Chapter 1: Introduction-What are "industrial engineering" and "industrial engineer"?
IE (Industrial Engineering) originated in the United States and is an applied engineering technology discipline developed on the basis of Taylor science. It emphasizes improving productivity in an all-round way, reducing production costs, ensuring product quality, making the system in the best operation state and obtaining huge overall benefits. It is a mainstream science that assists enterprise management, from method engineering, job measurement, job evaluation, salary system and factory design to job research and decision analysis, and even absorbs the research and practical experience of statistical methods and information technology, network planning technology and behavioral science development. The goal of IE is to improve the production management infrastructure of the factory, increase labor productivity, make theory and practice complement each other, ensure management effect, reduce costs, improve economic benefits, and find problems, solve problems and prevent problems based on engineering technology and scientific management skills.
Through study, students can organically combine technology and management, and carry out industrial simplification, specialization and standardization of IE management for enterprises, which can play the role of IE technology management from the formulation and formulation of process operation standards, labor quota hours, on-site management of processes and processes, and even the optimization and improvement of the production management system of the whole company.
Many people confuse IE with enterprise management, which is extremely wrong. It is actually the integration of technology and management. We know that the earliest watch is a mechanical watch, which uses a clockwork-driven timing system. Later, electronic watches appeared in the 1970s, and then electronic and mechanical integration formed today's electronic mechanical watches. This is the simplest example of "mechatronics", the "technology-management integration" of industrial engineering ("technology-management integration")
Industrial engineering has a history of 100 years abroad and is one of the seven major engineering disciplines in the United States. It integrates engineering and management, which greatly promotes the economic and social development of industrialized countries. Industrial engineering is a science about the effective operation of complex systems. It combines engineering technology with management science, and quantitatively analyzes, optimizes and designs practical engineering and management problems in manufacturing, service and other enterprises or organizations from a systematic perspective. It is an independent engineering discipline, aiming at system efficiency and benefit.
The development of industrial engineering discipline in Tsinghua University began in 1990s. The first batch of industrial engineering masters 1993 and undergraduate majors 1997 were approved, and enrollment began. After that, it was approved to award Doctor of Engineering and Master of Industrial Engineering according to the first-class discipline of "Management Science and Engineering". 200 1 10 The Department of Industrial Engineering was formally established, and Professor Savindi of Purdue University in the United States was specially appointed as the first department head and chair professor. From June 5438 to 10, 2004, Professor Savindi successfully completed his first term and continued his second term (2004. 10 to 2007. 10). There are 23 faculty members in the Department of Industrial Engineering, including teachers 18, all of whom are doctors returning from studying abroad or young and middle-aged teachers studying abroad.
Professor Savindi's goal for the Department of Industrial Engineering of Tsinghua University is to build a world-class industrial engineering discipline in a relatively short time. In the past three years, the Department of Industrial Engineering has made great progress.
Although there are different expressions about the training objectives of industrial engineering, in general, they are trying to answer a question, that is, what knowledge should I learn as an IE major? What are your abilities? What can I do after graduation? In short, what basic training should industrial engineers have during their study? Therefore, the question about the training goal of industrial engineering specialty is essentially an answer: what kind of person is an industrial engineer? What exactly do they do?
1 Five Views on "Industrial Engineer"
"What kind of person is an industrial engineer" is not a theoretical problem, but a practical problem. The emergence, application and development of industrial engineering have a history of nearly a hundred years. Due to the differences in emphasis and times, there are many opinions about industrial engineers at home and abroad, which can be summarized into five types, namely: "Industrial engineers are such people who are the designers of the best working system; Is an assistant to decision makers and managers at all levels; It is the interface, communicator and coordinator between management and technology, managers and engineers, departments and departments, enterprises and external environment; At the same time, he is also a professional engineer with his own independent and specific business, which is different from technical personnel such as management. Moreover, they are brave and good at putting forward new ideas and concepts, and can accept, advocate and popularize new technologies, new processes, new materials, new methods, new ideas, new strategies, or "regardless of ministers" that are difficult for ordinary people to accept or temporarily unknown to people.
The above statement reflects the nature, content and function of industrial engineers from different angles, among which the most core or basic statement is 1, that is, industrial engineers are the designers of the best working system. In other words, industrial engineers are engaged in an optimal design/redesign of a certain system, so that the manpower and other resources put into the system can be fully and effectively utilized, all kinds of waste can be eliminated/reduced, and the maximum/optimal output of the system can be realized. The second view holds that industrial engineers are assistants, staff officers and think tanks of leaders at all levels from their position and function, helping managers find problems, make correct production and operation decisions and provide scientific basis for management. It can be seen that IE major does not directly train managers such as factory directors and managers, but trains engineers, a special kind of engineers. On the other hand, managers must have IE knowledge, especially IE awareness. Otherwise, it is impossible for them to organize production and business activities reasonably and scientifically and do a good job in enterprises according to the requirements of industrial engineering. On the other hand, as IIE Institute in the United States said, industrial engineers often develop into senior managers because they have more business skills and training than other professional engineers. Therefore, the top management of many large companies now has a background in industrial engineering. The third argument is that industrial engineers, as "interface engineers", are different from other professional engineers and are irreplaceable by leaders and other departments or professional engineers. They always proceed from the overall situation, provide convenience for managers at all levels, make suggestions for various departments, and coordinate and integrate the business (such as design, manufacturing and supply) between various departments. The fourth statement emphasizes that the work of industrial engineers cannot be understood as the overall planning and design of the system or just as assistants and interfaces. They also have a clear professional division of labor and relatively independent work functions, which are very specific and practical, that is, they can be professionals who specialize in or focus on a certain aspect of work, such as quality control/management engineers, method research engineers, time research engineers, industrial safety engineers and so on. The fifth statement embodies the innovative characteristics of IE. What no one wants to do, or what others can't do, is exactly where industrial engineers come in. AgileMfg, for example, is a new strategy put forward by American industrial engineering experts to revitalize American manufacturing. It was China's industrial engineering experts who quickly accepted and actively spread this new idea in China [2].
The history of industrial development, especially the success or failure experience of manufacturing industry, tells us that industrial enterprises need industrial engineers, and with the expansion of IE application, people further realize that national development and social progress also need industrial engineers. As the IIE Institute of the United States said, "Industrial engineering is not limited to the skills of a specific industry. All organizations that want their capital consumption to achieve the best production and quality should hire industrial engineers. " 1In August, 1998, China Electromechanical News also published an article saying: "Industrial engineers are technical talents who are committed to designing efficient and optimized operation systems for various enterprises, government departments at all levels and even service industries such as shopping malls, banks and hospitals." Obviously, except IE major, no other major can cultivate such a person. It is precisely because China neglected the development and application of industrial engineering when introducing and popularizing modern management in the early 1980s that IE specialty in China has not been developed for a long time, resulting in a serious shortage of industrial engineering talents today. Some enterprises have failed to handle the relationship between introduction, digestion and innovation, and have repeatedly "made foreign countries"; Some factories are designed without IE, and the logistics is unreasonable, so they are demolished and rebuilt. Most enterprises do not have IE basic skills, so it is difficult to meet challenges and seize opportunities. There is also automation for the sake of automation, which is actually a disaster; In particular, scientific and technological innovation and product development have been neglected for a long time, or rushing headlong into it, losing money and shouting. , resulting in huge waste, environmental pollution and serious losses, forming a long-term unresolved qualitative and structural contradictions. These problems are closely related to our lack of industrial engineers, which is a historic lesson. Of course, the country's economic system and operational mechanism are fundamental, but all problems, difficulties and puzzles cannot be attributed to system and mechanism problems. It seems that all the problems are "just a package", and the shareholding system can solve all the problems. Others are irrelevant and dispensable. It's not like this at all! If you have to boil it down, it should boil down to the quality problem-the quality of workers, the quality of leaders, quality of enterprise, the quality of the nation, the quality of the whole people, and the quality of the country, including the basic skill IE that has been used in the world for a hundred years. IE, especially basic IE, is a compulsory course for industrial enterprises, which is insurmountable. This course will be made up sooner or later. Of course, making up lessons does not mean repeating history. We should seek a suitable starting point and deal with different situations differently. Don't make a one-size-fits-all, fixed model, seek truth from facts, improve efficiency and shorten time. Repeating history is actually resisting progress, which is unrealistic, because the situation today is different from that at that time; Besides, keeping pace with others will never catch up with others, and you can only fall behind forever.
2 the "four characteristics" of industrial engineering and the new situation of market competition call for industrial engineering
Through the above discussion that industrial engineers are classified into "five kinds of people" from the historical practice of industrial engineering application and development, it is necessary to go back and understand the main characteristics and significance of industrial engineering according to the development status and trend of modern industrial engineering.
There are many references about IE characteristics in textbooks and materials at home and abroad. Such as systematic, engineering, holistic, global, comprehensive, scientific, practical, empirical and developmental. We believe that IE practice at home and abroad has proved that the characteristics of IE are mainly embodied in four characteristics: engineering, sociality, interface and innovation.
Engineering: The United States considers IE as one of the five major projects in the United States, which is closely related to other disciplines (as shown in figure 1). With the help of science and technology, it is a practical activity to use natural resources and social resources (6 million people, monetary funds, materials, machinery and equipment, management and message information) to plan, design, manufacture/build equipment, facilities and products with clear objectives, time constraints and quality and productivity requirements, so it is very engineering, which is obviously different from.
Sociality: IE has been combined with management and economy since its birth. Since 1980s, the interaction between people and departments has been considered, which is "people-centered". Its goal is to unify the goals and interests of individuals, departments, communities, countries and enterprises. Enterprises form a real system through social interaction, and achieve the multiplier effect of "the whole system is greater than the sum of parts and individuals".
Interface: IE is the interface between management and engineering, technology and science, and also the interface between people, departments and enterprises, and the external environment. Its purpose is to eliminate the gap at the interface, overcome disconnection or friction, make the whole system integrated and coordinated, and give full play to the advantages of the system.
Innovation: This is the essence and specialty of IE. IE has emphasized scientific innovation and continuous improvement since its birth, and it is a creative method to solve all kinds of complex contradictions.
The practice of industrial engineering is developing the discipline of industrial engineering itself. IE before 1980s belongs to the traditional IE stage. We visited American enterprises and asked what IE was. Their answer was simple and clear: "IE is to solve factory problems". From the late 1980s to the 1990s, IE entered the modern IE era of self-innovation and perfection. IE's "four characteristics", especially sociality, interface and innovation, are more prominent. 1989, IIE socIEty revised the formal definition of ie given by IIE society in 1965 to read: "industrial engineering is a profession integrating planning, design, implementation and management to ensure performance, reliability and maintainability, follow the sequence and cost control, and realize the optimal production and service output system. This system may be of a socio-technical nature, which integrates people, information, materials, equipment, processes and energy into the whole life cycle of products, services or projects. This profession aims at the profitability, efficiency, adaptability, responsiveness, quality and continuous improvement of products and services throughout their life cycle. It uses humanities and social sciences (including economics), computer science, basic science, highly developed communication technology and concepts of physics, chemistry, mathematics, statistics, organizational and behavioral science and ethics to achieve the above goals. " Therefore, as Academician Wang Daheng pointed out, industrial engineering is an interdisciplinary subject combining engineering technology, economic management science and humanities and social sciences.
As we all know, the competition of enterprises in the market has changed from the competition of cost and quality in the past to the competition of new product design and development ability with the speed of listing as the core, the competition of quality cost guarantee and quick response ability of manufacturing system design, construction and operation with the reliability, safety and quality deterioration ability of product production as the core, and a new round of competition with service quality as the main line. Quality and cost only become the "passing competition" criteria for participating in market competition, while product development, manufacturing systems and services become the main competitive factors. Therefore, with the rapid development of market competition, many enterprises will inevitably realize the importance of IE more and more and call for industrial engineers to the society, because no other discipline is closer to enterprises than IE. This prompted IE to help solve the following problems of enterprises:
1) manufacturing strategy and planning;
2) Advanced technologies in new product design and development-innovative scientific theories and methods, risk management and technical management, rapid development of technologies and methods, and control and prevention of deterioration;
3) Rapid manufacturing-rapid production preparation, rapid manufacturing system reorganization and rapid product realization;
4) Enterprise design and diagnosis/treatment;
5) Optimal operation method, etc.
Three axioms and consciousness about industrial engineering
As mentioned above, IE has the basic characteristics of engineering, sociality, interface and innovation and the profound connotation of "Trinity". Therefore, the application and popularization of industrial engineering is not only its principle and method, but also the establishment of industrial engineering consciousness. Industrial engineering is not so much a technology or method as an idea, philosophy and consciousness. Industrial engineering has no profound theory and complicated mathematical derivation. As long as it is conducive to improving productivity, we will use it for us, learn from others' strengths and absorb all good advanced theories, technologies and methods, such as operational research, system theory, computer technology, strategy and various advanced manufacturing technologies. Therefore, industrial engineering has developed for nearly a hundred years. We believe that there is no doubt that social development has promoted the development of industrial engineering, but it is also closely related to a working creed that Taylor, the founder of industrial engineering, has always adhered to, that is, "there is always a best way to do anything." After nearly a century's practice in various countries, industrial engineers have formed a belief that "for a manual or human-involved system, it can always be created and improved through scientific investigation, analysis, experiments and research, and a new method that is better, more economical, faster and simpler than the existing operation methods can be found." From this, the following IE axiom can be derived: "A system with artificial or human participation can always be improved unless it has died out or is not worth reusing". This is the essence of industrial engineering. This is a kind of idea, thought, philosophy and consciousness. After years of IE practice, I have gradually formed a series of IE consciousness, which can be said to be the spark of thought and the talk of experience, which will be inexhaustible throughout my life. Although different experts have different generalizations, it is roughly like this: "That is, the awareness of continuous improvement and innovation, people-oriented awareness, awareness of cost and efficiency, awareness of problems and reforms, awareness of the overall situation and the whole, awareness of work simplification and standardization, and awareness of rapid response to demand.
These consciousness are the soul of IE, or IE spirit. We believe that it is more important to establish IE consciousness than to master IE technology and methods. Whether enterprise leaders have IE consciousness and cultivate employees' IE consciousness is the key to the success of IE practice. The leaders of Guangdong Cologne Company went to all parts of the country to find IE, and the employees of the company formed an atmosphere of "IE everywhere, IE when encountering problems", which was an important reason for them to create famous brand refrigerators in Rong Sheng. Therefore, different from the expression of "training objectives" of other majors, we regard "establishing industrial engineering consciousness" as one of the most important requirements, and clearly stipulate that it is planned to strengthen the compilation and assessment of this part of the content in this textbook revision. In a sense, industrial engineering majors should pay more attention to ideological and moral education than other majors. We believe that any enterprise or organization in human society, as long as it constitutes a system that provides output to the society, is essentially exporting "services". In essence, products are also a kind of "service" based on physical objects. People use products to serve themselves by their functions, not just the material products themselves. This is especially true for other cultural education, literature and art, social services and so on. Therefore, the "service" exported by any enterprise or organization must be responsible for the whole society (including itself), put social benefits first (only temporary economic benefits are false and cannot be recognized by the society for a long time), and stress professional ethics, corporate culture and corporate image. Industrial engineering is to study how the system can get the maximum or best output with the least input. Therefore, all the ugly phenomena of selfish and conservative behaviors, such as counterfeiting, exaggerating and cheating, harming the interests of others, abusing power for personal gain, cutting corners, embezzling and wasting, slacking off and being complacent, are naturally ruled out. What it absolutely needs is honesty, diligence, seeking truth from facts and real creative work. Being a man in advance, the application of industrial engineering is consistent and synchronous with improving the quality of employees and even the overall quality of enterprises. The application of industrial engineering is to do a good job in a series of basic work such as enterprise design, enterprise diagnosis, method research, post determination, logistics analysis, operation specification, standardization, etc. Only by practicing the basic skills and internal strength of enterprises can enterprises/organizations have real development, and so can countries. As the articles in Guangming Daily and China Electromechanical News in April and August of 1999 pointed out, "The development history of industrial engineering in developed countries tells us that the combination of modern management and industrial engineering is the conventional way for economic take-off". Therefore, vigorously promoting industrial engineering, researching and applying industrial engineering and strengthening the cultivation of industrial engineering talents are a basic construction in China at present and in the future.
4. Training objectives of industrial engineering specialty
As mentioned above, IE is an interdisciplinary subject integrating engineering technology, management and humanities and social sciences, and industrial engineers are special engineers with at least five opinions. Therefore, industrial engineering majors should cultivate compound interdisciplinary senior technical talents who know both engineering technology and economic management and humanities and social sciences. Of course, due to the limitation of training foundation, period and conditions, the undergraduate education of IE major still needs to lay a solid foundation. The comprehensive and deeper improvement of IE knowledge, ability and quality requires long-term work practice and social tempering in the future. Therefore, according to the practice of IE undergraduate and self-taught education in recent years and the enlightenment of social survey results, we think that the requirements for the knowledge and ability structure of the training object should be the most basic. Generally speaking, the selection and development should be carried out within the following scope:
Knowledge structure:
Public affairs, basic knowledge-politics, law, moral education, Chinese, mathematics, physics, chemistry, electrician, electronics, computer, foreign languages, etc.
Specialized industry or industry knowledge-such as basic knowledge and modern knowledge (advanced manufacturing technology and system) in mechanical manufacturing.
Industrial engineering knowledge-operational research, system engineering, system analysis, work research, ergonomics/human factors engineering, site management optimization, facility planning and design, logistics technology, product development and quality engineering, enterprise design and diagnosis, integration and control of manufacturing system and process, optimal operation method, new development of IE (such as agile manufacturing, OPT, ERP, reengineering, etc.). ), etc.
Knowledge of economic management and social science-engineering economy, production planning and control, cost management and control, quality management and control, finance, investment and marketing, organizational behavior and design, human consulting development and management, psychology, semantics, etc.
Ability structure: observation and experiment ability, investigation and research ability, comprehensive analysis/integration ability, planning and design ability, coordination/social ability, adaptability, innovation ability, language expression ability, computer application ability, foreign language reading ability, etc.
Consciousness exercise: through hard work and practical exercise, the above seven kinds of consciousness are gradually established.
What can you do after graduation: After hard work and practical training, you will gradually become the "five kinds of people" mentioned above. When you graduate, you should at least meet the basic requirements of the fourth kind of person [3].
Starting from what kind of person an industrial engineer is, this paper expresses some views on the basic characteristics, significance, axiom, consciousness and training goal of industrial engineering specialty, and the call of social development for industrial engineers, and is willing to discuss with all experts. Please criticize and correct me.