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The flow process chart is a graphical and symbolic representation of the activities performed on the work piece during the operation in industrial engineering.
online version
* Operation: to change the physical or chemical characteristics of the material. * Inspection: to check the quality or the quantity of the material. * Move: transporting the material from one place to another. * Delay: when material cannot go to the next activity. * Storage: when the material is kept in a safe location.
The flow process chart is a graphical and symbolic representation of the activities performed on the work piece during the operation in industrial engineering.
History
The first structured method for documenting process flow, e.g., inflow shop scheduling
Flow-shop scheduling is an optimization problem in computer science and operations research. It is a variant of optimal job scheduling. In a general job-scheduling problem, we are given ''n'' jobs ''J''1, ''J''2, ..., ''Jn'' of varyi ...
, the flow process chart, was introduced by Frank
Frank or Franks may refer to:
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* Frank (surname)
* Franks (surname)
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* Frank, a term in the Muslim world for all western Europeans, particularly during the Crusades - see Farang
Curr ...
and Lillian Gilbreth to members of ASME
The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) is an American professional association that, in its own words, "promotes the art, science, and practice of multidisciplinary engineering and allied sciences around the globe" via "continuing ...
in 1921 as the presentation "Process Charts, First Steps in Finding the One Best Way to Do Work". The Gilbreths' tools quickly found their way into industrial engineering
Industrial engineering is an engineering profession that is concerned with the optimization of complex process (engineering), processes, systems, or organizations by developing, improving and implementing integrated systems of people, money, kno ...
curricula.
In the early 1930s, an industrial engineer, Allan H. Mogensen, began training business people in the use of some of the tools of industrial engineering at his Work Simplification Conferences in Lake Placid, New York
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. A 1944 graduate of Mogensen's class, Art Spinanger, took the tools back to Procter and Gamble
The Procter & Gamble Company (P&G) is an American multinational Final good, consumer goods corporation headquartered in Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, founded in 1837 by William Procter (industrialist), William Procter and James Gamble (industr ...
, where he developed their Deliberate Methods Change Program. Another 1944 graduate, Ben S. Graham, Director of Formcraft Engineering at Standard Register Corporation Standard may refer to:
Symbols
* Colours, standards and guidons, kinds of military signs
* Standard (emblem), a type of a large symbol or emblem used for identification
Norms, conventions or requirements
* Standard (metrology), an object th ...
, adapted the flow process chart to information processing with his development of the multi-flow process chart to display multiple documents and their relationships.
Symbols
In 1947, ASME adopted the following symbol set derived from Gilbreth's original work as the ASME Standard for Process Charts.American Society of Mechanical Engineers (1947) ''ASME standard; operation and flow process charts''. New York, 1947.online version
* Operation: to change the physical or chemical characteristics of the material. * Inspection: to check the quality or the quantity of the material. * Move: transporting the material from one place to another. * Delay: when material cannot go to the next activity. * Storage: when the material is kept in a safe location.
When to use it
* It is used when observing aphysical process
Physical changes are changes affecting the form of a chemical substance, but not its chemical composition. Physical changes are used to separate mixtures into their component compounds, but can not usually be used to separate compounds into chem ...
, to record actions as they happen, and thus get an accurate description of the process.
* It is used when analyzing the steps in a process, to help identify and eliminate waste
Waste (or wastes) are unwanted or unusable materials. Waste is any substance discarded after primary use, or is worthless, defective and of no use. A by-product, by contrast is a joint product of relatively minor economic value. A waste prod ...
—thus, it is a tool for efficiency planning.
* It is used when the process is mostly sequential
In mathematics, a sequence is an enumerated collection of objects in which repetitions are allowed and order matters. Like a set, it contains members (also called ''elements'', or ''terms''). The number of elements (possibly infinite) is called th ...
, containing few decisions.
See also
*Business process mapping
Business process mapping refers to activities involved in defining what a business entity does, who is responsible, to what standard a business process should be completed, and how the success of a business process can be determined.
The main pur ...
* Control flow diagram
A control-flow diagram (CFD) is a diagram to describe the control flow of a business process, process or review.
Control-flow diagrams were developed in the 1950s, and are widely used in multiple engineering disciplines. They are one of the cla ...
* Data flow diagram
A data-flow diagram is a way of representing a flow of data through a process or a system (usually an information system). The DFD also provides information about the outputs and inputs of each entity and the process itself. A data-flow diagram ha ...
* Flowchart
A flowchart is a type of diagram that represents a workflow or process. A flowchart can also be defined as a diagrammatic representation of an algorithm, a step-by-step approach to solving a task.
The flowchart shows the steps as boxes of va ...
* Functional flow block diagram
A functional flow block diagram (FFBD) is a multi-tier, time-sequenced, step-by-step flow diagram of a system’s functional flow. The term "functional" in this context is different from its use in functional programming or in mathematics, where p ...
* Workflow
A workflow consists of an orchestrated and repeatable pattern of activity, enabled by the systematic organization of resources into processes that transform materials, provide services, or process information. It can be depicted as a sequence of ...
References
External links
{{commonscat, Flow process charts Industrial engineering Charts