Industrial and production engineering (IPE) is an interdisciplinary engineering discipline that includes manufacturing technology, engineering sciences, management science, and optimization of complex processes, systems, or organizations. It is concerned with the understanding and application of engineering procedures in manufacturing processes and production methods. Industrial engineering dates back all the way to the industrial revolution, initiated in 1700s by Sir Adam Smith, Henry Ford, Eli Whitney, Frank Gilbreth and Lilian Gilbreth, Henry Gantt, F.W. Taylor, etc. After the 1970s, industrial and production engineering developed worldwide and started to widely use automation and robotics. Industrial and production engineering includes three areas: Mechanical engineering (where the production engineering comes from), industrial engineering, and management science.
The objective is to improve efficiency, drive up effectiveness of manufacturing, quality control, and to reduce cost while making their products more attractive and marketable. Industrial engineering is concerned with the development, improvement, and implementation of integrated systems of people, money, knowledge, information, equipment, energy, materials, as well as analysis and synthesis. The principles of IPE include mathematical, physical and social sciences and methods of engineering design to specify, predict, and evaluate the results to be obtained from the systems or processes currently in place or being developed. The target of production engineering is to complete the production process in the smoothest, most-judicious and most-economic way. Production engineering also overlaps substantially with manufacturing engineering and industrial engineering. The concept of production engineering is interchangeable with manufacturing engineering.
As for education, undergraduates normally start off by taking courses such as physics, mathematics (calculus, linear analysis, differential equations), computer science, and chemistry. Undergraduates will take more major specific courses like production and inventory scheduling, process management, CAD/CAM manufacturing, ergonomics, etc., towards the later years of their undergraduate careers. In some parts of the world, universities will offer Bachelor's in Industrial and Production Engineering. However, most universities in the U.S. will offer them separately. Various career paths that may follow for industrial and production engineers include: Plant Engineers, Manufacturing Engineers, Quality Engineers, Process Engineers and industrial managers, project management, manufacturing, production and distribution, From the various career paths people can take as an industrial and production engineer, most average a starting salary of at least $50,000.
History
Industrial Revolution The roots of the industrial engineering profession date back to the Industrial Revolution. The technologies that helped mechanize traditional manual operations in the textile industry including the Flying shuttle, the Spinning jenny, and perhaps most importantly the Steam engine generated Economies of scale that made Mass production in centralized locations attractive for the first time. The concept of the production system had its genesis in the factories created by these innovations.Maynard & Zandin. Maynard's Industrial Engineering Handbook. McGraw Hill Professional 5th Edition. June 5, 2001. p. 1.4–1.6
Specialization of labor
Adam Smith's concepts of division of labour and the "invisible hand" of capitalism introduced in his treatise "The Wealth of Nations" motivated many of the technological innovators of the Industrial Revolution to establish and implement factory systems. The efforts of James Watt and Matthew Boulton led to the first integrated machine manufacturing facility in the world, including the implementation of concepts such as cost control systems to reduce waste and increase productivity and the institution of skills training for craftsmen.
Charles Babbage became associated with industrial engineering because of the concepts he introduced in his book "On the Economy of Machinery and Manufacturers" which he wrote as a result of his visits to factories in England and the United States in the early 1800s. The book includes subjects such as the time required to perform a specific task, the effects of subdividing tasks into smaller and less detailed elements, and the advantages to be gained from repetitive tasks.
Interchangeable parts Eli Whitney and Simeon North proved the feasibility of the notion of interchangeable parts in the manufacture of muskets and pistols for the US Government. Under this system, individual parts were mass-produced to tolerances to enable their use in any finished product. The result was a significant reduction in the need for skill from specialized workers, which eventually led to the industrial environment to be studied later.
Modern development
Industrial engineering In 1960 to 1975, with the development of decision support systems in supply such as the Material requirements planning (MRP), people can emphasize the timing issue (inventory, production, compounding, transportation, etc.) of industrial organization. Israeli scientist Dr. Jacob Rubinovitz installed the CMMS program developed in IAI and Control-Data (Israel) in 1976 in South Africa and worldwide.
In the seventies, with the penetration of Japanese management theories such as Kaizen and Kanban, Japan realized very high levels of quality and productivity. These theories improved issues of quality, delivery time, and flexibility. Companies in the west realized the great impact of Kaizen and started implementing their own Continuous improvement programs.
In the nineties, following the global industry globalization process, the emphasis was on supply chain management, and customer-oriented business process design. Theory of constraints developed by an Israeli scientist Eliyahu M. Goldratt (1985) is also a significant milestone in the field.
Manufacturing (production) engineering Modern manufacturing engineering studies include all intermediate processes required for the production and integration of a product's components.Some industries, such as semiconductor and steel manufacturers use the term "fabrication" for these processes.
Automation is used in different processes of manufacturing such as machining and welding. Automated manufacturing refers to the application of automation to produce goods in a factory. The main advantages of automated manufacturing for the manufacturing process are realized with effective implementation of automation and include: higher consistency and quality, reduction of lead times, simplification of production, reduced handling, improved work flow, and improved worker morale.
Robotics is the application of mechatronics and automation to create robots, which are often used in manufacturing to perform tasks that are dangerous, unpleasant, or repetitive. These robots may be of any shape and size, but all are preprogrammed and interact physically with the world. To create a robot, an engineer typically employs kinematics (to determine the robot's range of motion) and mechanics (to determine the stresses within the robot). Robots are used extensively in manufacturing engineering.
Robots allow businesses to save money on labor, perform tasks that are either too dangerous or too precise for humans to perform economically, and to ensure better quality. Many companies employ assembly lines of robots, and some factories are so robotized that they can run by themselves. Outside the factory, robots have been employed in bomb disposal, space exploration, and many other fields. Robots are also sold for various residential applications.
Overview
Industrial engineering
Industrial engineering is the branch of engineering that involves figuring out how to make or do things better. Industrial engineers are concerned with reducing production costs, increasing efficiency, improving the quality of products and services, ensuring worker health and safety, protecting the environment and complying with government regulations.
The various fields and topics that industrial engineers are involved with include: Manufacturing engineering Engineering management Process engineering: design, operation, control, and optimization of chemical, physical, and biological processes. Systems engineering: an interdisciplinary field of engineering that focuses on how to design and manage complex engineering systems over their life cycles. Software engineering: an interdisciplinary field of engineering that focusing on design, development, maintenance, testing, and evaluation of the software that make computers or other devices containing software work Safety engineering: an engineering discipline which assures that engineered systems provide acceptable levels of safety. Data science: the science of exploring, manipulating, analyzing, and visualizing data to derive useful insights and conclusions Machine learning: the automation of learning from data using models and algorithms Analytics and data mining: the discovery, interpretation, and extraction of patterns and insights from large quantities of data Cost engineering: practice devoted to the management of project cost, involving such activities as cost- and control- estimating, which is cost control and cost forecasting, investment appraisal, and risk analysis. Value engineering: a systematic method to improve the "value" of goods or products and services by using an examination of function. Predetermined motion time system: a technique to quantify time required for repetitive tasks. Quality engineering: a way of preventing mistakes or defects in manufactured products and avoiding problems when delivering solutions or services to customers. Project management: is the process and activity of planning, organizing, motivating, and controlling resources, procedures and protocols to achieve specific goals in scientific or daily problems. Supply chain management: the management of the flow of goods. It includes the movement and storage of raw materials, work-in-process inventory, and finished goods from point of origin to point of consumption. Ergonomics: the practice of designing products, systems or processes to take proper account of the interaction between them and the people that use them. Operations research, also known as management science: discipline that deals with the application of advanced analytical methods to help make better decisions Operations management: an area of management concerned with overseeing, designing, and controlling the process of production and redesigning business operations in the production of goods or services. Job design: the specification of contents, methods and relationship of jobs in order to satisfy technological and organizational requirements as well as the social and personal requirements of the job holder. Industrial plant configuration: sizing of necessary infrastructure used in support and maintenance of a given facility. Facility management: an interdisciplinary field devoted to the coordination of space, infrastructure, people and organization Engineering design process: formulation of a plan to help an engineer build a product with a specified performance goal. Logistics: the management of the flow of goods between the point of origin and the point of consumption in order to meet some requirements, of customers or corporations. Accounting: the measurement, processing and communication of financial information about economic entities