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Industrial Engineering

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Industrial engineering designs, improves, and installs integrated systems of people, materials, equipment, energy, and information to maximize productivity, quality, and safety.

Overview

Where mechanical and electrical engineers focus on the components, industrial engineers focus on the flow — how work, material, and information move through a facility, and how to make that flow faster, cheaper, and more reliable.

Lean & Six Sigma

  • Seven wastes (TIMWOOD): Transport, Inventory, Motion, Waiting, Overproduction, Overprocessing, Defects.
  • 5S: Sort, Set in order, Shine, Standardize, Sustain.
  • Kaizen, Kanban, SMED, Poka-yoke, Heijunka, Jidoka, A3.
  • DMAIC: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control.
  • Belts: White, Yellow, Green, Black, Master Black.

Operations Research

  • Linear & integer programming (LP/MIP).
  • Queuing theory (M/M/1, M/M/c, Little’s Law: L = λW).
  • Network flows, shortest path, transportation/assignment.
  • Inventory models (EOQ, newsvendor, multi-echelon).
  • Discrete-event simulation.

Ergonomics

Human factors engineering reduces injury and fatigue through workplace design. Reference standards: ANSI/HFES 100 (computer workstations), NIOSH lifting equation, RULA and REBA assessments, and ISO 6385 principles.

Key Metrics

  • OEE = Availability × Performance × Quality (world-class ≈ 85%).
  • Takt time = Available production time / Customer demand.
  • Cycle time, lead time, throughput, WIP.
  • First Pass Yield (FPY) and Rolled Throughput Yield.
  • DPMO — defects per million opportunities (Six Sigma ≈ 3.4 DPMO).

Tools

  • Simulation: Arena, FlexSim, AnyLogic, Simio.
  • Optimization: Gurobi, CPLEX, LINGO, Excel Solver.
  • Statistics: Minitab, JMP, R, Python (statsmodels, scikit-learn).
  • Project management: Primavera, MS Project, Smartsheet.
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