Industrial Engineering Week 1: Overview of IE as a Profession

Industrial Engineering

• Industrial Engineering is the branch of engineering that involves figuring out how to make or do things better.
• Industrial engineers are concerned with reducing production costs, increasing efficiency, improving the quality of products and services, ensuring worker health and safety, protecting the environment, and complying with government regulations.

Role of Industrial Engineers

• Work to eliminate waste of time, money, materials, energy, and other commodities.
• Examples of their work include streamlining an operating room, shortening a roller-coaster line, making assembly lines safer and more efficient, and speeding up the delivery of goods.

Basic Activities of Industrial Engineering

• Method improvement through Method Study and work sampling to reduce time.
• Estimating unavoidable allowances like personal, fatigue, etc., and avoidable allowances like machine breakdown, waiting for pieces, etc.
• Developing work content of any operation in terms of standard allowed minutes by Time Study and incorporating unavoidable allowances.
• Identifying and specifying the use of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE).
• Calculating machine and manpower requirement based on target, or calculation of achievable target based on available machine and manpower.
• Planning machine layout for maximizing unidirectional material movement (minimizing crisscross material movement).
• Optimizing handling and storage of cut parts, half-finished parts, and complete garment for easy retrieval.
• Managing Work in Process (WIP) in sewing line to maximize production, balance efficiency, and operator utilization through line balancing technique.

Duties and Responsibilities of Industrial Engineers

• Process Analysis and Optimization: analyzing and evaluating existing processes and systems to identify inefficiencies, bottlenecks, and areas for improvement.
• Workforce Planning and Optimization: assessing workforce requirements, designing work schedules, allocating resources efficiently, and implementing strategies to improve productivity and maximize the utilization of human resources.
• Layout Design and Facility Planning: designing and optimizing facility layouts for factories, warehouses, and other operational spaces.
• Supply Chain and Logistics Management: optimizing supply chain and logistics operations by analyzing transportation networks, inventory management systems, and distribution strategies.
• Quality Control and Process Improvement: implementing quality control procedures, developing strategies to monitor and improve product or service quality, and conducting statistical analysis and root cause analysis for quality issues.

Learn about the basics of Industrial Engineering, including its definition, goals, and responsibilities. Discover how industrial engineers work to improve production, efficiency, and quality.