Industrial Engineering

A wide spectrum of tools and techniques exists to manage business cost, output, utilization, cycle time, performance. This objective book explains strategy, benefits and application of tools, and how they fit and reinforce each other Basic IE principles apply widely, to support efficiency and productivity not only in manufacturing but also in the office, lab, maintenance shop, warehouse; service industries, military, medical services, construction. The 400 plus pages of this book present: Seven chapters on Industrial Engineering. Theory, practice, application; how it all fits together, payback of 10 times and how to get it, a sample charter. Four chapters on industrial engineering within a broader management structure; labor, materials, overhead, risk management. Eleven chapters on Cost Reduction; Survive, Recover, or Thrive. Basics, management, accounting, cherry pick, beyond cherry picking, do operating practices interfere, value added, motivation. Thirteen chapters on Work Measurement. What, Why, and How-To. Measurement techniques, incentives, time study, work sampling, construction piece rates, a model plan to establish work measurement, methods checklists, glossary, useful forms. Twenty seven chapters on Plant layout, facility design, floor planning. Benefits, concepts, work flow and productivity, sequence, relocation, relationships between elements of a layout, master plan, many tools to use, glossary. Sixteen chapters on Facility Relocation, Merger, and Consolidation. A plant instead of or in addition to, is it time to expand? to relocate? Justification, the relocation marketplace, incentives and taxes, site search, confidentiality, sequence. Examples of layouts within different building shapes. Five chapters on Capacity, Utilization, Constraints. Determine constraints, manage them, optimize capacity. Four chapters on Lean, or the Toyota Production System (although the author does not claim to be an expert). Lean Manufacturing and its predecessors, Just In Time or Just In Case, What the real Lean experts say, push or pull supply chain. A chapter, Made in (the name of your country here). Good reasons to keep manufacturing near the home market. For management and for the practitioner, IE Theory, Practice and Application presents what, why, benefits to expect, how to manage and how to practice the discipline; with checklists; and forms. Practical, real-life actions, on the production floor but also from the boardroom, are suggested to support business and production management, productivity and capacity. IE tools do not all perform the same function. Furthermore, none of these tools is automatically valuable or useful; each has pros and cons as you consider potential cost and benefit in your circumstance. Select those actions that will bring the most benefit to your circumstances and objectives and which can be implemented by your organization. "Most benefit" often refers to cost but not always; targets may in your situation include output volume now or future growth, fast reaction time, customer service, new products, new technology, quality, technical innovation or excellence, market share. IE tools can help attain all of these objectives.