Healthcare Kaizen focuses on the principles and methods of daily continuous improvement, or Kaizen, for healthcare professionals and organizations. Kaizen is a Japanese word that means "change for the better," as popularized by Masaaki Imai in his 1986 book Kaizen: The Key to Japan's Competitive Success and through the books of Norman Bodek, both of whom contributed introductory material for this book. Winner of a 2013 Shingo Research and Professional Publication Award! In 1989, Dr. Donald M. Berwick, founder of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and former administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, endorsed the principles of Kaizen in the New England Journal of Medicine, describing it as "the continuous search for opportunities for all processes to get better." This book shows how to make this goal a reality. Healthcare Kaizen shares some of the methods used by numerous hospitals around the world, including Franciscan St. Francis Health, where co-author Joe Swartz has led these efforts. Most importantly, the book covers the management mindsets and philosophies required to make Kaizen work effectively in a hospital department or as an organization-wide program. All of the examples in the book were shared by leading healthcare organizations, with over 200 full-color pictures and visual illustrations of Kaizen-based improvements that were initiated by nurses, physicians, housekeepers, senior executives and other staff members at all levels. Healthcare Kaizen will be helpful for organizations that have embraced weeklong improvement events, but now want to follow the lead of ThedaCare, Virginia Mason Medical Center, and others who have moved beyond just doing events into a more complete management system based on Lean or the Toyota Production System. It's often said, without much reflection, that people hate change. The experiences shared

The World Heritage community is currently adopting policies to mainstream human rights as part of a wider sustainability agenda. This interdisciplinary book combines a state of the art review of World Heritage policy and practice at the global level with ethnographic case studies from the Asia-Pacific region by leading scholars in the field. By joining legal reviews, anthropology and practitioner experience through in-depth case studies, it shows the diversity of human rights issues in both natural and cultural heritage sites. From site-designation to their conservation and management, the book explores the various rights issues and analyses the diverse social, cultural and legal challenges and responses at both regional and global level. Detailed case studies are included from Australia, Cambodia, China, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, the Philippines and Vietnam. The book will appeal to both natural and cultural heritage professionals and human rights and heritage scholars, and will serve as a useful compendium for courses use allowing students to compare, contrast and contextualize different contexts.

Discusses effluent discharges into various ambient waters and predictive tools for design and regulatory purposes. Emphasis placed on numerical modeling and simulations, rather than general examples. Provides real technical solutions and tools for minimizing the impact on coasts and other water bodies. Covers the fundamentals in predicting the mixing of effluents resulting from desalination plants. Includes an introduction to OpenFOAM and its applications.

Merchant Ship Types provides a broad and detailed introduction to the classifications and main categories of merchant vessels for students and cadets. It introduces the concept of ship classification by usage, cargo type, and size, and shows how the various size categories affect which ports and channels the types of vessels are permitted to enter. Detailed outlines of each major vessel category are provided, including: Feeder ship General cargo vessels Container ships Tankers Dry bulk carriers Multi-purpose vessels Reefer ships Roll-on/roll-off vessels The book also explains where these are permitted to operate, the type of cargoes carried, and specific safety or risk factors associated with the vessel class, as well as their main characteristics. Relevant case studies are presented. The textbook is ideal for merchant navy cadets at HNC, HND, and foundation degree level in both the deck and engineering branches, and serves as a general reference for insurance, law, logistics, offshore and fisheries.

This book comprises a set of stories about being an engineer for many decades and the lessons the author learned from research and practice. These lessons focus on people and organizations, often enabled by technology. The settings range from airplanes, power plants, and communication networks to ecosystems that enable education, healthcare, and transportation. All of these settings are laced with behavioral and social phenomena that need to be understood and influenced. The author's work in these domains has often led to the question: "Well, why does it work like that?" He invariably sought to understand the bigger picture to find the sources of requirements, constraints, norms, and values. He wanted to understand what could be changed, albeit often with much effort to overcome resistance. He found that higher levels of an ecosystem often provide the resources and dictate the constraints imposed on lower levels. These prescriptions are not just commands. They also reflect values and cultural norms. Thus, the answers to the question were not just technical and economic. Often, the answers reflected eons of social and political priorities. The endeavors related in the book frequently involved addressing emerging realities rather than just the status quo. This book is an ongoing discovery of these bigger pictures. The stories and the lessons related in this book provide useful perspectives on change. The understanding of people and organizations that emerges from these lessons can help to enable transformative change. Fundamental change is an intensely human-centric endeavor, not just for the people and organizations aspiring to change, but also for the people helping them. You will meet many of these people in this book as the stories unfold. The genesis of this book originated in a decision made early in the author's career. He had developed a habit of asking at the end of each day, "What did I really accomplish today?" This was sometimes frustrating as he was not sure the day had yielded any significant accomplishments. One day it dawned on him that this was the wrong question - He needed to ask, "What did I learn today?" It is always possible to learn, most recently about public health and climate change. In planning this book, the author first thought in terms of accomplishments such as projects conducted, systems built, and articles and books published. He could not imagine this being interesting to readers. Then, it struck him - It is much more interesting to report on what he learned about people and organizations, including how he helped them accomplish their goals. This is a book of stories about how these lessons emerged. In planning this book, the author first thought in terms of accomplishments such as projects conducted, systems built, and articles and books published. He could not imagine this being interesting to readers. Then, it struck him - It is much more interesting to report on what he learned about people and organizations, including how he helped them accomplish their goals. This is a book of stories about how these lessons emerged.

-- Only book written addressing the role of a Lean CFO. -- Explains how a Lean Management System integrated with a Lean Business Strategy drives financial success. -- In clear concise terms explains how & why Lean makes money for companies. -- Gives readers the logical reasons why a Lean Management System must replace a Management Accounting System. -- Answers the question "why do we need a Lean Management System?"

Although world-class firms like GE and Motorola have relied on Six Sigma to build their performance cultures, these processes are all too often left out of human resources (HR) functions. This lack of Six Sigma principles is even more surprising because preventing errors and improving productivity are so critical to the people management processes of hiring, retention, appraisal, and development.From the history and evolution of the Total Quality movement to initiatives for introducing a Six Sigma continuous process improvement strategy in your HR department, Achieving HR Excellence through Six Sigma introduces a new way to envision your role within the organization. It explains how this powerful methodology works and supplies a roadmap to help you find and eliminate waste in your HR processes.Describing exactly what HR excellence means, the book outlines dozens of proven approaches as well as a hierarchy of the exact steps required to achieve it. It illustrates the Six Sigma methodology from the creation of a project to its successful completion. At each stage, it describes the specific tools currently available and provides examples of organizations that have used Six Sigma within HR to improve their organizations.The text presents proven approaches that can help you solve and even eliminate people management problems altogether. Filled with real-world examples, it demonstrates how to implement six sigma into the transformational side of your organization. It also includes a listing of additional resources to help you along your Six Sigma journey.Explaining how to build a new business model for your HR organization, the book supplies the new perspective and broad view you will need to discover and recommend game-changing alternatives to traditional HR approaches in your organization.

The last two decades have witnessed an ever growing partisan divide in US politics over climate change and global warming. Significant elements in the Republican Party became openly hostile to the scientific evidence and, following the election of George W. Bush, legislative action at the federal level effectively ground to a halt. This opened up space at the state and local level to develop climate change policies with cities such as Chicago, San Francisco and New York implementing a number of initiatives that brought real and substantive developments. The election of Barack Obama in 2008 seemed to open new possibilities for federal and global leadership once more and whilst the Obama administration has been criticised for a somewhat contradictory approach to the issue at times, there were nonetheless a number of substantive policy developments. Through a substantive and detailed analysis of the politics of climate change, this book places the evolution of US climate policy within broader debates on the nature of politics in the US and argues that there exists a latent potential, often obscured by the complexities of its political system, for America to act as a world leader on the issue. This work will appeal particularly to students and scholars in American Politics, but will also prove useful to those in the fields of general Politics, climate change, sustainability, and environmental studies.

Based on the "go to" book in the field of ecological risk assessment, this shorter, principles-based, updated textbook is essential for students and new practitioners who want to understand the purposes of environmental assessments and how to achieve them. It includes environmental risks to humans as well as nonhuman populations and ecosystems, and most types of environmental assessments. Drawing upon the author’s extensive experience in the field, first as a senior research staff member in the Environmental Sciences Division at Oak Ridge Laboratory and then as science adviser in the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s National Center for Environmental Assessment, the book explains fundamental principles and basic techniques and illustrates them with example applications which carry through multiple chapters and make this book a practical and hands-on guide. Both the content and the style are inviting and approachable to different levels of students. Features 1. Integrates human health and ecological assessments. 2. Includes epidemiological, risk, causal, impact, and outcome assessments. 3. Focuses on fundamental principles that are applicable in all nations and legal contexts. 4. Employs an engaging style and draws on the author’s practical experience. 5. Explains fundamental concepts in short chapters, making it perfect for beginners in the field. 6. Explains the challenges and rewards of a career in environmental assessment. This book is a practical guide for senior and graduate students in environmental sciences and management, as well as new practitioners of assessment who want to understand the purposes of environmental assessments and how to achieve them.

Unique selling point: A rigorous examination of the influence of software development on competitiveness among small firms Core audience: Researchers and academics in business and MIS Place in the market: Academic reference with audiences in social science and computer science

This timely book provides effective methods and authentic examples of teaching about climate change through digital and multimodal media production in the English Language Arts classroom. The chapters in this edited volume demonstrate the benefits of addressing climate change in the classroom through innovative media production and cover a range of different types of media, including video/digital storytelling, social media, art, music, and writing, with rich resources for instruction in every chapter. Through the engaging ideas and strategies, the contributors equip educators with the critical tools for supporting students’ media production. In so doing, they offer new perspectives on how students can employ media and production techniques to critique the status quo, call for change, and acquire new literacy skills. As the effects of the climate crisis become increasingly visible to the youth population, this book helps foster and support youth agency and activism. Youth Media Creation on the Climate Change Crisis: Hear Our Voices is a necessary text for students, preservice teachers, and educators in literacy education, media studies, social and environmental studies, and STEM education. The eBook+ version of the text features embedded audio and video components as well as interactive links to reflect the multimodal nature of students’ work, spotlighting how youth media production supports the development of students’ critical literacy skills and shapes their voices and identities.

This book critically explores the legal tools, concepts, principles and instruments, as well as cross-cutting issues, that comprise the field of international environmental law. Commencing with foundational elements, progressing on to discrete sub-fields, then exploring regional cooperative approaches, cross-cutting issues and finally emerging challenges for international environmental law, it features chapters by leading experts in the field of international environmental law, drawn from a range of countries in order to put forward a truly global approach to the subject. The book is split into five parts: * The foundations of international environmental law covering the principles of international environmental law, standards and voluntary commitments, sustainable development, issues of public participation and environmental rights and compliance, state responsibility, liability and dispute settlement. * The key instruments and governance arrangements across the most critical areas of international environmental law: biodiversity, wildlife, freshwater, forestry and soils, fisheries, marine pollution, chemicals and waste, air and atmospheric pollution and climate change. * Crucial developments in seven distinct regions of the world: Africa, Europe, North America, Latin America, South East Asia, the polar regions and small island states. * Cross-cutting issues and multidisciplinary developments, drawing from multiple other fields of law and beyond to address human rights and Indigenous rights, war and armed conflict, trade, financing, investment, criminology, technology and energy. * Contemporary challenges and the emerging international environmental law regimes which address these: the changing climate, forced migration, marine plastic debris and future directions in international environmental law. Containing chapters on the most critical developments in environmental law in recent years, this comprehensive and authoritative book makes for an essential reference work for students, scholars and practitioners working in the field.

This book examines how safety failings during the use of any designed product or system-be it a car, a building, or a chemical plant-can be mitigated through effective understanding of the conditions and controls surrounding its use. Drawing on historical failures and their own real-world experience, Dr Andy Painting and David England explain how corporate culture, engineering safety, personnel selection, and proper safety auditing are key ingredients to maintaining safety in all aspects of an organization's operations. This effective strategy is also crucial to linking back to the design of future products in establishing where operational failures have been identified and can therefore be "designed out" in future iterations. The book challenges silo thinking among the various safety-related disciplines and shows how this can be counter-productive to effective safety management. Effectively Managing the Case for Safety draws on key features from engineering, design, and health and safety processes, which, when used cohesively, promote a better working environment for everyone and help to reduce wasted time, money, and effort for any organization. Safety is tracked from the initial design stage through any product's entire service life and includes evidence of how safety affects, and is affected by, all those who interact with a product, system, or project. Following their first book, An Effective Strategy for Safe Design in Engineering and Construction, which demonstrated how current construction regulations can be used as a framework to ensure that safety is embedded into the design of virtually any product from machinery to buildings, this follow up book defines what safe is, how it is initially derived, and how the operational safety of any product, during its in-use phase, can be managed and assessed. The result is not only to ensure compliance with relevant regulations but also to actively ensure the ongoing safety of all those who interact with a product or project.

Provides a thorough, updated guide to ungasketed bolted joints and their design Based around the latest ASME standards for bolted joints Covers use of the Finte Element Method for design analysis of bolted joints, with ANSYS examples Expands coverage of threads, internal/external thread interaction, and adjustment for design functions Examines the materials aspects of bolted joint design and behavior

Unique selling point: * Provides IT managers and audit professionals with relevant knowledge directly applicable to various blockchain-related organizational projects. Core audience: * An educational and professional reference resource for information systems researchers, IT managers, and audit professionals. Place in the market: * Unlike most current blockchain titles on the market, The Auditor's Guide to Blockchain Technology also deals with security and assurance issues

This book analyses the drivers of specific common pool resource problems, particularly in fisheries and forestry, examining the way in which private and public regulation have intervened to fight the common pool resource problem by contributing to the establishment and maintenance of property rights. It focuses on the various forms of regulation that have been put in place to protect fisheries and forestry over the past decades - both from a theoretical as well as from a policy perspective - comparing the concrete interaction of legal and policy instruments in eight separate jurisdictions.

This book explores creative interdisciplinary and potentially transformative solutions to the current stalemate in contemporary water policy design. A more open policy conversation about water than exists at present is proposed - one that provides a space for the role of the imagination and is inclusive - of the arts and humanities, relevant stakeholders, including landholders and Indigenous peoples, as well as science, law and economics. Written for a wide audience, including practitioners and professional readers, as well as scholars and students, the book demonstrates the value of multiple disciplines, voices, perspectives, knowledges and different ways of relating to water. It provides a fresh and timely response to the urgent need for water policy that works to achieve sustainability, and may be better able to resolve complex environmental, social and cultural water issues. Utilising a broad range of evidentiary sources and case studies from Australia, New Zealand, Canada and elsewhere, the authors of this edited collection demonstrate how new ways of thinking and imagining water are not only possible but already practised, and growing in saliency and impact. The current dominance of narrower ways of conceptualising our relationship with water is critiqued, including market valuation and water privatisation, and more innovative alternatives are described, including those that recognise the importance of place-based stories and narratives, adopt traditional ecological knowledge and relational water appreciations, and apply cutting-edge behavioural and ecological systems science. The book highlights how innovative approaches drawing on a wide range of views may counter prevailing policy myopia, enable reflexive governance and transform water policy towards addressing water security questions and the broader challenges posed by the Anthropocene and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Especially written for contractors and small businesses carrying out small works, Spon's House Improvement Price Guide contains accurate information on thousands of rates, each broken down to labour, material overheads and profit.

The new edition of this popular student text offers an engaging introduction to environmental study. It covers the entire breadth of the environmental sciences, providing concise, non-technical explanations of physical processes and systems and the effects of human activities. In this second edition the scientific background to major environmental issues is clearly explained. These include:
* global warming
* genetically modified foods
* desertification
* acid rain
* deforestation
* human population growth
* depleting resources
* nuclear power generation
* descriptions of the 10 major biomes.
Special student text features include illustrations and explanatory diagrams, boxed case studies, concepts and definitions.

Focusing on the critical role IT plays in organizational development, the book shows how to employ action learning to improve the competitiveness of an organization. Defining the current IT problem from an operational and strategic perspective, it presents a collection of case studies that illustrate key learning issues. It details a dynamic model for effective IT management through adaptive learning techniques-supplying proven educational theories and practices to foster the required changes in your staff. It examines existing organizational learning theories and the historical problems that occurred with companies that have used them, as well as those that have failed to use them.

The long-term development of public green spaces such as parks, public gardens, and recreation grounds in London during the twentieth century is a curiously neglected subject, despite the fact that various kinds of green spaces cover huge areas in cities in the UK today. This book explores how and why public green spaces have been created and used in London, and what actors have been involved in their evolution, during the course of the twentieth century. Building on case studies of the contemporary boroughs of Camden and Southwark and making use of a wealth of archival material, the author takes us through the planning and creation stages, to the intended (and actual) uses and ongoing management of the spaces. By highlighting the rise and fall of municipal authorities and the impact of neo-liberalism after the 1970s, the book also deepens our understanding of how London has been governed, planned and ruled during the twentieth century. It makes a crucial contribution to academic as well as political discourse on the history and present role of green space in sustainable cities.

When NASA Astronaut Nicole Stott first saw the Earth from space, she was filled with awe. Our shared home was a brilliant blue marble, with a razor thin atmosphere protecting billions of people, including everyone she loved. She realized that we are all bound together on this fragile planet. When she came back to earth, she knew she had to share this vision to help protect it. Stott knows the scale of the daunting task at hand-and yet, she believes we can set aside our differences and work together to tackle the most challenging planetary problems humanity has ever faced. She knows this, because she's seen it happen, on the International Space Station. Throughout her book, Stott imparts hard-won lessons in high-stakes problem solving, survival, and responding to crisis in space. On a space station, astronauts can't wait for someone else to handle a rescue; and when it comes to our earthbound problems, Stott learned that everyone should live like a crewmember, not like a passenger. In space, where everyone survives in a closed system, everything is local-and Stott discovered that in a profound way, the same is true back at home. Back to Earth distills these lessons and more into seven principles that can be practiced by each and every one of us to make much-needed change. In addition to sharing stories from her own spaceflight, Stott offers eye-opening insights from scientists and changemakers already sparking meaningful change in their communities and around the globe. She explores the complexities and splendor of the earth's biodiversity, and what it takes to preserve it, with both pioneering scientists on earth and engineers working to enable life in space. She meets with activists who use their time in space to advocate for clean water, and with executives who quit their corporate positions and use their global reach to become environmental leaders. Through her stirring call to action, Nicole Stott reveals how we each have the power to respect the Earth and one another-and to change our own lives in the process. And, while we're at it, we might just save humanity.

This new volume studies the impact and management of environmental pollution on plants, often resulting in plant abiotic stress physiology, which causes reduction in growth due to alterations in biochemical and physiological processes, thus threatening food security, the ecosystem, and the plants themselves. This volume details the harm to plants caused primarily by heavy metal contamination in soils, by pesticides use, and by air pollution and presents several mitigation strategies as well. Soils contaminated with heavy metals is a major challenge worldwide due to increase in anthropogenic and geologic activities. Despite the effectiveness of pesticides in preventing pest invasions and yield decline, pesticides and other air pollutants cause biochemical changes that can instigate leaf damage, stomatal impairment, early senescence, decrease in photosynthetic efficiency, interruption of membrane perviousness, and decrease of growth and yield in sensitive plant types. Chapters in this volume address these issues. Topics include the antioxidant, photosynthesis, and growth characteristics of plants grown in polluted soils; the benefits and hazards of pesticides; microbe-assisted bioremediation and biotechnological advances for plant pollution control; genetically modified plants and their potential resistance to environmental pollution; and more.

Carbon materials play a significant role in the development of alternative clean and sustainable energy technologies. This new volume focuses on the new applications of different carbon nanomaterials and graphene-carbon-nanotube hybrids for energy generation, energy storage, and energy conversion. It presents a comprehensive overview of recent developments on carbon-based nanomaterials with a focus on sustainable and clean energy applications. With chapters written by the leading academicians and researchers working in the field, the volume explores state-of-the-art developments using both commercially available and emerging materials and their potential applications for energy storage and energy harvesting.

This new volume offers effective solutions to the mismanagement of waste, particularly in developing countries, by providing an understanding of different types of wastes, their generation, and use of advanced technologies for waste management, and by focusing on integrating the technical and regulatory complexities of waste management. Waste Problems and Management in Developing Countries provides a comprehensive overview of the characterization, issues, and regulatory development of waste management for sustainable solutions and prevention techniques. It covers the various types of pollution, including pollution from plastics, industrial activities, metals, livestock, healthcare, food loss and waste, etc. It explores new techniques for thermal and radioactive waste management and includes such methods as vermicomposting and composting for organic wastes management and profitable use. The volume also looks at the role of modern technologies and legislation measures to manage biosolid waste. The volume includes numerous data sets obtained from various surveys and highlights special categories of waste that may not fit precisely into either RCRA Subtitle D (solid wastes) or Subtitle C (hazardous wastes). Academicians, researchers, and students will find the volume to be a comprehensible volume about waste management and its diversity, exploration, exploitation, and management strategies.