The Pittsburgh, PA Section of the Society of Women Engineers Question 1 - I am a chemical engineer working on my Masters. I would like to know to what extent is computer literacy needed to work in the chemical industry. I am familiar with languages like C. To be more specific, what are the well known packages for equipment design, process design and simulations used in the chemical industry. Can you tell me of a site where I can obtain more informaiton. 1 - Programming ability is not as important as familiarity with an ability to use spreadsheets, databases, and word processors, and other applications.
Most organizations have programmers who take care of the programming issues.
There are a number of design, modeling and simulation programs that are used, and the best vary depending upon the specific application. Question 2 - I have just accepted a position with a manufacturing company requiring time and motion studies to determine cost of production and labor with the goal to reduce costs and determine more efficient methods to achieve the same quality product outcome. Answer 2 - The first step is to list every task in the process to be analyzed. Each task has to be clearly defined - where it begins and where it ends. Variables that can occur within the task generally indicate that it should be broken down into separate tasks.