I did not start out wanting to be an Industrial Engineer, as I approached my senior year in High School my anticipations and goals was to become a Federal Marshall. I had it all planned out while attending Penn State University for a bachelors degree in law (did not have any discipline planned out) I would work evenings for a local police department, after graduating with a BS in law, I would then extend my education level to Masters and switch my evening job with the Police department to the Sheriff Department. Finally once I attained my Masters I would have the education, years of law experience and I would have reached the minimum age to apply for a position as a Deputy Federal Marshal.
Now enough of the dreaming and time to wake up, all that was abruptly change by my first wife's father talking me out of the law enforcement trial and on to the Engineering trial, since he himself was a Industrial Engineer with a Master Degree in the same field. I started off going to the same university as he to obtain my Industrial Engineering degree, but instead of going on to get my Masters, I chose to diversify and while working as an Industrial Engineer I went for a second degree in Business Administration. But enough of the background which led me up to working as an I.E. for more than twenty years.
My first job was a I.E. Technician for Pullman Standard in Butler Pa. Pullman Standard was a manufacture of railroad cars, the type they built in Butler were Coal Cars and Box Cars. These were all built from raw material stock all the way thru the assembly and painting operations. The Industrial Engineering Department was made up of about seven engineers with varying degrees of experience, we were all responsible for the methods, standards and quality criteria of over two thousand workers all spread over three shifts. Looking back it now this was probably the only company I worked for were the I.E. department was truely in charge of all aspects of the engineering discipline. Unfortunatley this was short lived by three years, for this was the start of the era of companies going overseas to manufacture their product this downsizing and company closings. Pullman chose the later, over two thousand people out of a job.
Onto my next stop, with a generous severance package (compared to todays standards) of one month of pay for every year of service, I had three months to find a job before we had to dig into the savings account. Fortunately I was able to obtain another Engineering job within three months, althou it was short lived and put to death by the same villain as my first job. The duties of this job was much like the first develop and implement standards and methods for the various operations thru out the electronic devices of Robertshaw Controls. At the end of this short lived job I started to think that maybe the north was not such a safe bet to obtain a job that would last until retirement. So being young and brave (or maybe just ignorant) I setoff to the south to look for a job in the textile/apparel industry.
So I stopped in Winston Salem/Greensboro the heart of the textile/apparel industry. I was able to obtain a position as an Junior I.E. with Hanes within a couple of months of searching for a job in my choosen field. This was my first introduction into predetermined time standards. Since this was the standard operation for the engineering department I was given the gift of being sent back to school to learn the H.B. Maymard system of M.O.S.T. Again the I.E.s were in charge of Method development and standard implementation.
I stayed with Hanes for seven years until I got bored and itched for new adventures and accepted a job as I.E. Manager for Fruit of the Loom for their new multi million dollars facility in Texas. Delayed construction would keep operations from starting up on-time , so I was bounced across the US and Canada performing various projects for one year until the opening of the plant. This stage in my career was probably the most enjoyable time getting to see the USA while getting vast amounts of experience. But finally it was opening day and work started at the Texas plant, I had a small staff of four to cover a plant of 1200 employees on two shifts. Standards practices were methods development and improvements, standard development and implementation. This lasted for about seven years and that villain reared its head again and the downsizing and plant closures began once again. The apparel industry was moving into Honduras and Mexico, even thou I made my share of trips to both countries while working at Fruit of the Loom, it wasnt my thing to accept a transfer that far south. So with yet another plant closing I was out looking for another job.
Ironically my next job lead me back to my original roots of metal fabrication with a fuel filtration vessel manufacture. And with this move and move back to the standard duties of using time studies for standard development with an added twist of compiling the data into a computerize data system to keep track of methods and piece standards. Four years later the company after 25 years in business decided to outsource the fabrication operation and run purely with the filtration end. Add another 4 more years and that brings me up to date, working with the same company but working with the filtration products. Duties range anywhere from setting standards, to developing methods, to ensuring quality criteria are followed. Using a mixture of time studies, predetermined standards and video analysis. Althou there isnt the once large I.E. department of six or seven to handle the plant, it may keep us busy all day long but the two of us can handle it.
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