Over the years, this customer’s cost reduction policies resulted in not replacing its industrial engineers as they moved to other positions. Overall productivity, however, trended downward along with the loss of those IE’s whose job was all about productivity improvement. Divisional managers embarked upon an aggressive hiring plan that placed IE’s back in all plants as a way to regain lost productivity in stamping and assembly operations, but these new hires needed a common understanding of the available tools and how to apply them.

Relying on its industrial engineering expertise, IET created a four-day, customized training program that was delivered to the newly hired IE’s. All essential aspects of work measurement, operation and productivity analysis, methods design, and production system design were conveyed to the class participants through lecture, in-class demonstrations and field applications within the plants. Class sizes were small to ensure active participation and individualized feedback.

IET hosted three separate training sessions, each at a different plant, during which 15 industrial engineers received instruction. Each group was encouraged to discuss the opportunities to improve productivity in their plants and share ideas. The IET instructor shared relevant experiences throughout each session to enhance the classroom topics and materials.

Course evaluations indicated that all participants found value in attending the session.