Telephone Call Center Services Industrial Engineering

Avishai MandelBaum is teaching a course service engineering.

http://ie.technion.ac.il/serveng/Lectures/Intro_to_ServEng_Teaching_Note.pdf

Information Technology Systems Cost Reduction - Theory and Research Papers

Reducing the Cost of IT operations Is Automation always the Answer?
http://static.usenix.org/event/hotos05/final_papers_backup/brown/brown_html/hotos05.html




Reducing operational costs through MIPS management
 L.M. Kwiatkowski & C. Verhoef
Department of Computer Science, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
De Boelelaan 1081a, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands
http://www.cs.vu.nl/~x/mips/mips.pdf

Information Systems Industrial Engineering - Online Book

This is the first pass attempt to assemble online and print articles related to the subject


Software Value Engineering


Industrial Engineering in Computer Engineering and Information Technology

Software Value Engineering


Information Productivity Improvement - Bibliography


TPS in Software Develpment - The Seven Wastes in Software Development

Lean Software Development and IT Enabled Services

Software Process Efficiency - Bibliography

Cloud Computing - Cost Reduction Technology - Adoption Case Studies and News

Value Engineering Computer Room Lightning
1984 Save Proceedings
http://www.value-eng.org/knowledge_bank/attachments/VE%20Computer%20Room%20Lighting.pdf



Understanding Software Process Redesign using Modeling, Analysis and Simulation
Presented at the ProSim'99 Workshop on Software Process Simulation and Modeling, Silver Springs, OR 27-29 June 1999
Revised version to appear in Software Process-Improvement and Practice.
Walt Scacchi
Information and Computer Science Dept.
University of California
Irvine, CA 92697-3425 USA
http://www.ics.uci.edu/~wscacchi/Papers/Software_Process_Redesign/Paper-Draft.html


A coordination theory approach to process description and redesign
Kevin Crowston and Charles Osborn
CCS WP #204 SWP # 4029
July 1998
http://ccs.mit.edu/papers/pdf/wp204.pdf


Information Systems - Industrial Engineering  - 4 year course
Binus University
http://curriculum.binus.ac.id/program/information-systems-industrial-engineering/1/

Two Kinds of Technology of Industrial Systems

I explain that role of Industrial engineering by stating that all systems are designed by functional systems specialists first and then they are evaluated and improved by industrial engineers. Industrial engineering is a specialized engineering activity. Safety engineering, reliability engineering etc. are some more specialized engineering branches that have a role in systems design.

In management systems also the original design is done by that functional management specialist and industrial engineers improve efficiency in the next iteration of design.

Quan-qing Li and Ming Li of Zhengzhou Institute of Aeronautical Industry Management expressed the same view in their paper "Thinking about the Application and Development Strategy of Industrial Engineering" presented in the IEEE 2011 conference on Industrial Engineering.

Every system has inputs, conversion process and output. The system design involves both specialized engineering technology and industrial engineering technology. The specialized engineering technology solves the problem of "is it possible?"  It makes the system come into existence and deliver the required output. It is industrial engineering technology that will make the system give good output from the given resources. It makes the system run with high efficiency and low cost. "Improving elements of operations" and "Seeking optimization" are the characteristic of Industrial engineering.


Many times entrepreneurs neglect industrial engineering because even without IE, the system is running and giving desired output. The short-sighted entrepreneurs do not see the waste that is being incurred in the system. Many times it is invisible to them until they lose the battle in the market place due to high cost of their product.

Payback Period - Estimation of Cash Flows and Determination of Payback Period

Payback Period

Payback period is an investment appraisal metric. This period will indicate the number of years it will take to get back the cash initially invested in a project. The period is calculated using the estimated cash flows, both outflows and inflows.

Cashflow Estimation - Some Principles

Cash flows of a project have to be estimated for a time horizon. The time horizon is the minimum of physical life of the plant, technological life of the plant, or the product market life.

In estimating the cash flows of a project, incremental principles (that considers all incidental effects), separation of investment and financing principle, post-tax principle and consistency principles are employed.

Incremental principle

In an existing company, the cash flows are to be estimated by evaluating the cash flows of the company with the project and without the project. The difference will be incremental cash flows related to the project.

Separation of investment and financing principle

In a standard capital expenditure analysis, interest payment to be made on borrowings is not brought into the picture. Borrowing is considered a financing decision and its impact is included in the cost of capital estimation. Hence cash flow estimates do not have any interest payment of component.

Post-tax principle

Tax impact on the cash flow is considered and after tax cash flows are estimated.

Consistency principle

The inflation expectation built into estimation of revenues and costs and cost of capital have to be consistent or same.

___________________________________________________________________________________________

Some Examples Issues That I came Across Recently

1. Acquisition of a software by a design department.
2. Replacement of boiler tubes.
3. Replacement of an electronic equipment as some cards used in the equipment are not available anymore for replacement (the equipment manufacturer is not supplying those cards anymore as the equipment is phased out for production).

The approval authority for the expenditures wants the concenred departments to calculate the payback period for the expenditure proposals.

Originally Knol 1952

Estimation of Cash Flows for Engineering Economic Analysis

An investment proposal or an expenditure proposal must have estimated benefits and costs for doing engineering economic analysis. For simple proposals, the engineer making the proposal may be able to make these estimates. For complex proposals, involvement of marketing, production, maintenance and other operating departments and accounting department may be necessary. The estimation of benefits and costs are to be made keeping in mind the following principles.


Cash flow Estimation - Basic Principles

Time horizon

Cash flows of a project have to be estimated for a time horizon. The time horizon is the minimum of physical life of the plant, technological life of the plant, or the product market life.

Cash flow principle

In economic analysis, it is actual cash flow that is used. So the time at which actual cash is received or paid is to be estimated along with the amount of cash flow.



In estimating the cash flows of a project, incremental principle (that considers all incidental effects), separation of investment and financing principle, post-tax principle and consistency principles are employed.

Incremental principle

In an existing company, the cash flows are to be estimated by evaluating the cash flows of the company with the project and without the project. The difference will be incremental cash flows related to the project.


Long-term funds principle

The cash flows reflect the benefits that accrue to long-term funds.

Interest exclusion principle - Separation of investment and financing principle

In a standard capital expenditure analysis, interest payment to be made on borrowings is not brought into the picture. Borrowing is considered a financing decision and its impact is included in the cost of capital estimation. Hence cash flow estimates do not have any interest payment  component (interest paid for long term funds).

Post-tax principle

Tax impact on the cash flow is considered and after tax cash flows are estimated.

Consistency principle

The inflation expectation built into estimation of revenues and costs and cost of capital have to be consistent or same.


Thus, in estimating the cash flows of a project, incremental principle (that considers all incidental effects), separation of investment and financing principle, post-tax principle and consistency principles are employed.

Opportunity to increase manufacturing resource productivity - McKinsey Article

June 2012


Stephan Mohr,  an associate principal in McKinsey’s Munich office, Ken Somers,  a consultant in the Antwerp office, Steven Swartz,  a principal in the Chicago office, and Helga Vanthournout, s a consultant in the Geneva office jointly authored an article published in McKinsey Quarterly, 2012 June on the theme Manufacturing Resource Productivity.

They observed that cost of inputs especially raw materials and energy are going up as production and consumption of manufactured goods is going up in emerging countries. Therefore variable cost is going up as a proportion of production expenses.

But companies have a visible opportunity of reducing these variable costs. Companies who make use of these opportunities will have operational stability compared to organization who ignore them and hence likely to suffer volatility.

The opportunities are in four areas: Production process redesign, Product redesign, Value recovery from used products that are with consumers, and Supply circle management.

Processes can be redesigned to save 20 to 30% energy.

Product redesign can be undertaken to reduce material use by 30%. At the same time design changes can be brought in to their potential for recycling and reuse.

The benefit can go up to 50% if the mechanism and recycling and reuse are put in place with bringing consumers into the loop to recover used products from them.

Once a company is successful with these initiatives, it can implement them in its supply partner organizations.

Read the full article
http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Manufacturing_resource__productivity_2982