EIT Industrial Review, Second Edition
This toolbook provides a complete review for the Industrial section of the Engineer in Training State licensing exam. It reviews each topic with numerous example problems and complete step-by-step solutions.
TABLE OF CONTENTS EIT Industrial Review, Second Edition
Chapter 10: Computers
In the 60-question afternoon session of the FE Exam, expect three questions on computer computations and modeling and three questions on information system design.
Computer Computations and Modeling
According to the FE Discipline Specific Reference Handbook, page 72, all FE examinees "are expected to be familiar with flow charts, pseudocode, and spreadsheets." Industrial engineers are also expected to have some additional familiarity with computer hardware and software vocabulary and concepts of interactive computing and communication.
Logic Flow Diagrams and Pseudocode
When FE exams mention flow charts, they usually mean logic flow diagrams, not the process flow diagrams familiar to industrial engineers through the GPSS simulation language. A process flow diagram depicts the flow of transactions (customers or jobs) through a set of facilities. Instead of telling GPSS what procedure to follow to simulate a system, the process flow diagram describes the system being simulated; this is non-procedural programming. Logic flow diagrams and pseudocode, by contrast, are ways of documenting step-by-step procedures. The entity that "flows" in a logic flow diagram is the "attention" or focus of the logic engine. A logic flow diagram and a set of lines of pseudocode are two ways of specifying what the computer should do and where it should go next, where it will again be told what to do.
To read and understand a modern logic flow diagram, you need only to understand six standardized symbols and the connections among them. Examine Figure 10-1.
Figure 10-1: Logic Flow Diagram Symbols
The processing block
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