Productivity, Safety, Comfort, and Operator Health Management

Productivity Management- Principle of Industrial Engineering

Every industrial engineer is a productivity manager.
He has to plan for productivity and achieve productivity improvement year after year.

As a part of productivity management, he has to assess management actions of the organization for effect on productivity and has to recommend changes if they have an adverse effect on productivity or if there is scope for increasing productivity by modifying them.

Industrial engineering departments have to make productivity improvement plans for every year. Toyota Style Industrial Engineering demands that IEs plan the cost reduction for each product every year. They even demand monthly plans (Kaizen Costing).

Total Productivity Management (TPMgmt) is being promoted Japanese Industrial Management Association as top down plan for productivity improvement.

Operator Comfort and Health - Principle of Industrial Engineering

As human effort engineers, industrial engineers are concerned with comfort and health of operators.

The productivity improvement and the consequent extra production from a man-machine combination should not lead to discomfort, fatigue and musculoskeletal disorders.

Safety is an important human resource management responsibility under OSHA act. Industrial engineering need to plan their involvement in safety management and in developing human effort designs which are safe to the highest degree.

Comfort studies are to be done periodically.

Health is also covered under OSHA. Industrial engineering have to take care of operator health in the design of motions of the operators and also in the design of hand-tools,  machine controls to be operated by operators and work station.


Updated on 29 May 2019, 13 February 2014