The Origin of Industrial Engineering
Industrial engineering originated in the activity of engineers managing engineering activities. More specifically, it originated in engineers managing the production activity. Frederick William Taylor is regarded as the father of the discipline. He advocated functional management, a management or supervision system wherein number of experts participate in the management of the a department instead of a single person being the manager or supervision and responsible for the successful performance of the department. Taylor's advocacy of function management in production departments was accepted by the management profession in the form of staff assistance to managers. Industrial engineering emerged as one of the staff activities. Industrial engineering has focus on human effort engineering and system efficiency engineering. In the management literature effectiveness and efficiency are considered as two important dimensions of the performance of an organization or a department. Industrial engineering has focus on efficiency.
Effectiveness refers to producing the goods or services the consumers want. Manager has to find out what goods the market wants, forecast the demand and create a production-distribution system capable of producing and distributing the output in the market at a profit. There is significant customer interaction in this process even for a production manager. Industrial engineering department supports the production managers in the area of running the department (or the organization if they are assisting the CEO) with high efficiency. It analyses the resource usage in the production-distribution systems created by managers or specialist designers of the systems and provides design alternatives that improve the system efficiency. While the system design is a synthesis activity done in response to a demand to create a system capable of producing and distributing a product or service satisfying a target production quantity with a specified minimum profit, industrial engineering focuses on the analysis of the entire system as well as components to identify opportunities to reduce resource use. It is a redesign activity, done over an extended time frame to continuously increase efficiency. What is the reason for increase in efficiency over a period of time. It is now theoretically as well as empirically proved that efficiency increasing ideas come to people as they are repeating an activity. This is termed as learning effect. Technology is continuously subjected to improvement and capital equipment manufacturers are coming with better technology to reduce costs. Industrial engineers also participate in this continuous improvement of production-distribution system with a special methods and tools that focus on eliminating waste, capturing the ideas of large number of operators, supervisors and engineers on continuous basis and incorporating the recent offerings of capital equipment manufacturers, subcontractors, component manufacturers and raw material suppliers that provide cost reduction opportunities.
Industrial engineering becomes a special function that has focus on improving efficiency same as eliminating waste or reducing cost.
Efficiency - Multiple Explanations
We depicted industrial engineering as management function or activity with special focus on efficient industrial or business activities. What is efficiency of a production-distribution system? In the case of machines we define efficiency as output/input. But in the case of production systems, the definition given by Harrington Emerson, a pioneer industrial engineer is elimination of waste. This definition was utilized by Japanese company, Toyota Motors to improve efficiency of its operations many fold and became better than American companies. So efficiency of a production system is defined in terms of identifying and eliminating waste. How is waste identified? Waste is identified in one way by comparison. Waste can be defined in terms of resources. One can talk of waste of manpower, waste of material, waste of machine time, waste of energy etc. Toyota management man, Taichi Ohno came out with 7-wastes model. In this model, wastes include inventory (stock of materials, components etc.) and rework due to production of defective items.
Productivity: Productivity is another term related to efficiency. Productivity can be measured as output for specfic inputs. One can say to make one unit of output 4 mandays are being utilized in an organization. If in another organization, only 3.5 mandays are being utilized to make one unit of similar output there is a need for analysis and investigation to improve productivity. If similar machines are being used in both the organizations, probably there is waste in the first organization. Productivity measurements can be done for each resource and such measures are called partial productivity measures. There are attempts to calculate total factor productivity in terms of money. Industrial engineering department is entrusted with the responsibility of improving productivity.
Standard Cost: Standard cost calculation was made possible by industrial engineering technique of time study. F.W. Taylor, the father of industrial engineering developed the time study method through which very small elements of man-machine work was timed using stop watches and fair amount of time necessary to complete the element by any trained operator was determined. With this method, it was possible to fix standard time required to do one unit of out for man-machine systems. Cost of production for unit of output could be calculated with this method. Many times in companies there are deviations from the prescribed method termed as standard method and actual costs differ from standard costs. This difference is a waste, and there can be actions to minimize this waste. Apart from it, there can be reduction in standard cost itself because of the learning effect. Japanese managers and industrial engineers have implemented systems for exploiting learning effect in a systematic manner by demanding reduction in standard cost every month. Continuous improvement in activities made possible by suggestion schemes is termed as Kaizen by Japanese people. Kaizen means good change and the Japanese term encourages operators to think of good change always. Reduction in standard cost is improvement in efficiency and productivity. Hence efficiency improvement is cost reduction and industrial engineers are responsible for cost reduction. In any organization, industrial engineers have to reduce standard cost per unit every period and this reduction will result in reduction of total cost of the organization for the same level of output between two successive periods.
Efficiency improvement is carried out by industrial engineers through human effort engineering and system efficiency engineering.
Industrial Engineering Definitions
Going
Industrial engineering directs the efficient conduct of manufacturing, construction, transportation, or even commercial enterprises of any undertaking, indeed in which human labor is directed to accomplishing any kind of work . Industrial engineering has drawn upon mechanical engineering, upon economics, sociology, psychology, philosophy, accountancy, to fuse from these older sciences a distinct body of science of its own . It is the inclusion of the economic and the human elements especially that differentiates industrial engineering from the older established branches of the profession (Going, 1911) [1].
Maynard
“Industrial engineering is the engineering approach applied to all factors, including the human factor, involved in the production and distribution of products or services.” (Maynard, 1953) [2]
Lehrer
“Industrial engineering is the design of situations for the useful coordination of men, materials and machines in order to achieve desired results in an optimum manner. The unique characteristics of Industrial Engineering center about the consideration of the human factor as it is related to the technical aspects of a situation, and the integration of all factors that influence the overall situation.” (Lehrer, 1954) [3]
AIIE
“Industrial engineering is concerned with the design, improvement, and installation of integrated systems of men, materials, and equipment. It draws upon specialized knowledge and skill in the mathematical, physical, and social sciences together with the principles and methods of engineering analysis and design, to specify, predict, and evaluate the results to be obtained from such systems.” (AIIE, 1955). [4]
Nadler
"Industrial engineering may be defined as the art of utilizing scientific principles, psychological data, and physiological information for designing, improving, and integrating industrial, management, and human operating procedures." (Nadler, 1955) [5]
Lyndal Urwick
“Industrial engineering is that branch of engineering knowledge and practice which
1. Analyzes, measures, and improves the method of performing the tasks assigned to individuals,
2. Designs and installs better systems of integrating tasks assigned to a group,
3. Specifies, predicts, and evaluates the results obtained.
It does so by applying to materials, equipment and work specialized knowledge and skill in the mathematical and physical sciences and the principles and methods of engineering analysis and design. Since, however, work has to be carried out by people; engineering knowledge needs to be supplemented by knowledge derived from the biological and social sciences.” (Lyndall Urwick, 1963) [6]
"Industrial engineering is concerned with the design, improvement and installation of integrated systems of people, materials, information, equipment and energy. It draws upon specialized knowledge and skill in the mathematical, physical, and social sciences together with the principles and methods of engineering analysis and design, to specify, predict, and evaluate the results to be obtained from such systems." [7]
Sawada
"Industrial engineering is an art for creating the most efficient system composed of people, matters, energy, and information, by which a specific goal in industrial, economic, or social activities will be achieved within predetermined probabilities and accuracy. The system may be for a small single work station, a group, a section, a department, an institution or for a whole business enterprise. It may be also be of a regional, national, international, or inter-planetary scope."(Sawada, 1977) [8]
Narayana Rao
“Industrial Engineering is Human Effort Engineering. It is an engineering discipline that deals with the design of human effort in all occupations: agricultural, manufacturing and service. The objectives of Industrial Engineering are optimization of productivity of work-systems and occupational comfort, health, safety and income of persons involved.” (Narayana Rao, 2006) [9]
Narayana Rao
"Industrial Engineering is Human Effort Engineering and System Efficiency Engineering. It is an engineering discipline that deals with the design of human effort and system efficiency in all occupations: agricultural, manufacturing and service. The objectives of Industrial Engineering are optimization of productivity of work-systems and occupational comfort, health, safety and income of persons involved."(Narayana Rao, 2009) [10]
Yamada
Total Industrial Engineering is "a system of methods where the performance of labor is maximized by reducing Muri (unnatural operation), Mura (irregular operation) and Muda (non-value added operation), and then separating labor from machinery through the use of sensor techniques." (Yamashina)
"Industrial Engineering is Human Effort Engineering and System Efficiency Engineering. It is an engineering-based management staff-service discipline that deals with the design of human effort and system efficiency in all occupations: agricultural, manufacturing and service. The objectives of Industrial Engineering are optimization of productivity of work-systems and occupational comfort, health, safety and income of persons involved."(Narayana Rao, 2011) [Added to this knol on 14.9.2011]
References
1. Going, Charles Buxton, Principles of Industrial Engineering, McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, 1911, Pages 1,2,3
2. Maynard, H.B., “Industrial Engineering”, Encyclopedia Americana, Americana Corporation, Vol. 15, 1953
3. Lehrer, Robert N., “The Nature of Industrial Engineering,” The Journal of Industrial Engineering, vol.5, No.1, January 1954, Page 4
4. Maynard, H.B., Handbook of Industrial Engineering, 2nd Edition, McGraw Hill, New York, 1963.
5. Nadler, Gerald, Motion and Time Study", McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., New York, 1955
6. Urwick, Lyndall, F., “Development of Industrial Engineering”, Chapter 1 in Handbook of Industrial Engineering, H.B. Maynard (Ed.), 2nd Edition, McGraw Hill, New York, 1963.
8. Sawada, P.N., "A Concept of Industrial Engineering," International Journal of Production Research, Vol 15, No. 6, 1977, Pp. 511-22.
9. Narayana Rao, K.V.S.S., “Definition of Industrial Engineering: Suggested Modification.” Udyog Pragati, October-December 2006, Pp. 1-4.
Going's definition is an important one and clarifies the uniqueness of industrial engineering in engineering as well as management subjects. It is the focus on human factor and economic factor that distinguishes IE from other engineering branches and management subjects. Defintions of AIIE and IIE have created ambiguity in the explanation of industrial engineering. It would have been more appropriate if AIIE and IIE defined IE as economic design of production systems. That would have clarified the role of IE in systems design.
Explanation of IE as human effort engineering and system efficiency engineering provides a great breadth to IE discipline ranging from a single operator with a simple tool to global systems in terms of size and it provides a great area of focus that is efficiency in the two important performance dimensions of management: effectiveness and efficiency.
Industrial Engineering Tool Kit
What the important methods and techniques of Industrial Engineering?
Human Effort Engineering
Stop watch time study, work sampling, PMTS - MTM, MOST
3.
Ergonomics
4. Safe Work Practice Design
Personal protective devices
5. Wage Incentives and Job Evaluation
System Efficiency Engineering
Process analysis, operation analysis, work station design
2. Product Design Efficiency Engineering:
Value Engineering
3. Capital Equipment Efficiency Engineering :
Engineering Economics, Replacement Studies, OEE improvement,
4. Plant Layout Efficiency Improvement: Plant Layout Studies for reduction of material movement, operator movement and movement of salesmen etc.
Assembly Line Balancing ,
Linear programming models, Integer programming, Non-linear programming
Engineering Economic Appraisals of projects submitted by Engineering Departments
Bibliography - Addition in 2013
20 ways to improve productivity in garment production
http://www.onlineclothingstudy.com/2012/02/20-ways-to-improve-productivity-in.html
Many IE tools are mentioned in the list. Nice article
Practice of Twinning by Arcelor Mittal - Asking a low productivity unit to study and implement processes of high productivity plant
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304444604577340053191940814.html
Productivity - Efficiency Improvement - Cost Reduction Projects in Various Industries and Organizations - A Collection - made in 2013
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Chapter is being made available to readers as it is being written. Suggestions are welcome.
