of great companies.

Cost accounting can be very simply and easily developed from the cost formula. The elabora-tion would carry us too far from the subject of records, reliable, immediate, adequate and per-manent.

In a periodical publication, as to each page there is material, personal service, equipment charge; and if the weekly edition runs to 2,000,000 copies of 80 pages each, a saving of the one one-hundred-thousandth part of a cent in cost per page means $800 in a year, enough to leave some profit after paying the salary of a man whose sole duty might be to prevent this minute waste.

When the formula is applied to railroad oper-ating cost it inevitably shows that E is low.
We have all seen locomotive safety valves pop-ping and black smoke issuing from stacks.
There is waste of fuel, but fuel is the largest single material item in railroad operation,
amounting in fact to one-third of all material expense. We have all seen railroad day labor-
ers dawdling over their work; but common labor, notoriously of poor efficiency, is the
largest service item in railroad operation, being about one-eighth of the whole. We have all seen
superfluous equipment, whole roads paralleled; and even if there were not an item of duplica-
tion, is it not conceivable that with a complete understanding of the problems by people, by
government and by managers, railroads might secure money at 4 per cent instead of 6 per
cent, thus reducing equipment interest charges $280,000,000* a year? By the test of the cost
formula we can at least analyze every item of expense, determine standards and efficiencies,
and strive for waste elimination. The cost formula is one of the instruments wherewith
wastes can be detected and measured ; but even as Kepler proved by measurement that all
planets moved in elliptical orbits, so does the proper measurement of costs show where the
savings, if made, must necessarily go.

The savage destroys, the barbarian squan-ders, but the civilized man conserves. QP
therefore measures civilization, TW measures civilization, and T'R measures civilization.
There is scarcely a conceivable limit to quality, but quantity, natural resources, are limited; there is scarcely a conceivable limit



* This item was not included in the recent estimate of a pre-ventable railway operating loss of $1,000,000 a day.

to human skill; but each individual's span of time is inexorably limited. Friction and clum-
siness, duplication and waste, can be eliminated from equipment; but each machine's life is
limited. As to material, shall we use radium or shall we use sulphur; as to equipment, shall
we use the old round blunderbuss bullet or shall we use the slim modern pointed bullet which
travels twice as fast, goes four times as far, and weighs half as much ; as to equipment, shall
we use subways built with 4 per cent money advanced by the city, or shall we travel on slow
surface cars drawn by horses and earning 10 per cent? As to equipment, shall we use the
king's couriers on the king's highway or shall we use the telephone over a 1,000-mile gap?
Shall the workers idle the long days through and be content with yams and a gee string?

Civilization is high when QP is low; civil-ization is high in which T'R is low; but
reductions in QP, reduction in T'R must be balanced by increases in TW. Records, the
instruments by which these relations are dis-covered and determined, are not dry and mo-
notonous ; they are an inspiration and a guide. 
This is the final problem : —

Shall ultimately more of us work less time each, W remaining low, or shall we all work a
reasonable time and greatly increase W? Hav-ing increased our command over materials, over
equipment, what shall we do with the gain? I once heard an eloquent labor-union leader ex-
pound his creed : "Eight hours for work, eight hours for play ; eight hours for sleep, and eight
dollars a day." Eight hours for sleep— yes; eight hours for work — why not more or less as
we find pleasure and delight or aversion and pain in it? A dollar an hour! Why not what
we are entitled to through elimination of ma-terial and equipment wastes ? Eight hours for
play? There are moments in a man's existence that count more than monotonous months —
the moment when Charles the Hammer learned that the Saracens were in rout; the moment
when Columbus learned that land was lifting to westward; the moment when Lister con-
ceived of asepsis, when Pasteur conceived the germ theory. Many of the minutes of the eight
hours for play can be expanded into moments worth while, through the conquest of matter
and of time.

Gebraucht der Zeit, sie geht so schnell von hinnen.
Doch Ordnung lehrt Euch Zeit gewinnen!

Goethe.

IEKC Industrial Engineering ONLINE Course Notes


Commentary by KVSSNRao

A fairly lengthy chapter


Ud  31.1.2026, 31.1.2022,  12.11.2021
Pub 3.10.2013

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Thursday, January 29, 2026

February - Industrial Engineering Lessons - Notes - Industrial Engineering Knowledge Center

 347. Harrington Emerson's Eighth Efficiency (Productivity Management) Principle: Standards and Schedules 

https://nraoiekc.blogspot.com/2013/10/chapter-10x-eighth-principle-standards.html

348. Harrington Emerson's Ninth Efficiency (Productivity Management) Principle: Standardized Conditions. 

https://nraoiekc.blogspot.com/2013/10/chapter-11-ninth-principle-standardized.html


349. Harrington Emerson's Tenth Efficiency (Productivity Management) Principle: Standardized Operations. 

https://nraoiekc.blogspot.com/2013/10/chapter-12-tenth-principle-standardized.html


350. Harrington Emerson's Eleventh Efficiency (Productivity Management) Principle: Written  Standard-Practice Instructions. 

https://nraoiekc.blogspot.com/2013/10/chapter-xiii-eleventh-principle-written.html

351. Harrington Emerson's Twelfth  Efficiency (Productivity Management) Principle: Efficiency Reward. 

https://nraoiekc.blogspot.com/2013/10/chapter-14-twelfth-principle-efficiency.html

352. Harrington Emerson:  12 Efficiency Principles  Applied to Measurement and Cure of Wastes. 

https://nraoiekc.blogspot.com/2013/10/chapter-15-efficiency-principles.html


354.  Industrial Engineering - Its Role in Productivity Improvement

355.  Productivity Planning

356.  Manufacturing Cost Reduction Policy Deployment - Introduction.

357. Organizing for Industrial Engineering Department and Function

358. Resourcing for IE Department and Productivity Improvement Projects

359. Productivity - Communication

360. Productivity Training by Industrial Engineers

361. Productivity Control - Productivity Management - Koontz & O'Donnell

https://nraoiekc.blogspot.com/2022/03/productivity-control.html

362. Principles and Practices of Productivity Management

https://nraoiekc.blogspot.com/2021/06/principles-of-productivity-management.html



366. Industrial Engineering Strategy

367. Success Stories - Industrial Engineering, Productivity Improvement and Productivity Management


IEOR Module


371. Operations Research - An Efficiency Improvement Tool for Industrial Engineers

372. PRINCIPLES AND APPLICATIONS OF OPERATIONS RESEARCH
(from the perspective of an industrial engineer)
(From Maynard's Industrial Engineering Handbook, 5th Edition, pp. 11.27-11.44)
Jayant Rajgopal (From Rajgopal's website)
http://www.pitt.edu/~jrclass/or/or-intro.html

373. Engineering Optimization - Introduction


374. Single Variable Optimization - Engineering Problems

375. Multi-Variable Optimization - Engineering Problems

376. Constrained Optimization - Engineering Applications

377
Constrained Optimization - Part 2 - Engineering Applications




LinkedIn Newsletter
February 2026 - Industrial Engineering Lessons - Notes - Industrial Engineering Knowledge Center




Ud. 29.1.2026
Pub. 14.2.2025





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Tuesday, January 27, 2026

2026 Machine Shop Engineering, Technology & Industrial Engineering - Productivity Improvement & Cost Reduction News

 


Say YES to Knowledge Based Industrial Engineering. 

Use recent developments in engineering & technologies in process improvement for productivity. Develop files for each production process and accumulate the items of your interest. Do knowledge management.

Forward Thinking About Productivity: Assess each engineering and technology develop about its productivity benefit for the processes of your organization.
 

https://www.themachinist.in/category/machine-tools  (A Times group magazine) 


https://mfgnewsweb.com/archives.aspx

Metal Working Equipment News 

https://www.equipment-news.com/

Twitter Hashtag Machining

https://twitter.com/hashtag/Machining

MEM Magazine

Manufacturing & Engineering Latest News & Articles

https://memuknews.com/




Productivity Science of Machining - F.W. Taylor - Experiments and Results.

Free Download

https://www.academia.edu/104259034/Productivity_Science_of_Machining_F_W_Taylor_Experiments_and_Results


https://shopmetaltech.com/category/cutting-tools/


Manufacturing design and process planning

https://www.manufacturingsolutions.sandvik/en/our-offering/manufacturing-design-and-process-planning/




---------------------------------------


----------------------------------------


January 2026


Published 01/23/2026


Putting the "Plate" Gage to Use
How do you measure tight-tolerance parts on a plate gage without stumbling into subtle errors? George Schuetz explains his process.
George Schuetz
Director of Precision Gages, Mahr Inc.
https://www.mmsonline.com/articles/putting-the-plate-gage-to-use


Published 01/21/2026
Troubleshooting Processes Experiencing Drift or Shift
John Miller
President, Way Of The Mill
https://www.mmsonline.com/articles/identifying-if-a-process-is-experiencing-drift-or-shift


Scaling intelligently by getting more from your people, your equipment, your data and your decisions is a worthy goal for the new year

Scaling /growing/expanding Under Constraint: Machining Technology Investment Strategies for 2026.


Every machine, system and software package must earn its keep inside your strategic plan. Even tools and other accessories have to be acquired rationally.

Novo Modo, the young five-axis shop  is a clear example. Instead of chasing pricier hardware, founder Joseph Alonso focused on workholding and repeatable cells. Crimping parts and using windowed frames instead of machining dovetails is a small change, but it eliminates entire operations, setups and the need for a separate “dovetail machine.” Standardized offsets and modular zero-point workholding dropped setup time from an hour to a few minutes, and a complex satellite gimbal can go from a 45-pound block to a finished, 2.5-pound part in a single operation.  Novo Modo’s advantage is how its fixtures, preparation and workflow elevate  cell and make it give more output. 

FANUC's calls AI Servo Tuning helps when servo behavior is the root cause of a surface finish flaw or contour issu., This tool lets a technician diagnose and correct it in minutes instead of days. When “identical” machines are not behaving identically, it helps bring them in line. 

Shops that routinely handle materials like Inconel get ahead by being intentional with end mills and cutting strategies: tool materials that balance hardness and toughness, geometries and coatings that hold a sharp edge and tool paths that manage heat. Taken together, those choices can dramatically increase metal removal rates in tough materials, and the only “new investment” necessary is better decision-making.

American Precision Museum's  “Innovation Station”  traces  a line from handwork to line shafts to done-in-one machining, robotics and 3D printing. Capabilities advance incrementally as each generation combines more operations and reduces variation.

Scaling intelligently by getting more from your people, your equipment, your data and your decisions is a worthy goal for the new year

https://www.mmsonline.com/articles/scaling-under-constraint-machining-technology-investment-strategies-for-2026



Rotary Table Offers Precise Machining of Bladed Turbine Parts

January 1, 2026


GROB Systems, Inc., a provider of manufacturing systems and machine tools, has introduced its new VARIO Rotary Table providing a unique, adaptable solution for consistent, accurate machining of bladed turbine parts and thin walled and slender parts.

https://mfgnewsweb.com/archives/4/69168/Machinery-Metalcutting-Chipmaking-jan26/Rotary-Table-Offers-Precise-Machining-of-Bladed-Turbine-Parts.aspx




Threaded Adjustable Grippers Offer Long-Wear Workholding Capability

January 1, 2026


Fairlane Products manufactures a wide range of carbide-tipped, serrated grippers, such as hex head type, round head type, and serrated body type.

Fairlane Products has expanded its lineup of workholding and fixturing components with a wide range of adjustable grippers.

Adjustable grippers penetrate the workpiece to provide high holding power. Used in jigs, fixtures, and chuck jaws, these grippers fit a variety of applications. Adjustable grippers are available in high-speed tool steel, with either tool steel or carbide serrations, in a number of thread styles and lengths.










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2024 Machine Shop Engineering, Technology & Industrial Engineering - Productivity Improvement & Cost Reduction News

Say YES to Knowledge Based Industrial Engineering. 

Use recent developments in engineering & technologies in process improvement for productivity.

Forward Thinking About Productivity: Assess each engineering and technology develop about its productivity benefit for the processes of your organization.
 

https://www.themachinist.in/category/machine-tools  (A Times group magazine) 


https://mfgnewsweb.com/archives.aspx

Metal Working Equipment News 

https://www.equipment-news.com/

Twitter Hashtag Machining

https://twitter.com/hashtag/Machining


Productivity Science of Machining - F.W. Taylor - Experiments and Results.

Free Download

https://www.academia.edu/104259034/Productivity_Science_of_Machining_F_W_Taylor_Experiments_and_Results


https://shopmetaltech.com/category/cutting-tools/


Manufacturing design and process planning

https://www.manufacturingsolutions.sandvik/en/our-offering/manufacturing-design-and-process-planning/



2024 News



Modern Machine Shop  MMS 2024 Top Shops


2024 Top Shops Honorees Announced

Modern Machine Shop Recognizes Excellence in Manufacturing with Annual Award 


2024 Honorees

Category: Machining Technology


SSP – Twinsburg, OH


Category: Shopfloor Practices & Performance


Major Tool & Machine – Indianapolis, IN

Major Tool & Machine

https://www.majortool.com/

Category: Business Strategy & Performance


Mitotec Precision – Necedah, WI


Category: Human Resources


JD Machine, Advanced Manufacturing – Ogden, UT

https://www.mmsonline.com/zc/top-shops/2024-top-shops

Published 09/11/2024
MMS Top Shop 2024
Custom ERP System Drives Automation in Large-Format Machining in Major Tool & Machine – Indianapolis, IN
https://www.mmsonline.com/articles/how-a-custom-erp-system-drives-automation-in-large-format-machining

Published 07/25/2024
Increasing Productivity with Digitalization and AI
Job shops are implementing automation and digitalization into workflows to eliminate set up time and increase repeatability in production.





November 2024

Discover now: CoroMill® MS20, sustainable manufacturing and how to elevate your CAM skills

Sandvik Coromant

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/discover-now-coromill-ms20-sustainable-manufacturing-3pocf/

Don’t miss out: New tools, AI insights, and why your machines need to start talking

Sandvik Coromant

October 11, 2024

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/dont-miss-out-new-tools-ai-insights-why-your-machines-ezqsf/

Top essential reads: Your guides to AI, cost reduction, and automation

Sandvik Coromant

August 26, 2024

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/top-essential-reads-your-guides-ai-cost-reduction-automation-cwmif/



Sandvik Coromant to Present “The Cutting Edge of Connectivity” at IMTS 2024

July 25, 2024 11:01 am   

Industry expert Jeff Rizzie looks at the future of machining with sensorized tooling in educational session at the 2024 International Manufacturing Technology Show


Leading cutting tool maker and advanced machining solutions provider Sandvik Coromant will deliver a presentation offering insights on sensor-enabled tooling and the future of manufacturing at the upcoming International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS) in Chicago.


May 2024

NEW PRODUCTS

Innovative Workholding for Turning and Milling


HWR WORKHOLDING USA will bring its full line of innovative workholding products to IMTS 2024, exhibiting for the first time at booth 431579. HWR will be highlighting new and existing solutions for both turning and milling applications, and will present a RoboJob automation cell demonstrating the ease with which HWR products facilitate process automation.


For milling applications, HWR will be showcasing its SolidLine family of zero-point workholding products. The newest of these include SolidGrip MAXX and SolidBolt FLEXX, both released in 2024. SolidGrip MAXX allows users to quickly convert two standard vises into a single large-capacity vise with a maximum clamping range of 800 mm (31.5 in.), offering a highly secure, cost-effective solution for large-part manufacturers.

https://www.americanmachinist.com/new-products/product/55128554/innovative-workholding-for-turning-and-milling-hwr-workholding-usa-imts-2024



10 Feb 2024

https://www.advancedmanufacturing.org/manufacturing-engineering/future-proofing-your-workshop/article_5ec4bf8a-e5f8-11ee-bd90-bba99f563a27.html



9 September 2024

Monday, Sept. 9, from 3:15-4:10 p.m. IMTS 24

The educational session, titled “The Cutting Edge of Connectivity: How Sensorized Tooling is Driving Manufacturing into the Future,” will be led by Jeff Rizzie, Sandvik Coromant Strategic Key Account Manager. He has over 43 years of industry experience in metal cutting, machine tool integration and Industry 4.0 technologies.

The discussion, held in room W192-C on Monday, Sept. 9, from 3:15-4:10 p.m., will explore the latest advancements in sensor-equipped tools and best practices for making the most of data. The presentation will also cover:


Data connectivity options to integrate tool sensor data with wider factory systems/networks

Using sensor data to optimize machining parameters like speeds, feeds and depths of cut

How sensorized tooling data and insights can drive productivity improvements

How investing in sensorized tooling can achieve long-term cost savings and efficiency gains across manufacturing processes.

https://www.practicalmachinist.com/sandvik-coromant-to-present-the-cutting-edge-of-connectivity-at-imts-2024/


20 May 2024


Pdf

https://www.home.sandvik/globalassets/5.-news-media/publications/meet-sandvik-m%C3%B6t-sandvik-pdfer/meet-sandvik-pdf-archive/2024/sandvikmeet-20241.pdf


https://www.linkedin.com/advice/0/what-limitations-using-sensors-machine-tools-skills-robotics-2bbgc



February 2024


Latest Developments in CNC Machining: February 2024

https://amfg.ai/2024/03/12/latest-developments-in-cnc-machining-february-2024/


23 Sep 2023

https://www.home.sandvik/en/offerings/manufacturing-and-machining-solutions/


Ud. 27.1.2026,. 21.11.2024







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