OVERVIEW

Thirty years ago I (TB) started my industrial engineering career as a time study and methods analyst for one of the world's leading brass manufacturers. It was one of those old-line industries in the Naugatuck Valley area of Connecticut where grandpa, dad, his sons, relatives, and in-laws all worked. At that time, employees had on average around 25+ years of service. The company hired me and Dan, a classmate of mine, as their first two degreed industrial engineers. It was a tremendous transition from academia to the real world of manufacturing. Dan and I were quickly counseled that our long hair, bell-bottoms, platform shoes, and loud ties were inappropriate dress code for the copper and brass industry. Academia could never prepare us for what we were about to experience during those first few years of employment. We were the "hippy-dippy" time study kids in a Theory X (brush cut, white shirt, black tie, polyester sport coat) company.

Dan and I talked off-line a lot, and we agreed that while we might be going through major personal and cultural adjustment, it was an industrial engineer's gold mine, a place where we could directly apply basic industrial engineering skills and make quick improvements. I remember implementing all kinds of state-of-the-art improvements on the shop floor, like rearranging equipment and creating shadow boards for tools to improve workplace organization and flow. We performed setup and changeover studies to reduce downtime and improve delivery flexibility. We conducted man/machine interference and work-sampling studies to...