Industrial Engineering Examples

1. Industrial Engineering Examples Walton Hancock 1/6/2010

2. Examples’ Span of Time • 1952 to !954 – Masters and Dr. of Engineering • !954 to !956 - Lieutenant, U.S.Airforce • 1956 to 1959 – Manager of Industrial Engineering and Manager of Quality Control • 1959 to 1996 – Prof. of Industrial Engineering and Prof. of Hospital Administration

3. 1.Printing Plant Lubrication Program • MS in Eng. Thesis • New Plant, Printing presses had 300 lubrication points. • Selected lubricants, trained crews and implemented system. • No bearing failures in six years • Perceived as a difficult problem by management so received brownie points

4. 2. Color Control System • Color variation on supermarket shelves a major issue. • Dr. of Eng. Thesis • Learned color physics, designed the electronic equipment to measure color in real time, Implemented system and trained operators. • Now color could be measured. Color variation decreased.

5. Color Control System • Perceived as a major contribution to printing. • Published papers and thesis was published as a book. • Had 52 people working for me upon graduation. • Company maintained salary when drafted.

6. 3.Production Methods classes- Ford • Taught foremen about methods improvements. • Final exam was presentation to Plant Manager. • Average real savings was $10,000 each for 87 students plus $1,500,000 personal effort • Always buy the product of who you are working for or you can get fired!

7. 4. MTM Association Research • MTM was widely used in US and Western Europe foe establishing production standards. • Developed some of the systems and improved older ones. Built a special purpose computer to collect in plant human performance data. • Improved MTM-1, MTM-2 and MTM-3. • Systems used in US and western Europe. • Approached to be Technical Director of Postal Service. • Expert witness on numerous labor productivity arbitrations

8. Human Factors Laboratory • Started the Human Factors Laboratory which is now the Center for Ergonomics

9. 5.Employee Heat Stress Allowances • Car Company was designing a new foundry and wanted a scientific method of determining the heat stress allowances for employees exposed to red hot metal. • Designed workstations so that no allowances were necessary with proper training. • Resolved a large labor issue and reduced costs.

10. Major Quality Problems Efforts • Because of Heat stress solution, retained by President as his personal consultant on major quality problems. • Company supported my students working on these efforts. • Was a teenager car nut. Overhauled car engine at 12, built motor bike at 13, electric car at 14 and first car at 15. I was in seventh heaven!

11. 6. Engine Hot Test System • Was teaching Quality control course, so as a project the class designed the first computer aided hot engine test system. • Set up lab, obtained 6 engines, broke the engine into seven subsystems and then designed tests to work at three per minute. • System is still in use.

12. 7. Assembly Plant Quality Control • Each car had inspection ticket. Worked only on defects occurring over 10% of time. • Divided plant into 5 zones. • A team of three- an IE under 30, a plant engineer and a plant foreman to determine root causes and eliminate defects. • Teams solved three per week with a new one occurring for a net solution rate of two per week.

13. Assembly Plant Quality • Quality of cars greatly improved. Major issue was the body quality. • This effort was an experiment. Was not deemed OK because I used my engineering skills to solve the quality problems. • Repeated experiment in another plant without using my engineering. Solved all of the problems. • Quality Control Department had 300 employees!! We had 16!!

14. Assembly Plant Quality • Offered an assembly plant, but full time. No thanks. • Everyone on team was promoted.

15. 8. Door Locking Sounds • Malen’s thesis was to make all GM cars doors closing sound like Mercedes at no increase in cost. • Collected all competitive cars and analyzed door amplitude vs. frequency. • Analyzed using finite element for one car (ME Method) • Achieved result by redesigning lock for all cars with less cost

16. 9. Engine Compression Variation • Kawlra’s thesis was to reduce between cylinder compression ratio variation to reduce vibration, improve fuel mileage and emissions. • Did variation simulation analysis on all components affecting compression ratio(41) • Eliminated four major machining processes.

17. Compression Ratios • Tightened four processes specs • Loosened a number of specs • Achieved desired result for several engines • First year savings -$40,000,000.

18. 10. Axiomatic Analysis • Hired by Institute for Social Research to help them prove that favorable worker attitudes produce higher productivity. • Worked with a 600 employee design engineering group at TVA. • Designed a small difference questionnaire to be filled in by everyone. • Questions like “You should have all the information you need when you start a design – Do you and how often? • Converted results to economics.

19. Axiomatic Analysis • Negative responses were that they did not have the necessary info which caused redesign 30% of the time and that the environmental review group refused to publish their criteria causing redesign. • Situations corrected - Output went up by 12%! • Used in production plants with good success

20. 11. Process Control • Big problem in implementing Lean is that processes have to produce high quality first. • Most process control tools help examine a particular process not the whole system process capability.) • Used step wise and ridge regression to reduce co linearity.

21. Process Control- Ridge Regression • Cut the implementation of new starter motor line from 3 years to three months. Identified 4 of 72 processes that caused defects. • Identified the poor processes in a casting line. Once identified were fixed with great improvement in quality • Did not identify poor processes in another casting processes because the standard tests(32) were not significant. Problem solved by looking elsewhere which would not have happened without knowing that tests were OK.

22. 12. Lean Systems • Started teaching Lean in 1985. • Implemented flow lines and cells • Reduced delivery from 30 days to 5 (computer chip manufacturing.) • Reduced manufacturing space by 67% (custom doors.) • Reduced clean room space by 67% (filters)

23. Lean Systems • Selected a machine and used it to demonstrate the improvements. • Die casting machines- increased productivity and quality. • Large stamping press – greatly reduced set up and down time. Out produced every other press in the company.

24. 12. Lean- Six Sigma Systems • Taught a Lean-Six Sigma industrial course One week per month over 4 months. • Students worked on an important problem over four months using Six Sigma method of selection. • Gave students “maturity” by visiting every week. • Average savings were $400,000 per student.

25. 13. Hospital Systems • Obtained NIH grant to develop better hospital operational systems. • Inpatient admissions, Operating room scheduling, nurse staffing and assignment, ancillary staffing, and outpatient scheduling systems were developed and implemented.

26. Hospital Savings

27. Hospital Systems • The key to most savings is the inpatient admissions system(ASCS). This system maximizes and stabilizes occupancy. Enables the stabilization of nursing, OR and ancillary services. • Installed ASCS in 19 hospitals with forecasted success.

28. 14.Uof M Hospital Design • Used technology to do the design of the size and configuration of U of M Main Hospital. Built to our design with forecasted results achieved.

29. 15. Company • Because NIH had no method of promoting new systems, formed a company at their suggestion. • President for 10 years. Either had to quit being a Professor or dissolve company. Dissolved company.

30. 16. Patient Waiting Times • Yuli Huang (PhD student) reduced the waiting time of outpatient clinics by 50%. • No money saved except the elimination of need to expand waiting rooms, but still a good idea.

31. 17. Operating Room Scheduling • Wrote an OR computer aided scheduling system that enabled procedures to start on time. • Implemented in 6 hospitals. Increased utilization by 20%, reduced overtime by 90%. • Started on time 95% of the time.

32. 18. Other Hospital Efforts • New company “Lean Care Systems” with 5 colleagues to continue implementation efforts.

33. Academic Output • 35 PhD Students chaired or co-chaired • 89 papers • 16 Monographs • 4 books • And a lot of fun!