Industrial engineering use of a spreadsheet

INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING USE OF A SPREADSHEET

F. E. Fields

Industrial Enaineering Superintendent

ICI Americas Inc.

Indiana Army Ammunition Plant

Charlestown, Indiana 47111

ABSTRACT

Through the ef f ic ient use of a microcomputer, the time required to i n i t i a l l y analyze data and to develop labor and material standards has been greatly reduced. To an even greater extent, the time required to perform periodic updates of the data and of the labor and material standards has also been reduced. This paper describes how a spreadsheet is used to accomplish these tasks, as well as some discussion of other data collection and analysis for Industrial Engineering projects.

KEYWORDS

Industrial Engineering; Work Measurement; Motion and Time Study; Labor Standards; Mate- r ia l Standards; Interactive Spreadsheets; Maintenance Data Analysis.

INTRODUCTION

In Industrial Engineering our work frequently calls for us to analyze masses of data. This is especially true in Work Measurement. Work Measurement involves the collection and analysis of hundreds and thousands of small time values generated through time study, predetermined time systems, work sampling studies or a combination of these or other techniques. This has always required long, tedious hours of Industrial Engine- ering time. This paper wi l l describe how this work is performed with a microcomputer and an electronic spreadsheet. Once the raw data is entered, along with the necessary formulas, the microcomputer extends and manipulates the data to develop the labor standards, as well as to printout forms for the daily production ta l l ies and efficiency calculations. The four examples of the use of the spreadsheet in this paper wi l l be pre- sented from an overall management viewpoint. This paper wi l l not attempt to explain how to use the various commands or just which key to use for what purpose. For the actual hands-on application of Lotus I-2-3 or other spreadsheets, classes, or one-on-one training can usually be found.

BACKGROUND

ICI Americas is a wholly-owned subsidiary of ICI Limited of England. ICI has about 123,000 employees with production fac i l i t i es in over forty countries and sales offices in over sixty countries. ICI produces agriculture products, synthetic f ibers, general chemicals, industrial explosives, Organic and specialty chemicals, paint and decorative products, petrochemicals and plastics, pharmaceuticals and related items. ICI Americas has production and sales in the U.S. for most of these items, for example, Stuart Phar- maceuticals is a subsidiary. Specifically, ICI Americas is the prime contractor for two Army Ammunition Plants (AAP's) - Volunteer AAP in Chattanooga, Tennessee and Indiana AAP across the Ohio River from Louisvi l le, Kentucky. At Indiana AAP we have 1,800 employees. Our job is to (1) maintain the manufacturing and support buildings and equipment as the Army specifies, (2) to modernize old fac i l i t i es or equip new fac i l i t i es as funded by the Army, and (3) to produce the howitzer and mortar ammunition to the Army's specifications and time table.This includes propelling charges for the I05MM, 155MM and 8" Howitzers and the 4.2" Mortar. Actually, what we do is to take rol ls of cloth, s l i t the cloth to the right width, cut i t to shape, sew i t into bags, and print i t in our Bag Manufacturing fac i l i t y . These empty bags are then transferred to load lines where they are f i l l ed with propellant powder, sewed, and packed.

The Industrial Engineering Department has three sections with a supervisor for each section. One section handles the Value Engineering, Self-Amortizing and Employee Sugges- tion programs. A second section covers Production Work Measurement which develops l i s ts

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of equipment needed, production layouts, detailed methods descriptions, and preliminary standards prior to each production run. During the production run they help solve production problems, develop final standards and implement cost reductions. At the end of the production run, they develop an as-built manual which includes production layouts, l ists of equipment, and f i f t y or sixty photographs of all production operations in use at that time. They also develop Direct Material Standards. The third section of the Industrial Engineering Department covers work measurement for indirect operations. This section develops methods and standards for Material Handling, which is quite extensive on plant; Receiving Inspection, Quality Assurance Labs including Metrology Lab, Weights Lab, Chem Lab, and Physical Lab, as well as to develop benchmarks for Maintenance Work Measurement. Both of these work measurement groups use MTM-I, 2, 3, 4M and GPD to set standards. One of the Industrial Engineering supervisors is a certified MTM instructor and is also on the Training and Qualifications Committee of the MTM Association for Standards and Research. Overall, our Production and Indirect Work Measurement Programs show a savings of $800,000 to $1,O00,O00 each year.

DIRECT MATERIAL STANDARDS

The Direct Material Standards are developed on the personal computer with a printer located in the IE office. I t produces the Material Standards Matrix which shows all of the direct materials used to make the product, and amount of material needed for each. The materials are listed for each product, showing the material code, description of the material, name of the part, and the unit of measure for that material. I t also shows the "I00%" which means the amount of that material that goes into the part and stays in i t . For the f i rs t operation, "Sl i t Cloth," the "I00%" of material is shown. Next i t gives the "I00% with offal" which includes the skeleton or other necessary mate- r ial loss due to the shape of the part. For example, cutting circles out of a piece of cloth wil l leave a skeleton of cloth that has no further use. The scrap percent is shown next on the matrix. Through on-the-floor studies we have determined the amount of material loss that is unavoidable for the particular operation. Next i t gives the "subtotal" which is the total of I00% material, offal, and scrap for that material for that operation. Each succeeding operation is calculated as shown on the matrix in order, with a cumulative subtotal given after each operation. This matrix is the heart of the material standards program, performing most of the required calculations while avoid- ing an exploded view of the entire production process for a specific product. As you could see, data enters the matrix via "I00%" and "usage with offal" input for all material involved. This data may be input by the user or from other matrices. Since data may be input from other matrices, a large, unwieldy matrix may result. However, a large matrix may be broken down into smaller, more easily managed submatrices without losing control of the material flow through the production process. The matrix is designed to have a uniform configuration for all products produced. This uni- formity permits interchangeability of matrices between product lines. The matrix performs most of the calculations for the system, and provides general overview of material usage and flow through the production process. Finally, the matrix summary is generated by the computer. I t has two pri- mary purposes. First, i t summarizes the immense amount of data provided by the matrix and second, provides a final copy of the Direct Material Standards that can be issued. This eliminates the need for a secretary to type the final copy, saving labor and reducing the chance for error. The main advantage of the use of this system is that Industrial Engineering manhours have been reduced. In addition, once the system is installed, maintenance of the standards is greatly simplified. The matrix is quite helpful as i t provides a visual display of material needs, offal and scrap as the product proceeds through the manufacturing process. This system appears flexible and shows promise in other areas besides material standards, such as labor standards~ estimating, etc.

ENGINEERED MATERIAL AND LABOR STANDARDS

This is the newest part of our program. This program provides Integrated Labor and Material Stand- ards which can be dollarized by Accounting to give incremental product costs at any stage of production. The basic purpose is to provide a dollar value for scrap generated and collected at various points in the manufacturing process. The Integrated Labor and Material Matrix shows the same direct material buildup as the Material Matrix does. I t also shows the manhours required per piece for Production labor and for Inspection labor. I t then gives a subtotal for labor for that operation and a cumulative subtotal of manhours.

USE OF A SPREADSHEET IN RECEIVING INSPECTION

The operation of the Indiana Army Ammunition Plant requires a considerable number of indirect or support operations. The nature of explosives require considerable distance between production and storage fac i l i t ies, separation of the storage of explosives and inert material, etc. This requires considerable material handling. Also, an extensive Quality Assurance organization and various labs are needed to provide very precise weights, and to conduct numerous and involved testing of raw materials, work in process, and completed products. In addition, propellant powder must be repack- aged from large containers (for long distance hauling) to smaller containers (necessary in production), and dried (to lower the percent of moisture in the powder) as necessary. With this informa- tion and the fact that the plant is two miles wide and five miles long, then maybe you can get an idea of the need for the indirect operations and hundreds of employees in these areas of indirect operation. The example that follows concerns the Receiving Inspection operation which is a function of the Quality Assurance Department. This operation requires several inspectors who very closely inspect and pull samples to test all incoming materials. Since the Army has very detailed specifi-

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cations for materials, they expect us to fu l ly inspect and test the materials to insure that these materials are within acceptable l imi ts .

LABOR STANDARDS

The Industrial Engineering manpower required to develop the i n i t i a l labor standards decreased s l ight ly when the computer with spreadsheet was installed and in use. However, the Industrial Engineering manpower required to revise the standards decreased drast ical ly. Manually, this had taken 4-6 manweeks to revise the Receiving Inspection standards, now with a personal computer and spreadsheet, i t only takes two manhours. Since the quantity per lo t varies substantially, there is a definite need to review and revise the standards frequently. This changes the inspection sampling requirements and, thus, requires a change in the standards. Plantwide, we normally review standards once a year. However, in this case, we review these standards every quarter.

PROCEDURE

The procedures to develop this type of Indirect Labor Standards is somewhat different from the development of Production Labor Standards. Thirteen weeks of data giving the number of lots and the number of pal lets, rol ls of cloth, dunnage assemblies, etc., inspected each week is input for each item of material handled. This is put into a spreadsheet. The totals and averages/week for each product are calculated by the computer. A three sigma standard deviation is then figured by the computer. Any data that fa l ls outside of these l imits is discarded and the new totals and averages are recalculated by the computer. The new weekly averages are applied to the quality assurance tables to determine the sample size for inspecting materials in a batch process (MIL STD I05). The resulting sample size per lo t for each material is then used with the basic MTM standards to provide a standard time value per lo t . Obviously, the MIL STD I05 tables and the basic MTM standard data are already in the computer. The last step is to printout ta l l y sheets for the operators to record the number of items and lots they inspect by day of the week. On the back of the ta l l y sheet the operators write the number of manhours on standard and the number of manhours off standard (and for what reasons).

USE OF A SPREADSHEET IN MAINTENANCE

The Plant Engineering Department at Indiana Army Ammunition Plant is quite large as could be expected with this size of a f ac i l i t y . Indiana Army Ammunition Plant covers over lO,O00 acres, has 15DO buildings, 18O miles of roadway and 90 miles of railroad tracks. To maintain this f ac i l i t y we have over 300 maintenance mechanics. Supervising these mechanics are 31 foremen. These foremen have a d i f f i cu l t time, to say the least, of actually being able to supervise these mechanics. A foreman may have four to six different crews working most anywhere on the IO,O00 acres. Although Maintenance has a good system of planning, scheduling, engineered standards, as well as planners and inspection engineers, you can imagine that the foreman has a d i f f i cu l t time trying to effectively supervise his numerous crews. The Plant Engineering Manager approached Industrial Engineering for assistance on how to help the foreman spend more time on actual supervision of his mechanics. Industrial Engine- ering needed to, f i r s t , find out how the foremen were actually spending their time. Then they would try to reduce the nonsupervisory act iv i t ies so that the foreman would have more time to actually supervise their crews. Since Industrial Engineering had been having quite good results using work sampling studies throughout the plant, work sampling was considered as the f i r s t approach. However, on anaysis, i t did not seem too practical, considering the d i f f i cu l t y of actually trying to locate the 31 foremen constantly moving around the large fac i l i t y . A second approach was then considered and adopted. I t called for each of the foremen to record their own act iv i t ies. A foreman's daily log was in i t ia ted for this purpose. On the log the foreman l isted his act iv i t ies under three cate- gories: paperwork, contacts with mechanics, and other. Due to the unusual nature of the maintenance work at Indiana Army Ammunition Plant, a t r i a l run was made to find out what various act iv i t ies the foremen actually do. Discussions were conducted with foremen to obtain their f u l l , positive cooper- ation. The proper att i tude of the foremen was quite c r i t i ca l to the success of this type of study.

THE SPREADSHEET

Next we developed a system to summarize the data. Since Maintenance had just received an IBM Per- sonal Computer with a Lotus I-2-3 spreadsheet, we decided to use these. We then developed a spreadsheet format that gave percent of time for each l ine item, standard deviation with upper/lower l imits and minimum/maximum times.

STUDY AND ANALYSIS

Each of the 31 foremen f i l l ed out a daily log each day with the study covering one fu l l month. This gave us over 600 daily logs which contained over 40,000 items to be entered into the computer. This data entry was started by our Industrial Engineers working with the daily logs of the f i r s t two or three foremen and debugging as they went. When the program seemed to be working well , the data en- t ry was turned over to clerical personnel. The computer produced a summary of each of the 31 foremen's daily logs plus a summary by general foreman. With this multitude of summary sheets, we paused to analyze what we had and to decide what else we needed. Then i t was easy to summarize the

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data in other ways, i . e . , the foremen covering different crafts or different areas of the plant.

RESULTS

Through the personal computer's ab i l i t y to handle this mass of data, and show i t in various spreadsheets summarized in many different ways, we were able to clearly analyze how each foreman was spending his time. This lead to questioning as to why and how they were doing the various parts of their jobs. I t lead to the transfer of some paperwork to clerks. Also, i t lead to a realization that we didn' t have enough vehicles assigned to Maintenance, since sometimes the foremen didn't have transportation to v i s i t their crews. This resulted in the reassignment of nine vehicles to improve the effectiveness of some of the maintenance crews. Also, one foreman moved his off ice to a d i f fe r - ent building to be closer to the work area of his maintenance mechanics. These and other actions have resulted in a reduction in Maintenance backlog since the study. At this time, a year after the study, our Plant Engineering Department Manager, General Foremen, Foremen and Industrial Engine- ers are s t i l l analyzing and raising questions. We gained numerous "tangible" results plus a much improved, cooperative sp i r i t within our Maintenance Supervision. In the future we plan to use the personal computer and the Lotus I-2-3 spreadsheet to help us undertake additional studies in Main- tenance and elsewhere at Indiana Army Ammunition Plant.

CONCLUSION

Throughout these examples of using a personal computer with spreadsheet, we have seen how i t has saved Industrial Engineers a tremendous amount of time and enabled us to complete assignments sooner We have looked at the development of Direct Material Standards, Integrated Labor and Material Stand- ards, Receiving Inspection Standards and a special study for the Maintenance Department. For the work that we were previously doing with pencil and calculator, i t has reduced our time requirements substantially. The Industrial Engineers' time that we saved has enabled us to do audits of methods and standards that were long overdue, to go farther and faster in the development of work methods and standards in new areas, and to do special studies for Management that has helped ICl Americas do a better job in operating the Indiana Army Ammunition Plant. For the new assignments that we receive, such as the Integrated Labor and Material Standards, Maintenance Foremen Study, etc., the personal computer with spreadsheet has enabled us to do more indepth studies, more analysis from different perspectives and to provide the results and our recommendations much sooner. I f you get the chance, I 'd strongly recommend that you try out the spreadsheet on a PC. The results could be as beneficial for you as i t is for us.

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Industrial engineering use of a spreadsheet