IIE Blogs

It’s critical that we educate the public (and more importantly management) that we are not just "industrial" engineers – but engineers who design and improve "systems" of all types.

IEs can contribute to the preventing the catastrophic events that the “Zeroth Law” addresses. Typically there are multiple safeguards in place to address the very serious safety problems that could take down our plants.

In the last PID blog, we looked at Willie Sutton’s example of "going where the money is" and thought a little about IE/Lean tools for finding out where in our plants and supply chains there was most likely to be money to "liberate." This blog is going to talk about choosing tools to help us "liberate" that money.

Are we working on the projects "where the money is?" Maybe a more applicable (or at least more professional) phrase for IEs is "doing the right things rather than merely doing things right."

In my experience, lean improvements are more effective and far more sustainable if done as black belt or green belt projects. I have found that any differences in philosophy or approach can be worked out, if you simply remember what it is that you are trying to accomplish, and behave accordingly.

It occurred to me that an organization’s continuing lean efforts to reduce waste can often provide the “excess” capacity to provide the production capability “margin” that enables responsive and flexible production systems.