Mumbai University > Mechanical Engineering > Sem 8 > Industrial Engineering And Management

Marks: 10M

Year: May 2015, Dec 2015

Industrial engineering is a branch of engineering which deals with the optimization of complex processes or systems. Industrial engineers work to eliminate waste of time, money, materials, man-hours, machine time, energy and other resources that do not generate value.

The need of computers in industrial engineering is playing an exceptional role which is proved further.

• Computers acted as the main catalytic ingredient because of which industries can produce any demand, at the desired cost within the desired time.
• Today each and every traditional orthodox manufacturing process is replaced with an alternative of automation and in majority of mass manufacturing processes the use of computers is a must.
• Applications and software are customized and engineered by professionals specifically to improve productivity, improve quality, manufacture and manage the entire cycle of product development.
• Computers are used right from preparing a plan to setup an industry to the marketing of the product produced by that industry.
• Computers used in modern industries are an integrated part of the industrial revolution.
• There are several reforms which are concerned with the development, improvement, and implementation of integrated systems of people, money, knowledge, information, equipment, energy, materials, analysis and synthesis, as - These reforms worked with correlation with the principles and methods of engineering which is design to specify, predict, and evaluate the results to be obtained from such systems or processes.
• In order to accomplish these reforms with ease and excellence the need of computers in industrial engineering played a very vital role.

Depending on the sub-specialties involved, the need of computers proved to be backbone achieving the following milestones which are must for setting up an industry such as

1. operations management,
2. management science,
3. operations research,
4. systems engineering,
5. management engineering,
6. manufacturing engineering,
7. ergonomics
8. safety engineering,
9. others, depending on the viewpoint or motives of the user

The main advantages of computers in industrial engineering are:

1. Increased throughput or productivity.
2. Improved quality or increased predictability of quality.
3. Improved robustness (consistency), of processes or product.
4. Increased consistency of output.
5. Reduced direct human labor costs and expenses.
6. The following methods are often employed to improve productivity, quality, or robustness.
7. Replacing human operators in tasks that involve hard physical or monotonous work.
8. Replacing humans in tasks done in dangerous environments (i.e. fire, space, volcanoes, nuclear facilities, underwater, etc.)
9. Performing tasks that are beyond human capabilities of size, weight, speed, endurance, etc.
10. Reduces operation time and work handling time significantly.
11. Frees up workers to take on other roles.
12. Provides higher level jobs in the development, deployment, maintenance and running of the automated processes.

The main disadvantages of computerization are:

1. Security Threats/Vulnerability: An automated system may have a limited level of intelligence, and is therefore more susceptible to committing errors outside of its immediate scope.
2. Unpredictable/excessive development costs: The research and development cost of automating a process may exceed the cost saved by the automation itself.
3. High initial cost: The automation of a new product or plant typically requires a very large initial investment in comparison with the unit cost of the product, although the cost of automation may be spread among many products and over time.