Senior Industrial Engineer

I’m on an assignment as a Lead Industrial Engineer at General Motors Flint Engine plant, as a contract engineer thru Industrial Engineering Technology. There my duties consist of constraint management and plant capacity planning. The plant currently makes the HFV6, and is in the execution stages of implementing cells and modules to build the new lithium ion battery for the Chevrolet Volt to be launched in 2010. A large part of my constraint management responsibilities is involved in the day-to-day management for thru put and strive to make the daily production requirements. They’re the raw casting, come in from the global supply chain (the casting are engine blocks, cams, and heads). After they arrive from the global supply chain they are inventoried and started thru various cells to be CNC machined prior to assemble. To properly manage the work cells my function of an industrial engineer and constraint management is to assure that the cells don’t get blocked or starved so that the work can flow smoothly thru all the cells. Many things can cause the cells to be blocked or starved, from quality, equipment failure, manpower issues etc. For example on the engine head, there are 19 different CNC milling machines with over 500 different programs in these machines. These machines need to stay in synchronization to feed each other (not blocked or starved) in order to fulfill the daily production requirements. One day last week my family was working on a project and I applied the blocked - starved constraint method. We were grinding hamburger from a recently butchered animal. My job was to load the raw meat into the hopper. The hopper grinds at a certain rate of speed. The key is to let the grinder run at 100% of its capacity (same as the CNC mills). The meat comes out of the grinder and must be placed in zip-lock bags. If the grinder has to be slowed down or turned off due to the meat not being packaged at the same rate of speed. Then the grinder is being blocked. If the grinder is not running at its full capacity due to meat not going in the hopper than it’s being starved. The constraints management for building an engine is much more complex than the project of grinding hamburger, but the same concept applies.

Industrial Engineer

Goodrich, MI