Some companies utilize their Industrial Engineering group as an in-house consultant/controlling function, where the group itself not only provide operating plans that reduces costs for an operation, but also controls its’ daily actions and adherence to the plans. The IE’s main role in this company is to plan for an operations’ short term and long term cost reduction initiatives. However, an IE supervisor in such a company has 50% or more of their day ensuring that the operations are following the plan, facilitating short term process improvement activities, and working with the operation’s customized needs driven from their corrective action plans for each day. The other 50% percent or less are left for long term value added projects and proactive planning. In other words, IE’s are focusing more on short term initiatives.
The IE role diminishes as their role of in-house consultants extends beyond just providing guidance and into policing those who do not following determined plans. To make matters worse, most of the non-operational IE tasks are put on the back burner when operations can demand 100% of the IE group’s time without qualm on the group’s queue of projects and hours. If the IE group does not keep good backlog controls and no project management, they cannot justify their need for time to complete the long term initiatives.
The value of an IE in this type of company can most likely be measured using an opinion survey on how helpful they are to the operation. In order to deviate from this structure, IE’s need to quantify why there needs to be a limit to their role. This needs to be supported by some documented backlog planning projects and hours. The operation needs to know why long term planning for their long term benefits are not getting done because their IE group is distracted with operational daily problems.
How can an Industrial Engineer actually quantify the value of their time in this type of work environment without investing so much? One option is to utilize the technique called Expert Opinion Standard Systems, specifically Backlog Control System. For those that are not familiar with the Backlog Control system1 here are the steps:
1. List all jobs waiting to be completed starting with the oldest jobs.
2. Using the expert opinion of senior management, estimate the time required for each job, and the total time.
3. Establish a backlog hour goal. Note: A sufficient amount of backlog is needed to allow for efficient planning and scheduling.
4. Establish a control graph and a control chart. Plot the backlog control graph: Hours Backlog vs. Week Beginning.
5. Each week, jobs are added to the backlog, and times required are estimated. At the end of the week, the total hours added is totaled and entered on the backlog control chart.
6. During each week, jobs completed are totaled and entered onto the backlog control chart.
7. At the end of each week, the new job hours are added to the beginning backlog hours, and the hours completed are subtracted, resulting in the ending backlog hours. The ending backlog hours are then carried over to next week and set as the beginning backlog hours.
8. Beginning and ending backlog hours are calculated. This will give the variance report. Positive variance means the backlog is growing and some action may be needed. Negative variance means the backlog is shrinking and other projects can be accepted.
9. Corrective action may be required for the following reasons:
a. Backlog trend increasing – look into adding more people
b. Backlog trend decreasing below 40 to 50 hrs per week, more projects can be accepted or a reduction of staff may be required
c. Backlog trend is flat but high – may require overtime, temporary help and delegating work may help
d. Backlog trend is flat but low – may need to loan out employee, ask employees to burn vacation time or ask employees to complete pending training requirements
Since the function of an Industrial Engineer is to drive change by being allowed to complete their planning projects, they have to ensure that activities are focused and their completions are supported by upper management and tracked. If there is no project management, then starting with the Backlog Control system should kick this off to manage the non-operational tasks to 50% of the IE’s time. Doing so will also better equip the IE team to get the support from the operation to limit the time allocation on non IE tasks and into long term planning projects and benefits.
Reference:
1. Fred E. Meyers, and James R. Stewart, Motion and Time Study for Lean Manufacturing (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 2002), 290-293.