IIE Solutions articles from September 1998

IIE Solutions archives from September 1998

IE skills are great for business, says consultant. (industrial engineering consultant Alan Nager)
September 1, 1998... Alan Nager firmly believes that a grounding in industrial engineering provides some of the best tools with which to start a business, and he should know. Nager started his own IE consulting firm five years ago and credits his IE experience for...

If you meet a technology guru in the road, kill him! (competing computer techniques in engineering)
September 1, 1998... Joseph Campbell has described mythology as the "waking dream that is dreamed by the human collective unconscious." Myths arise as an artistic expression of the deep-flowing rivers of emotion and shared experience that seem timeless and...

Integrating facilities planning and ISO 14000.
September 1, 1998... Action taken before it is needed is the hallmark of superior planning and is always preferable to a knee-jerk reaction. It has long been the intent of facilities planners to initiate actions that eliminate the need for crisis activities. Some of...

Facility planning's hidden link. (facility planning and infrastructure)
September 1, 1998... Here we examine the link between facility planning and a host of frequently hidden factors collectively known as the infrastructure. Infrastructural elements do not participate in the facility planning process, but they do support it. The...

]Incremental change. (ergonomics management)(Ergonomics Solutions: Point)
September 1, 1998... Incremental change can be represented symbolically by the tortoise in the fable about the tortoise and the hare. There is continuous progress toward a goal, usually in small steps. I will address three aspects of incremental change in the context...

Comprehensive redesign. (ergonomics management)(Ergonomics Solutions: Counterpoint)
September 1, 1998... The idea behind comprehensive redesign is that all scheduled improvements to a set of operations are designed and implemented simultaneously. It is based on the premise that the advantages of making all of these changes in a single, multifaceted,...

Work standard assessment using heart rate monitoring.
September 1, 1998... Almost all industrial manufacturing facilities use some type of work or labor standards to measure productivity and forecast costs. Traditionally, this has been the domain of industrial engineers or other time study experts, who analyze the work...

Effective communication skills for engineers.
September 1, 1998... Most engineers are attracted to nonlinear, iterative processes with inexact solutions. After all, these represent the most intriguing of technical puzzles. But what if the process were the process of listening? Would it send you scrambling for...

Gilbreth winners built profession over the years. (Institute of Industrial Engineers' Frank and Lillian Gilbreth Industrial Engineering Award)(part eight)
September 1, 1998... In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Institute of Industrial Engineers, IIE Solutions presents the eighth in a series of histories, reflections, and projections about IIE. This month we take a look at past winners of the Frank and...

Aerospace manufacturer takes off with paperless manufacturing system.
September 1, 1998... CHALLENGE: Reduce time spent managing and handling paper work orders and instructions, which bogs down manufacturing programs at aerospace STRATEGY: Switch to paperless manufacturing by implementing a manufacturing execution system (MES) to...