Industrial engineering basic concepts

Industrial Engineering (IE) is a function that studies a process, classifies the various steps in the process, fixes time to perform steps, works on improving the process and implementsbetter practices.
Engineers make things, Industrial Engineers make things better.

Capacity Utilization (CU) Base lining is a method to measure and improve utilization of a processthrough a time study analysis.

Time Study is a methodology that is used to measure a process by observing the time taken to complete a process.

Process Listing Activities ListingVolume Definition Time Study and Validation Volume Tracking Avaliability Tracking Calculate CU CU Tracking and Reporting Improve CU

Process Listing: Set of activities to do.
ActivityListing: Set of tasks performed on a given input to convert it into the desired output.
Volume Definition: Output of each activity step.
Time Study: Work measurement technique that usesa stopwatch to time operations and fine-tunes the time applying performance rating of an average qualified operator.
Volume Tracking: Process of updating the number of activities that aperson works upon, in a database.
Availability Tracking / Loss Tracking: Process of updating the time (in minutes) that a resource is available /unavailable for work.
Calculate CU:Measurement of how much of an employee’s time is used for processing work.
CU tracking and Reporting: To enter in a database the month’s (period desired) IE metrics (KPIs).
Improve CU: We canimprove CU by increasing efficiency and/or increasing availability.

Key IE Metrics: Capaciti Utilization (CU) that is the ratio of work produced in standard time against the totalresource time. Availability that is the ratio of available time against the total resource time and Efficiency that is the ratio of work produced in standard time against the available time.