Productivity and industrial engineering
What
is productivity?
Applied
in an enterprise, a sector of economic activity or the economy as a
whole, productivity may be defined as an output and input relation.
The
term productivity can be used to asses or measure the extent to which
a certain output can be extracted from a given input. This may
appears simple enough in cases where both the output and the input
are tangible and can be easily measured; however, in cases where
intangibles are introduced measure of productivity can be more
difficult.
Calculation
of productivity
Productivity
can be calculated as follows:
Productivity
and industrial engineering in goods production
In
the case of goods production, the objective is the manufacturing to a
better cost, through the raw material, with productivity of the
primary resources of production: Materials, human resources and
machines. It's on these, where the action of industrial engineers
should address their efforts. Increasing productivity indexes and
reducing production costs, are fundamental tasks of an industrial
engineer.
The domain of industrial and systems engineering
Definition of
Industrial and Systems Engineering
According
with Womack and Jones (1996),
an Industrial and Systems Engineer is one who is concerned with the
design, installation, and improvement of integrated systems of
people, material, information, equipment, and energy by drawing upon
specialized knowledge and skills 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’’.
The
work of and industrial and systems engineering
But,
what kind of system is it that Industrial and Systems Engineering
work to optimize? In the context of organizations, we can say that
the ultimate system of interest is the extended enterprise.
Industrial
and system engineers must see how performance improvement in the
target subsystem (warehouse layout, work cell configuration, display
/human-equipment interface, queue design, simulation, supply chain,
etc.) serves the higher good or works to optimize the performance of
the larger system.
The
domain of industrial and systems engineering
Basically,
industrial and systems engineering works in four areas: manufacturing
systems engineering, management systems, operations research and
human factors engineering. Of course, each of these areas needs basic
knowledge of mathematics, accounting, economics, statistics,
psychology, etc.
A
simple representation of the domain of industrial and systems
engineering is shown below.
The
Industrial and systems engineering value proposition isn’t only
knowledge; it is the ability to reduce that knowledge to practice in
such a way that it produces positive business results.
Activities of industrial engineering
Most important activities of industrial engineering are:
- Development of time standards, costing and performance standards.
- Selection of processes and assembling methods.
- Selection and design of tools and equipment.
- Design of facilities including plant location, layout of building, machines and equipment, material handling system raw materials and finished goods storage facilities.
- Design and improvement of planning and control systems for production, inventory, quality and plant maintenance and distribution systems.
- Cost control systems.
- Development and installation of job evaluation systems.
- Installation of wage incentive schemes.
- Design and installation of value engineering and analysis system.
- Operation research.
- Mathematical and statistical analysis.
- Performance evaluation.
- Organization and methods.
- Supplier selection and evaluation.
Industrial engineering functions
Industrial engineering plays an important role in any organization. Organizations are usually set up with selected industrial engineering functions best suited to their requirements. For example a company manufacturing standardized products may not have operation research functions whereas a manufacturer of precision instruments may heavily rely on quality control functions.
Traditionally, industrial engineering involves different functions, which support manufacturing and service operations in order to improve productivity, safety and workers welfare. These functions, as in the past, are otherwise neglected by many entrepreneurs who are only motivated by profit. Developed countries have long ago realized the physiological needs of their citizens as their life style has improved with the abundance of material resources. Further, with an increase in educated workers, the demand for improved working conditions and better treatment from the owners of enterprises increased. The owners adopted many of the industrial engineering functions to satisfy the employees demand while still maintaining profitability.
Industrial engineering functions can be grouped in different ways to suit an organization’s need. The major groupings, which provide a profile of its involvement, are:
- Methods engineering
- Work measurement
- Planning of facilities and handling of materials
- Statistical quality control
- Production planning and control
- Operations analysis and computer simulation
- Human resources
- Safety at work
- Equipment engineering
- Advanced concepts and strategies
