Industrial Engineering is System Efficiency Engineering. It is Machine Effort and Human Effort IE. 4 Million Page View Blog. 200,000+ visitors. (36,000+ pv, 25,500+ visitors in 2025.)------------------
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Functions of Industrial Engineering - Focus Areas of Industrial Engineering
Principles and Focus Areas of Industrial Engineering
Orientation Lecture for Post Graduate Diploma in Industrial Engineering (PGDIE) of National Institute of Industrial Engineering, Mumbai, India for the academic term 2017 - 2019 - PGDIE 47 Batch by Professor K.V.S.S. Narayana Rao.
Productivity Science, Facilities Industrial Engineering, Process Industrial Engineering and Product Industrial Engineering and Productivity Management.
Great post! The history and principles of Modern Industrial Engineering are fascinating. It's impressive to see how this discipline helps companies increase productivity and reduce costs.
Excellent material, thank you for sharing
Excellent tracing of the history of industrial engineering sir. Well documented.
Up to 1.7.2023: 264 (Top 1% of Publications on Academia.Edu for the month)
Introduction to Modern Industrial Engineering.
"Industrial engineering involves applying engineering knowledge - principles and practices to design, improve and optimize productivity of products, production/operation systems, processes, and resources."
As an IE you have to commit yourself to measure the productivity of every resource or input used in the process and search for alternatives that give more productivity. Search is for ready made solutions or for design principles that give better engineering solutions. So you are monitoring the market for engineering items and also monitoring the knowledge bases for appropriate information to help you in your task.
Engineering for Productivity, Company Growth and Company Progress.
Introduction to Modern Industrial Engineering - Version 2.0
by Prof. Narayana Rao K.V.S.S.
Productivity Science, Facilities Industrial Engineering, Process Industrial Engineering and Product Industrial Engineering and Productivity Management.
Contents
1. Introduction and History
2. Definition and Explanation
3. Contribution of Taylor, Gilbreth and Harrington Emerson
PRODUCT INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING (Value), - Customer Value Engineering, Cost Value Engineering, Design for Cost Efficient Manufacture and Assembly (DFMA).
FACILITIES INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING (Lean), - Manufacturing Facilities, Inspection Facilities, Transportation - Material Handling Facilities, Warehousing - Storage Facilities, Data - Information Processing Facilities, Power Generation Facilities, Auxiliary Supplies Facilities
PROCESS INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING (Minimizing Effort - Machine - Man).
Machine Effort Industrial Engineering - Human Effort Industrial Engineering
Modern Industrial Engineering - A Book of Online Readings.
Industrial Engineering of Products, Facilities, Processes, Machine Effort and Human Effort.
Version 1.0 - 27.12.2024
Readings Presented as Modules and Lessons of Modern Industrial Engineering.
You can download pdf version of this article.
Modern Industrial Engineering - A Book of Online Readings.
Cost Reduction of Products and Services at unit level through Productivity Improvement of all Resources used in Production Processes is the primary and core function of Industrial Engineering.
Others objectives and goals are included in later years.
Constraints like quality, machine health and human health are there right from the start of productivity improvement activity.
Focus Areas of Modern Industrial Engineering
Productivity Science
Industrial Engineering Strategy
Facilities Industrial Engineering
Product Industrial Engineering
Process Industrial Engineering
Industrial Engineering Optimization
Industrial Engineering Statistics
Industrial Engineering Economics
Human Effort Industrial Engineering
Productivity Measurement
Productivity Management
Data Processing and Information Systems for Industrial Engineering
Industrial engineers (IE) are employed and productivity improvement and cost reduction are practiced in many companies using IE philosophy, principles, methods, techniques and tools. Apple Inc. - Industrial Engineering Activities and Jobs
It is important that industrial engineers have to recognize that scientific management was evaluated by Lilian Gilbreth, a psychologist from a human behavior perspective and a positive opinion was given. Industrial engineering, appeared as a part of the system of management and engineering developed to reduce cost of products made using engineering processes and methods.
After discussing the contribution of Taylor and Gilbreth in more detail, the contribution of many other industrial engineering researchers, professionals, consultants and authors are provided in a series of notes to introduce more industrial engineering concepts. These concepts and their applications will be discussed in more detail in various focus area modules of the course.
Unless special effort to know is made, engineers take 10 years to know engineering developments and implement them in their company processes - L.D. MILES. Prime Turning (TM) - New Turning Process with High Productivity RE-INVENTING TURNING, SANDVIK COROMANT TECHNICAL PAPER, 2018 https://nraoiekc.blogspot.com/2020/06/sandvik-coromant-cutting-tools.html
Toyota style Industrial Engineering - Waste Elimination - Ohno
"We have eliminated waste by examining available resources, rearranging machines, improving machining processes, installing autonomous systems, improving tools, analyzing transportation methods and optimizing the materials at hand for manufacturing. High production efficiency has also been maintained by preventing the recurrence of defective products, operational mistakes, and accidents, and by incorporating workers' ideas." Taiichi Ohno (P. 21)
Productivity Science - Taylor's Research on Machining Productivity Improvement Metal Cutting Theory - Productivity Focus Process Planning Principles Process Charting for Process Analysis Operation Analysis of Value Adding Transformation (Operation in Process Chart Terminology) Operation Analysis of Inspection Operation Analysis of Material Handling and Transport Operation Analysis of Temporary Delays Operation Analysis of Storage in Stores Operation Analysis of Information Generation and Communication
Various organization level issues like plant layout, JIT-lean thinking, and TPM will be covered in the module as part of operation analysis of various tasks in the processes.
Introduction to Process Industrial Engineering ______________
Engineering tasks are to be divided into elementary operations or elements, and the time to complete them has to be understood through various elements contributing to it. Through that understanding the time to do an element has to be reduced. These elements have to be classified into standard elements that are present in multiple tasks.
Time study has to be done at the start of the process improvement study. At intermediate points in the study. At the end of the study. Then after some training and practice in the new method, it has to be done to fix the output expected from the new process as standard.
Taylor's Time Study: Taylor wanted time study to generate standard data for specified elements of work of machines and men. This standard data can be at national or universal level, industry level or company level. Taylor and Gilbreth recommended study of the best person to understand the best way of doing a work element. They spent time to further improve the way of doing based on productivity science developed them on the work element. For them the output of time study has to be the best way of doing a work element and the minimum time in which it can be done. Taylor insisted from the beginning that the speed specified for operations has to be the speed that can be done comfortably, safely and healthily for the entire career span of the operators. What is that speed? Industrial engineering discipline later on developed a standard for that speed as 3 miles per hour. But is it scientifically validated? It may be necessary to provide solid logic and empirical foundation for this standard. Do people feel happy and comfortable to walk 24 miles per day in 8 hours? This standard has corresponding specification in various work elements. In which work element, people are happy and comfortable to do as per the standard? It is an important question to be answered IE discipline.
{Productivity Measurement within a new architecture for the U.S. National Accounts: Lessons for Asia http://www.apo-tokyo.org/files/mp_apo-keo_jorgenson_lec.pdf not available now.]
Waste measurement is highlighted by Taiichi Ohno and other Toyota industrial engineers. Material and information flow diagram is totally Toyota invention and it measures and highlights inventory. A setup time is the variable that controls inventory (lot size), it records setup times.
Taking the cue from TPS, industrial engineering discipline has to start measurement of waste as industrial engineering measurement area.
Ohno's Seven Wastes
Losses identified in TPM
16 Losses given by Yamashina in Manufacturing Cost Reduction Deployment
Value Stream Mapping to Identify Inventory Accumulations
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
Evaluation Improvement of Production Productivity Performance using Statistical Process Control, Overall Equipment Efficiency, and Autonomous Maintenance, Amir Azizi Procedia Manufacturing Volume 2, 2015, Pages 186-190 open access http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2351978915000335
Test of hypothesis is to be used by industrial engineers to confirm or validate that their redesign or a process has resulted in the increase of productivity. This becomes useful when there is variation in the output from various workstations or persons. We can also visualize activities in different places. In such case we test the hypothesis that productivity has improved in the workstations where redesign is is implemented.
Applied Industrial Engineering - IE in Various Branches of Industrial Engineering
Industrial engineering is primarily an engineering discipline with productivity orientation. It major application is in incremental improvement of processes that give benefit within one year and hence it became closely allied with management in increasing profits, reducing costs and providing the company with the potential to reduce prices and increase profit. Hence Taiichi Ohno said industrial engineering is profit engineering. If a company is not using IE, it is losing an opportunity.
The application of industrial engineering is in processes of all engineering branches. Engineering activities like product design, production, maintenance of machines in factories, and service of consumer items are important engineering activities. In addition material handling and storage also involve engineering. Unfortunately, industrial engineering profession has not given enough attention to makes its presence in various engineering branches visible and systemic. Only limited attempts were done to create textbooks that discuss IE in specific engineering branches.
A Good Example of Applied IE - Improving Processes using New Technologies
Industry 4.0 Technology and Manual Assembly
By Amanda Aljinovic
March 15, 2023
Digital work instructions, cobots, radio frequency identification (RFID), augmented reality (AR) and other Industry 4.0 technologies can help. These technologies are designed to provide cognitive and physical support to people on the assembly line. How can engineers decide when such technologies are a worthwhile investment?
In a case study, industry 4.0 technologies application in a gear-box assembly line was studied.
Seven Industry 4.0 technologies were considered: RFID, digital work instructions, pick-to-light technology, AR, cobots, automated guided vehicles, and ergonomic manipulators.
Four quantitative criteria were used to rank the technologies: total investment cost, worker effort, workspace utilization and cycle time reduction.
RFID is one of the most important technologies for identifying and tracking assemblies in a production system. It provides precise information about the locations or states of goods in real-time and serves as a capstone for the establishment of the IoT within production.
Digital instructions are proven to reduce the assembly time and errors with complex assemblies.
Pick-to-light systems use LEDs on racks or shelves to show assemblers where to pick parts for an assembly and how many to retrieve. The lights guide assemblers through each step in the process. These systems are often connected with warehouse management systems.
AR also offers the possibility of significant improvement in cycle time, error rate, mental strain, worker focus.
Cobots are particularly desirable when people are confronted with heavy loads and repetitive, tedious activities. People can share the same workspace with the cobots, allowing managers to allocate tasks in a more flexible, efficient way.
AGVs can eliminate the need for people to transport parts and assemblies to and from the assembly line.
The ergonomic manipulator is an electronic device developed to improve ergonomics at the fifth assembly workstation. The device reduces the amount of physical effort needed to handle heavy components that must be mounted to the gearbox.
This article is a summary of a research paper co-authored by Aljinovic, Nikola Gjeldum, Ph.D., Boženko Bilic, Ph.D., and Marko Mladineo, Ph.D.
Shenzhen factory uses computer-controlled autonomous manufacturing in the dark, basically without assembly line workers in the production of electrical equipment components used in smartphones. It is equipped with an automated optimization system for Machine Learning and AI devices, an intelligent self-maintenance system, and an intelligent real-time monitoring system.
The factory’s production efficiency has been increased by 30% and the inventory cycle reduced by 15%.
The GSK plant has applied advanced technologies throughout its manufacturing operation, using advanced analytics and neural networks. This has improved line speeds at the site by 21%, cut downtime, increased yields, and delivered an OEE (overall Equipment effectiveness) improvement of 10%.
GSK has applied deep-learning image recognition to detect quality defects, and is using artificial intelligence to optimise machine throughput.
By implementing digital twin technologies, it has boosted capacity by 13%, while cycle time monitoring and the use of digital visualisation tools have cut cycle times by 9%.
Haier’s Hefei air conditioner factory applied advanced algorithms, digital twins, knowledge graphs and other cutting-edge technologies in the research and development (R&D), production and testing of household central AC systems, resulting in a 33% increase in energy efficiency, a 58% drop in the defect rate, a 49% increase in labour productivity and a 22% drop in unit manufacturing costs.
By deploying AI use cases across order forecasting, warehouse and production scheduling, product design, quality and assembly-testing domains, Foxconn Industrial Internet’s Taiwan factory has achieved a 73% increase in production efficiency, a 97% reduction in product defects, a 21% reduction in lead time and a 39% decrease in unit manufacturing costs.
486
Johnson & Johnson - Industrial Engineering - Productivity Improvement Activities - Industry 4.0 Lighthouse Plant
Johnson Xi’an replaced its manual facility with a Fourth Industrial Revolution-enabled new factory in 2019. This facility includes digital twins for technology transfer and material handling, intelligent automation of continued process verification (CPV) and batch execution processes.
This has shortened the product transfer time by 64% during site relocation and has enabled a 60% decrease in non-conformance, while improving productivity by 40%, operating costs by 24% and GHG emissions by 26%.
487
K-Water - Hwaseong - REPUBLIC OF KOREA - Industrial Engineering 4.0 - WEF - McKinsey Light House Plant
K-water launched a next-generation AI water treatment plant to reduce production costs, improve responsiveness and reduce human error. It is being scaled across 40+ other sites.
It has helped K-water to reduce its chemical usage by 19%, improve labour efficiency by 42% and reduce power consumption by 10%.
488
LONGi Solar - Jiaxing Plant - Industrial Engineering 4.0 - WEF - McKinsey Light House Plant
Jiaxing site implemented more than 30 Fourth Industrial Revolution use cases, using AI and advanced analytics to boost manufacturing operations.
The site achieved a 28% reduction in unit manufacturing costs, a 43% cut in yield loss and an 84% decrease in production lead time within one year, while also lowering energy consumption by 20%.
Mondelēz Beijing implemented 38 Fourth Industrial Revolution use cases, such as an AI-powered dough-making lights-off workshop and gas consumption optimization by machine learning. As a result, Mondelēz Beijing has achieved a 28% net revenue growth and 53% increase in labour productivity while reducing GHG emissions by 24% and food waste by 29%.
490
Novo Nordisk - Hillerød Plant - Industrial Engineering 4.0 - WEF - McKinsey Light House Plant
Novo Nordisk has invested in digitalization, automation and advanced analytics, building a robust Industrial Internet of Things operating system to be scaled across their manufacturing footprint, increasing equipment efficiency and productivity by 30%.
The site implemented Fourth Industrial Revolution use cases such as data flow integration, digital twin, machine learning across end-to-end value chain (from R&D to customers).
As a a result, the innovation lead time accelerated by 72%, shutdown days for trial were reduced by 21%, and order horizon from customers improved 14-fold.
The plant leverages 4IR capabilities such as data science, AI and machine learning across end-to-end value chain from R&D to retail customers. Altogether, it has been improving productivity and enabling faster reaction to market needs while growing production capability.
492
Quaker Houghton - Industrial Engineering 4.0 - Intelligent Die Casting
Over four years, the plant reduced its energy consumption by 59 per cent, improved waste optimisation by 64 per cent, decreased CO2 emissions by 61 per cent, and reduced water consumption by 57 per cent.
To improve energy efficiency and thereby reduce CO2 emissions, the Hyderabad team focused on the highest energy consumers in the plant: air compressors and chillers. An IoT-enabled device, Equaliser 4.0, was installed to regulate the compressors, thereby improving their efficiency. For the chillers, a data-driven energy management system with closed-loop control was fitted to constantly monitor and adjust energy consumption in real-time, optimising energy efficiency.
Unilever Sonepat implemented 30+ Fourth Industrial Revolution use cases in its E2E supply chain. Top use cases included boiler and spray dryer process twins, as well as customer data-informed no-touch production planning and inventory optimization.
This improved service by 18%, forecast accuracy by 53%, conversion cost by 40% and Scope 1 carbon footprint by 88%.
