Industrial Engineering articles from October 1992

Industrial Engineering archives from October 1992

Saturn gets high volume and flexibility from LeBlond Makino cells. (Flexible Manufacturing)
October 1, 1992... Try to accommodate 200 part design changes on a typical automotive transfer line and you will find out what a world-class headache feels like. However, a decision to make flexible machining a key manufacturing strategy let Saturn Corp. do...

Litton Unit handling systems verifies solutions with Wolverine Software. (Litton Unit Handling Systems) (Simulation)
October 1, 1992... New material handling ideas may sound great on paper, but will they really work? When engineers at Litton Unit Handling Systems, Hebron, Ky., want to try out a new design or retrofit, they go to their in-house simulation staff. "It is the...

The need for both labor and machine flexibility in manufacturing. (Flexible Manufacturing)
October 1, 1992... Flexibility, balance and inventory are the three strategic resources for manufacturing. Each is a substitute for the other. For example, as the balance of a process is increased, there is less of a need for inventory and flexibility....

Implementation strategies for quality programs.
October 1, 1992... Today there is a growing interest in public and private sectors of the world economy to improve the quality of goods and services. However, organiations getting started in quality improvement often have problems defining the quality system they...

Performance-based pay: linking work objectives to personal interests. (The Human Side)
October 1, 1992... I recently did some work at a major southern plant site. The Fortune 50 company has a paternalistic philosophy of taking care of its workers with good pay, good benefits and, at this site, virtually no chance of unemployment. The company is...

New technologies take IEs back to traditional techniques. (industrial engineers)(computer-based work measurement)
October 1, 1992... Management needs the productivity and quality information that is generated by sound work measurment. Many of us remember the days of the stopwatch when well-educated and well-paid industrial engineers had to spend their valuable time studying,...

Southern utility company energized by automatic data collection system. (Duke Power)
October 1, 1992... A Charlotte, N.C. based utility company powered its way to higher productivity, better organization and greater efficiency by employing a data collection system for use throughout their operation. Before turning to automatic data collection...

What happens when a scanner reads a bar code. (Tutorial)
October 1, 1992... Bar code readers, or scanners, were put into practical application about 20 years ago. Since that time, a large variety of scanning equipment with different reading capabilities have been introduced. Wand, or light pen, readers were some...

Using verification to ensure successful automation. (different techniques for bar-code verification)
October 1, 1992... The most important reasons for the popularity of bar code transaction systems are the great direct and indirect benefits based on the confidence in its reliable and accurate information as well as the increased speed of its data entry system....

Can you really bank on bar coded data?
October 1, 1992... "These lousy bar codes never work right." Ever hard that? How about when you are in the supermarket line and the item doesn't seem to register when scanned? What about bar codes? Are they accurate and reliable? Are they really better than...

Identifying and ranking opportunities for machine vision in a facility.
October 1, 1992... Identifying machine vision applications in a facility is often done on the basis of dousing the most recent "fire." Often when the fire goes out, the value of machine vision becomes suspect, especially since machine vision systems experience...

The potential of RF/ID is finally a reality. (radio frequency/identification)
October 1, 1992... As the world moves toward more highly automated factories, industrial applications for radio frequency identification (RF/ID) are proliferating. Current applications include automated material handling systems, automatic ID for tool management...

A power plant maintenance worker productivity process.
October 1, 1992... Historically, power plant maintenance managers have always been concerned about worker productivity. In order to measure maintenance work productivity and methods to improve it, a productivity management process can be defined through the four...

Critical resource diagram: a new tool for resource management.
October 1, 1992... Resource management is a major function in any organization. In a project management environment, project goals are achieved through the strategic allocation of resources to tasks. Several analytical and graphical tools are available for...

America's new discipline: government and industry partnerships. (Transcript)
October 1, 1992... Government and industry actions and partnerships in quality and productivity that are essential in these brutal economic times for the United States and our trading nations throughout the world. We urgently need to understand and then to...