Process Improvement using engineering knowledge to reduce cost through increasing productivity of machines and men by reducing machine time and man time is the main activity of industrial engineering.
Many other disciplines help industrial engineers to achieve their objectives. But the main discipline that is the foundation for IE is engineering of products and processes.
Ubiquity of Industrial Engineering Principle of Industrial Engineering
Illustration: Google's Engineering Productivity Department - Evolution of the Department through Automation of Testing. Emergence of Software Engineering Productivity Engineer & Specialist.
Review of the
Chapter 1.5 Fundamentals of Industrial Engineering
in Maynard's Handbook of Industrial Engineering, 5th Edition. List of all chapters of the book is available in:
This chapter was written by Philip E. Hicks.
The theoretical basis of industrial engineering is a science of operations (productivity).
To successfully use this science in most applications one must simultaneously consider at least three criteria: (1) quality, (2) timeliness, and (3) cost.
Almost always, the goal of industrial engineering is to ensure that goods and services are being produced or provided at the right quality at the right time at the right cost. Effectiveness of a process has to be ensured first. Then industrial engineering that is efficiency improvement can be undertaken.
A practicing industrial engineer has to effectively use “soft” (management/productivity management) as well as “hard” science (productivity science and productivity engineering). In the final analysis, the industrial engineer’s job is to make both new and existing operations perform well (Effectively and Efficiently).
Industrial engineering techniques have to deal with physical entities (e.g., equipment, buildings, tools) as well as informational entities (e.g., time, space) for an operation, employing what can be thought of as hard science. Management-related factors in the workplace that determine the motivation level of an employee to perform his or her assigned duties well, or actively participate in operational improvement over time, represent the soft science of industrial engineering.
Efficient production system design and efficiency improvement of production systems is the aim of industrial engineering. This fact is brought out by Hicks in the following statement.
A production system is essentially the sum of its individual operations.
Therefore, it follows that if one wants a production system to be efficient then its individual operations must be efficient. Working from a bottom-up micro perspective, one approach is to simply review all individual operations to make them the best they can be. One reason such an approach offers considerable opportunity for improvement today is that it has been often overlooked while the search for the single “silver bullet” macro solution occurs in the front office or the boardroom. In many firms today individual workstation cycle times can be reduced by one-third to one-half of their present average cycle times by implementing a short list of modest improvements in these workstations.
Hicks has given following areas as fundamental areas of industrial engineering
OPERATIONS ANALYSIS AND DESIGN
OPERATIONS CONTROL
OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT
He described the following activities
Methods Engineering - Making individual operations efficient. Machine effort has to be efficient. Human effort has to be efficient.
MAYNARD's MACHINE EFFORT INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING - Machine Work Study - Operation Analysis.
Lesson 33. - Industrial Engineering ONLINE Course
H.B. Maynard - HUMAN EFFORT INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING - Introduction
Material Handling - Once again Machine effort - Human effort
Ergonomics - Human effort - Effects on comfort, fatigue, health
Facilities Planning and Design - to minimize transportation of material, movement of people
Simulation
Jidoka is the name given to this activity in Toyota Production System (Improvement of Facilities and Processes).
OPERATIONS CONTROL (Quantity Planning)
He described the following activities
Production
Just-in-Time
Inventory Control
Quality Control
JIT is the name given to this activity in Toyota Production System (Improvement of flow. Reduction of batch quantities and delays.)
OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT (Organization Structure and Practices)
He described the following activities
Team Based
Continuous Improvement
Operations management has evolved as an independent subject area within the discipline of business management and industrial management. Operations control is a sub-area within operations management.
Industrial engineering has to focus on two areas as its specialty – Human effort engineering and System efficiency engineering. By inserting the term efficiency and writing the first area as OPERATIONS EFFICIENY ANALYSIS AND DESIGN will be make it more clear to the practitioners as well as users the role of industrial engineers. Work measurement is an exclusive area of industrial engineering and we need to recognize that in methods engineering once again functional engineering of the method belongs to production engineers and only human effort and efficiency engineering are the areas of industrial engineering. Ergonomics is the science used by industrial engineering in human effort engineering.
Productivity science, productivity engineering and productivity management are the unique areas of specialization and focus of industrial engineering in the operations science, engineering, flow and management.
Conclusion by Hicks
As this handbook clearly demonstrates, there are numerous tools available both to practicing industrial engineers and anyone else interested in applying industrial engineering techniques and methods. The concepts of industrial engineering as contained in this handbook, are based on sound principles and provide a solid basis for both effective problem solving and operational improvement.
Those in our society who are responsible for operational improvement should be making full use of the many industrial engineering capabilities that exist today. Most operational improvement effort should be performed in a participative environment using employees at all levels in an organization—with industrial engineers guiding their efforts (The knowledge of industrial engineers has to be combined with that of knowledge of all others in the organization).
The improvement potential in the existing operations of many organizations is enormous.
I have to highlight that in manufacturing strategy and operations strategy, improvement is an important task and industrial engineers have to contribute significantly in this task of productivity improvement (cost and time).
A book by Hicks
By Narayana Rao
IE is Engineering++. IE has application in all engineering branches.
An IE does something more than engineering in the engineering area. It is the understanding of the cost of inputs into the engineering products and productivity of the resources and process elements. An IE does not spend time on creating new engineering products and processes. He spends time on understanding and improving cost elements and productivity elements of existing products and processes. It means IE develops productivity science and cost science related to engineering elements.
The engineering done by IE is productivity engineering of engineering elements, based on the discoveries in productivity science. This productivity engineering could be done by the industrial engineer himself or he can get the engineering project approved to be executed by the concerned engineers internally or by the consultants and external engineering design firms. He measures cost and productivity (time) of engineering elements and combines them in creating better cost effective and productive solutions to existing products and processes. Thus the final effect of industrial engineers' efforts is on final products and processes and systems. But many times it is the combination of improvements at the elements level, and their proper integration that gives the result at the system level. Industrial engineering department of a company has to make significant contribution of the order of 2 to 5% reduction in the engineering systems cost of the organization year after year based on adopting new engineering developments, industrial engineering discoveries and inventions, creative thinking and the learning effect of all employees of the organization.
Industrial Engineering Measurements - Online Course Module
Updated 22.3.2022, 17 Oct 2021, 17 July 2021
Pub 20 March 2012
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