Dr. K.V.S.S. Narayana Rao
Professor, National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE)
Mumbai, India
Industrial Engineering is principally concerned with developing standard operating procedures (SOP) for all the operations done by human element in a work place.
Industrial engineering department has to develop standard operating procedure, design and ensure standard working conditions, determine and specify standard time required to complete a SOP and also determine the standard pay for an operation or an operator. The rewards for achieving an output higher than the standard output per day is also to be designed by the industrial engineering department.
The objectives in designing standard operating procedures for each operation are to maximize productivity of the work system and to ensure comfort, safety and health of the operators.
Productivity of a work system is a multidimensional concept. The system has to produce output to the design specification, with minimum wastage of raw materials and machine time, and has to ensure that equipment is kept in good condition and requires minimum breakdown maintenance.
In the modern work environments, man works with most modern machines. Industrial engineer has to understand the working of the machine, and the machine elements and has to design how the operator is going do the operations that he has perform on the machine. Industrial engineer can specify the machine elements for any job if he has the competency himself or he may receive specification of machine elements required to complete a job from a specialist production engineer and then add the operations of the human element to it. In a smaller set up, industrial engineer may himself act a production technology man. Industrial engineering is traditional explained as design of man-machine-material system. Therefore, industrial engineers need to have a good grasp of production processes employed in their factories.
Industrial engineers have to specify and ensure standard working conditions. These include proper space for movement of material handling equipment, of operators and supervisors, proper ventilation and climatic conditions, proper lighting and noise conditions etc.
Industrial engineers have responsibility to train operators in the standard operating procedures and bring them to a skill level at which they can complete the job in the standard time prescribed. Once a standard operating procedure is installed, industrial engineers have to maintain a continuous improvement system to capture the learning effect. The suggestions of the operators have to collected or received systematically and they have to be evaluated and incorporated in the SOPs if appropriate giving due credit to the operator. Any changes in science/knowledge which can change an SOP and Standard Work Conditions (SWC) for better is to be recognized by the industrial engineering department on an ongoing basis and SOPs have to be modified accordingly. For this purpose, the department may do an annual review of the knowledge base as well as each SOP and SWC.
Management of Productivity, Quality, Comfort, Safety, and Health are the ongoing responsibility of industrial engineering department. They need to set standards or controls for this purpose and have to gather data on a periodic basis to compare actuals with standards. They have to use the managerial processes of planning, directing, coordinating and control to achieve the objectives in respect of productivity, quality, comfort, safety and health.
Where there is good industrial engineering practice, there has to be a workforce which is highly skilled, productive, and happy because of the relative comfort and incomes they enjoy.
Professor, National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE)
Mumbai, India
Industrial Engineering is principally concerned with developing standard operating procedures (SOP) for all the operations done by human element in a work place.
Industrial engineering department has to develop standard operating procedure, design and ensure standard working conditions, determine and specify standard time required to complete a SOP and also determine the standard pay for an operation or an operator. The rewards for achieving an output higher than the standard output per day is also to be designed by the industrial engineering department.
The objectives in designing standard operating procedures for each operation are to maximize productivity of the work system and to ensure comfort, safety and health of the operators.
Productivity of a work system is a multidimensional concept. The system has to produce output to the design specification, with minimum wastage of raw materials and machine time, and has to ensure that equipment is kept in good condition and requires minimum breakdown maintenance.
In the modern work environments, man works with most modern machines. Industrial engineer has to understand the working of the machine, and the machine elements and has to design how the operator is going do the operations that he has perform on the machine. Industrial engineer can specify the machine elements for any job if he has the competency himself or he may receive specification of machine elements required to complete a job from a specialist production engineer and then add the operations of the human element to it. In a smaller set up, industrial engineer may himself act a production technology man. Industrial engineering is traditional explained as design of man-machine-material system. Therefore, industrial engineers need to have a good grasp of production processes employed in their factories.
Industrial engineers have to specify and ensure standard working conditions. These include proper space for movement of material handling equipment, of operators and supervisors, proper ventilation and climatic conditions, proper lighting and noise conditions etc.
Industrial engineers have responsibility to train operators in the standard operating procedures and bring them to a skill level at which they can complete the job in the standard time prescribed. Once a standard operating procedure is installed, industrial engineers have to maintain a continuous improvement system to capture the learning effect. The suggestions of the operators have to collected or received systematically and they have to be evaluated and incorporated in the SOPs if appropriate giving due credit to the operator. Any changes in science/knowledge which can change an SOP and Standard Work Conditions (SWC) for better is to be recognized by the industrial engineering department on an ongoing basis and SOPs have to be modified accordingly. For this purpose, the department may do an annual review of the knowledge base as well as each SOP and SWC.
Management of Productivity, Quality, Comfort, Safety, and Health are the ongoing responsibility of industrial engineering department. They need to set standards or controls for this purpose and have to gather data on a periodic basis to compare actuals with standards. They have to use the managerial processes of planning, directing, coordinating and control to achieve the objectives in respect of productivity, quality, comfort, safety and health.
Where there is good industrial engineering practice, there has to be a workforce which is highly skilled, productive, and happy because of the relative comfort and incomes they enjoy.
Industrial engineering is a great service to the society – making everybody happy and productive in work place where the maximum time is spent by everybody in the world in the hours, they are awake - is very worthy activity.
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