Industrial Engineering Examples

Walton Hancock

1/6/2010

Examples’ Span of Time

1952 to !954 – Masters and Dr. of Engineering

!954 to !956 - Lieutenant, U.S.Airforce1956 to 1959 – Manager of Industrial

Engineering and Manager of Quality Control

1959 to 1996 – Prof. of Industrial Engineering and Prof. of Hospital Administration

1.Printing Plant Lubrication Program

MS in Eng. ThesisNew Plant, Printing presses had 300

lubrication points.Selected lubricants, trained crews and

implemented system.No bearing failures in six yearsPerceived as a difficult problem by

management so received brownie points

2. Color Control System

Color variation on supermarket shelves a major issue.

Dr. of Eng. ThesisLearned 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.

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.

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!

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

Human Factors Laboratory

Started the Human Factors Laboratory which is now the Center for Ergonomics

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.

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!

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.

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.

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!!

Assembly Plant Quality

Offered an assembly plant, but full time. No thanks.

Everyone on team was promoted.

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

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.

Compression Ratios

Tightened four processes specsLoosened a number of specsAchieved desired result for several

enginesFirst year savings -$40,000,000.

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.

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

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.

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.

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)

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.

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.

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.

Hospital Savings

Typical HospitalSavings %

Inpatient Admissions $17,453,072 16.5%Operating Rooms $5,166,720 4.9%Nurses Using Aides $5,752,728 5.4%Nurses Reorganized $3,794,175 3.6%Ancillary Services $2,539,360 2.4%Totals $34,706,055 32.8%

Hospital Budget $105,776,192

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

18. Other Hospital Efforts

New company “Lean Care Systems” with 5 colleagues to continue implementation efforts.

Academic Output

35 PhD Students chaired or co-chaired89 papers16 Monographs4 booksAnd a lot of fun!