Friday, February 19, 2021

Resource Efficiency Industrial Engineering

 "Industrial Engineering is System Efficiency Engineering." - Narayana Rao

Industrial Engineering  = Engineering + Productivity Orientation (Productivity Science + Productivity Engineering + Productivity Management )


Who said it? First F.W. Taylor in his paper on Piece Rate System. It specifically mentions that the new system will increase productivity. What is the new system? Study of each element of the machine - man system with respect to time. How to reduce cutting time of machine tools? How to reduce manual or human effort time?

Reduce the time taken by technology or capital resources and human resources in industrial systems is the primary task of industrial engineering. It is engineering done with cost, time and productivity as measures of achievement or effectiveness.

The present environmental concern brought the issue of resource efficiency to the forefront. There is a demand for industrial engineering.



Integrated evaluation of resource efficiency and cost effectiveness in production systems


Michael Lieder

Licentiate thesis

KTH Royal Institute of Technology 

School of Industrial Engineering and Management 

Department of Production Engineering

Stockholm 2014

https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:712671/FULLTEXT01.pdf


On a global level multinational companies have launched numerous programs to improve their production systems and increase productivity (Netland, 2012).

The number of SMEs (1-250 employees) stands for 99% of all companies in Europe (European Commission, 2013)

Particularly when it comes to operational resources there is a lack of methods which enable accessing resource savings in a comprehensive way (Steinhilper, et al., 2011) leaving potentials for superior competitiveness untouched.

This research was partly originated from a European research project called ‘Methods for Efficiency - M4E’. The project has been initiated in order to develop a comprehensive concept to detect and tackle 
resource losses particularly in SMEs (Univerity of Bayreuth, u.d.).

Together with the University of Bayreuth, the Fraunhofer IPA and nine industrial partners the Department of Production Engineering at KTH developed a supporting tool for the consistent assessment of resource efficiency for SMEs (Lieder, 2011).  

Production systems can be described as people, equipment and procedures organized for the combination of materials and processes that constitutes the manufacturing operation (Groover, 2008).

Production system is a group of technical production facilities linked with each other for a certain type of production, which includes the existing reactions between them (International Institution for 
Production Engineering Research, 2004).

Synergetic behavior resulting from relationships between system parts is a significant characteristic.

Human and technical system together with energy and product material represent operational resources  in production systems.

The word resource has its origin in the French language and means “something that is a source of help” or “a means of supplying a deficiency or need” (Oxford University Press, 2013).

The term resource has perspectives as available money for operations in companies including patents, contracts or privileges (International Institution for Production Engineering Research, 2004),  as human and physical resources (Bernolak, 1997) and assets, humans, material, energy, equipment, 
machines, information, knowledge (Westkämper, 2006).

In this research work,  resources investigated are  labor from human and automated systems, energy, direct material for products, indirect material and handling of direct material during operation phases in production systems. (Handling is mentioned. Inspection also might have been mentioned).

I agree with this interpretation given in the thesis.

Effectiveness is mainly connected to an output oriented perspective and the creation of customer value of a transformation process.

Effectiveness is the first objective of systems design.

Efficiency is  associated with the utilization of resources to create effectiveness and a rather input oriented perspective of a transformation process. 

Green manufacturing is defined as “the creation of manufacturing products that use materials and processes that minimize negative environmental impacts, conserve energy and natural resources, are safe for employees, communities, and customers and are economically sound” and is labeled as first steps towards sustainability (Dornfeld, 2010).

Four levels of production system - single work unit, production lines, production plant and the natural environment. 

A single work station may for instance consist of an assembly station or a CNC machine.

Seeing time as a resource, the efficiency of equipment and manual operations can be evaluated by the time for which resources were used during the value added time. The idle time of material is measured by the inventory time in the process. (content in italics added by me)

Doctoral thesis

From resource efficiency to resource conservation Studies, developments and recommendations for industrial implementation of circular manufacturing systems

Michael Lieder

Doctoral thesis

KTH Royal Institute of Technology

School of Industrial Engineering and Management

Department of Production Engineering

Stockholm 2017

https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1135859/FULLTEXT01.pdf












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