Engineering, Production Systems and Economic Development in the 21st Century

  In this new century, which has left the past ten years behind, a new economic development dominated by the service sector has begun to emerge worldwide, particularly in developed countries. Country economies have increasingly begun to integrate more with the outside world, also under the influence of globalization. Looking at the production dimension, in developed countries, elements that create difference and value (design, creativity, technology that increases end-user comfort and safety, brand value, image value, etc.) have begun to come to the fore rather than production itself. In light of these developments, the concept of engineering has also begun to change in this new century. Engineers are no longer concerned solely with the production department of a product in the classical sense, but have begun to engage with other dimensions of the work in this century (R&D, technology, creativity, design, etc.). Technological and industrial developments in this century have naturally increased dependence on basic resources such as energy and raw materials, and the efficient use of these increasingly scarce resources has become much more important. Therefore, given the constantly evolving and changing business and working conditions, engineers and manufacturers have taken on many new responsibilities at this juncture. Looking at successful engineers or businesspeople working in production systems in recent years, we see that individuals who manage scarce resources, propose alternative production policies, and provide good interdisciplinary coordination in projects have begun to come to the fore. In this context, companies with an engineering infrastructure based on preventing and solving problems by developing systems, models and methods for the examination, planning, organization, implementation, supervision and development of systems in the industrial and service sectors—consisting of elements such as people, machinery, materials and the like—are institutions that have achieved or will achieve success in the near future.

With the arrival of the 21st century;

Today, particularly industrial engineers working in the field are trying to adapt to developments in production operations. For the most part, they are striving to embrace the changes necessary to ensure advanced levels of effectiveness, efficiency and continuous improvement in the manufacturing environment. In short, the fundamental task that industrial engineers must accomplish in this period is to formulate the necessary strategies in the most correct manner in light of the changes they face, implement them, and ensure that they are realized as desired. We now live in a world where we encounter many changes of different dimensions at unexpected times. In this age, with core technological elements, industrial engineering has changed rapidly and has become a more attractive engineering discipline for the new generation. Society is transforming into a knowledge society and the concept of innovation has become increasingly important. Accordingly, the continuous improvement of industrial culture and manufacturing has become an important factor in the economic development of nations. Another notable point in this age is the existing competitive environment, and this naturally accelerates technological advances further. Manufacturing has now entered a new era and global markets have begun to emerge. As a result, manufacturing organizations have been forced to make fundamental structural changes in order to survive and compete. The emergence of new manufacturing technologies has brought together systems, intelligence and integration, and the manufacturing system has become extremely complex. As a result, a problem occurring in a small regional part of a system now affects the entire system in a more complex manner. Engineers have now been forced to use advanced techniques such as modeling, simulation and optimization to ensure the structure, organization and management of a manufacturing system. Similarly, the need has arisen to develop new human-centered systems to ensure the structure, organization and management of a manufacturing system.

Specific to modern manufacturing, in design;

new ideas have begun to emerge in processes and management. The reason for this is the developments in system theory and methods that continuously affect each component of a manufacturing system. This naturally enables a better understanding of the totality of material, energy and information flows in a manufacturing system. As a result, these developments have led to further progress in theory and methodology. In the meantime, increasing consumer power along with economic development has caused major changes in consumption and consumer market structure. The world has now entered an age of product diversity, customized production, systematization and internationalization. It has entered a more difficult period in terms of competition, and companies are now forced to focus more on activities such as product development, R&D, after-sales service, etc. Meanwhile, classical organization and management theories have also changed significantly. As a result, the concept of mass customization has developed, and of course this has necessitated the implementation of new approaches in manufacturing. Due to this increasing momentum in the development of science, technology and markets, companies have been forced to make very urgent changes. New generation technologies, information and products have begun to replace the old ones at an unpredictable pace. This has further increased demand for technology use while also bringing about changes in issues such as resource efficiency and environmental protection. In the meantime, modern technology has begun to be used not only to ensure high efficiency and cost effectiveness, but also to help achieve clean production and continuous change. In this information age, information technologies and related technologies, advanced manufacturing technologies and methods (rapid manufacturing, lean manufacturing, flexible manufacturing, visual manufacturing, green manufacturing) are changing rapidly. Techniques applied for high speed, high efficiency, high quality and low production loss have naturally been affected by these developments.

In our country in the 21st century, these changes in the world;

In parallel, which engineering strategies need to be developed and implemented has also become quite important. In this framework, there are many strategies to be considered as indicated below; In my opinion, the strategies that should be observed and implemented are as follows; 1. To develop necessary engineering theories, methods and applied research taking into account developments in the production environment and newly emerging technologies, 2. To develop advanced manufacturing methods and management research in order to keep pace with market changes and scientific developments, 3. To focus on clean production, continuous improvement, theories, methods and applied research with regard to the conditions of our country, 4. To conduct research on subjects such as work study and analysis and make efforts to increase the production efficiency of organizations and production workers in our country, 5. To improve the capabilities of people responsible for manufacturing management to produce quality output and for this purpose to develop work study and analysis systems, to adopt and implement intelligent manufacturing, manufacturing systems engineering and other emerging new technologies, 6. To improve the integration of information, material and energy flows to increase the effectiveness of production operations, 7. To advocate the importance of the human factor in managerial thinking, management ideas, management theories and research related to management techniques. T. Emrah Sözer - Industrial Engineer - Production Director - Sözer Makina Sanayi ve Ticaret Ltd. Şti.