Industrial Engineering from the Vision of a Portable Automated Model

Published in: Proceedings of the 13th Latin American and Caribbean Conference for Engineering and Technology: Engineering Education Facing the Grand Challenges, What Are We Doing?
Date of Conference: July 29 - 31, 2015
Location of Conference: Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
Authors: Lourdes Medina
Ricardo Silva
Zachary Soto
Refereed Paper: #72

Abstract:

It can be generally stated that the industrial engineering (IE) field branches out to a broad spectrum of aspects, not limiting itself to one focus in the industry. In a world that is constantly advancing technologically, IE is key in allowing the advancement of production, whether in a manufacturing or service industry, in order to keep up with the everyday increasing demand. From the more social standpoints dealing more with people, such as supervision to the more technical, say economics, quality and production forecasting, IE impacts the field in many ways. These different aspects can all be seen and represented through one of the more increasingly common practices in the field, automation. Accordingly, this paper shows how we can teach IE from the vision of a portable automated model (PAM). Through the development of PAM, many aspects and branches of IE can be displayed to show the versatility of IE roles and purposes and its different impacts in the industry. Using a small-scale model, different examples of cost and accounting, economic analysis, lean, design, layout, production planning controls, operations, simulation, quality and even human resource management can be displayed to show the importance of this engineering field.

Keywords- Engineering Education, Industrial Engineering, Automation