Improvment of Industrial Engineering

New development in Industrial Engineering

Industrial Engineering (IE) is an engineering application that was developed on the basis of scientific management. Industrial Engineering emphasizes integral improvement for such things as labor productivity,cost reduction, product quality, system capability and overall performance effectiveness.Industrial Engineering has been bombarded with the public attention in recent decades because the public benefits from its advantages.Recently, IE’s main development direction trends toward automation and Computer Integrated Manufacturing.In an increasingly competitive world, simulation has become one of the most powerful and effective analysis tool available to those who are responsible for designing the system or process. Arena is one of the simulation softwares, and  plays the most important role in simulation area.

Arena is widely used as a decision-making tool in manufacturing and service industries and its main characteristic is simulation regarding the production line operation. Arena simulation modeling is an experimental methodology that seeks the behavior of systems and then constructs theories that account for the observed behavior. Finally, Arena produces the changes in the system of operation to predict the future behavior and improve the system performance. In other words, Arena provides "a fully integrated environment for building, animating, verifying and analyzing simulation models"(Template Developer's Guide). With Arena, you can design a unique Arena template that is specific to your personal project or particular industry.

In the FAQ of the website of Arena Simulation Software, there is a description about the new feature in the latest release of Arena. The biggest change in Arena is that it provides significant enhancements to the Arena Visual Designer tool. This tool provides convenience for the users with a sneak preview on the new Arena graphical user interface. In addition, you can display realistic in-process 3D animation in the visual design plate. This updating makes Arena easier and more visible to use and enhances the Arena control model's flexibility. Therefore, your ultimate presentation environment for your particular simulation project can be presented by 3D animation. Furthermore, for the new Arena, the simulation engine and foundation will remain.

One of the important part in Arena is report. In the report, the user can get a lot of information that is helpful to improve the system performance. Here is a example.The designer will consider whether or not to hire more workers regrading "the number of waiting", "waiting in the queue", and "utilization". If for a particular system, the customers or work parts' waiting time is too long and the employee's utilization is very high, the designer needs to use the trade-off study to consider hiring more workers. Employees' utilization can show how busy they are. Therefore, using Arena not only can ensure production efficiencies,but also meet the workers' needs.

Previously, IE faced the problems of how to improve the productions whose processes had been designed. At the most, the production departments gave feedback regarding the poor production efficiency design to the design department and then let them improve the efficiency by the feedback. However, how to design the high efficiency process with IE principle during the production developments becomes most important in such a competitive society. Using Arena to simulate the process of operation before the managers invest into the project can reduce the risk of losing profit. Arena became more and more popular because it is easy to find the production operation problem based on the Arena’s parameter report and communicate the intricacies of complex processes to others.

Arena Similation Software. http://www.arenasimulation.com/tools_resources_arena_faqs.aspx

Rockwell Automation. Template Developer's Guide. Retrieved from
http://www.actsolutions.it/File/Arena/Arena%20Template%20Developer's%20Guide.pdf