This book is aimed at manufacturing and planning managers who struggle to bring a greater degree of stability and more effective use of assets to their operations, not realizing the degree to which production scheduling affects those objectives. It has been reported that 75% of the problems on the manufacturing floor are caused by activities outside the plant floor. Poor production scheduling strategies and systems are often the biggest contributors to the 75%. The book explains in detail that no scheduling strategy, and especially no transition to a different and better scheduling strategy, will succeed without strong commitment and guidance from senior leadership. Leadership must understand their active role in the transition, that people will feel uncomfortable and even threatened by change, and that they will need to be measured by different standards. Effective scheduling requires that following the schedule and production to plan is more important than trying to maximize each day's throughput. The book explains the advantages of a structured, regularly repeating schedule: how it can increase throughput, right-size inventory based on cycles and variabilities and therefore make it more usable, and improve customer delivery. It will explain the trade-offs between throughput, inventory, and delivery performance, how those trade-offs are actually decided in production scheduling, and how an appropriate scheduling strategy can make the trade-offs and their ramifications visible. It discusses several popular structured scheduling concepts, their similarities, and differences, to allow the readers to decide which might fit best in their environments. In addition, the authors discuss what makes an appropriate scheduling software system, and why a package designed for structured scheduling offers capabilities well beyond the Excel workbooks used by many companies, and how it offers much more design capability and ease of use than the finite scheduling modules in SAP or Oracle. Finally, the authors offer a proven roadmap for implementation, critical success factors necessary to achieve the full potential, and give examples of operations that have done this well. In addition, a guide for leaders and managers post-implementation is provided to help them fully exploit the advantages of a structured, repeating scheduling strategy.

Continually increasing demands on infrastructures mean that maintenance and renewal require timely, appropriate action that maximizes benefits while minimizing cost. To be as well informed as possible, decision-makers must have an optimal understanding of an infrastructure's condition-what it is now, and what it is expected to be in the future. Written by two highly respected engineers, the first volume, Infrastructure Health in Civil Engineering: Theory and Components, integrates the decision making concept into theoretical and practical issues. It includes: An overview of the infrastructure health in civil engineering (IHCE) and associated theories In-depth description of the four components of SHCE: measurements, structural identification, damage identification, and decision making Discussion of how IHCE and asset management are applied An exploration of infrastructure health management Built to correspond to the ideas presented in its companion volume, Applications and Management, this is an invaluable guide to optimized, cost-saving methods that will help readers meet safety specifications for new projects, as well as aging infrastructures at high risk for failure.

Work Organization and Methods Engineering for Productivity provides an introduction to, and practical advice on, assessing methods of working to achieve maximum output and efficiency. The main focus of the book is on the 'work study', which helps to increase the productivity of men, machines and materials. We are currently seeing a lot of disruptive advancement in industrial operations caused by technologies, including artificial intelligence and IoT. Against this technological backdrop, and with ever increasing focus on value, the fundamental understanding of how to analyze and organize the workplace for productivity is more important than ever. Case studies and illustrations throughout make this book a much have for managers with responsibility for production and planning in industry.

Digital Media and Wireless Communication in Developing Nations: Agriculture, Education, and the Economic Sector explores how digital media and wireless communication, especially mobile phones and social media platforms, offer concrete opportunities for developing countries to transform different sectors of their economies. The volume focuses on the agricultural, economic, and education sectors. The chapter authors, mostly from Africa and India, provide a wealth of information on recent innovations, the opportunities they provide, challenges faced, and the direction of future research in digital media and wireless communication to leverage transformation in developing countries. The volume provides important research on digital media and wireless communication within the context of developing countries that will be very useful for professionals from academia, government agencies, NGOs, technologists, entrepreneurs and investors, and others.

A solid, rigorous, yet comprehensible analysis of process capability indices, this work bridges the gap between theoretical statisticians and quality control practitioners, showing how an understanding of these indices can lead to process improvement.

This book provides a historical inquiry into the quantification of needs in humanitarian assistance. Needs are increasingly seen as the lowest common denominator of humanity. Standard definitions of basic needs, however, set a minimalist version of humanity - both in the sense that they are narrow in what they compare, and that they set a low bar for satisfaction. The book argues that we cannot understand humanitarian governance if we do not understand how humanitarian agencies made human suffering commensurable across borders in the first place. The book identifies four basic elements of needs: As a concept, as a system of classification and triage, as a material apparatus, and as a set of standards. Drawing on a range of archival sources, including the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF), and the Sphere Project, the book traces the concept of needs from its emergence in the 1960s right through to the present day, and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's call for "evidence-based humanitarianism." Finally, the book assesses how the international governmentality of needs has played out in a recent humanitarian crisis, drawing on field research on Central African refugees in the Cameroonian borderland in 2014-2016. This important historical inquiry into the universal nature of human suffering will be an important read for humanitarian researchers and practitioners, as well as readers with an interest in international history and development.

This book provides engineers and scientists with a single source introduction to the concepts, models, and case studies for making credible reliability assessments. It satisfies the need for thorough discussions of several fundamental subjects. Section I contains a comprehensive overview of assessing and assuring reliability that is followed by discussions of: * Concept of randomness and its relationship to chaos * Uses and limitations of the binomial and Poisson distributions * Relationship of the chi-square method and Poisson curves * Derivations and applications of the exponential, Weibull, and lognormal models * Examination of the human mortality bathtub curve as a template for components Section II introduces the case study modeling of failure data and is followed by analyses of: * 5 sets of ideal Weibull, lognormal, and normal failure data * 83 sets of actual (real) failure data The intent of the modeling was to find the best descriptions of the failures using statistical life models, principally the Weibull, lognormal, and normal models, for characterizing the failure probability distributions of the times-, cycles-, and miles-to-failure during laboratory or field testing. The statistical model providing the preferred characterization was determined empirically by choosing the two-parameter model that gave the best straight-line fit in the failure probability plots using a combination of visual inspection and three statistical goodness-of-fit (GoF) tests. This book offers practical insight in dealing with single item reliability and illustrates the use of reliability methods to solve industry problems.

Accident prevention is a common thread throughout every aspect of our society. However, even with the most current technological developments, keeping people safe and healthy, both at workplaces and at other daily activities, is still a continual challenge. When it comes to work environments, ergonomics and human factors knowledge can play an important role and, therefore, must be included in, or be a part of, the safety management as a cross-disciplinary area concerned with the understanding of actual work situations and potential variables. This multidisciplinary approach will ultimately ensure the safety, health, and well-being of all collaborators. The main goal of this book is to present theories and models, and to describe practices to foster and promote safer work and working environments. This book offers: * Examples of field practices that can be reproduced in other scenarios * Applications of new methods for risk assessment * Methods on how to apply and integrate human factors and ergonomics in accident prevention and safety management * Coverage of human factors and ergonomics in safety culture * New methods for accident analysis This book is a compilation of contributions from invited authors organized in three main topics from eleven countries and is intended to cover specific aspects of safety and human factors management ranging from case studies to the development of theoretical models. Hopefully, the works presented in the book can be an inspiration for translating research into useful actions and, ultimately, making a relevant and tangible contribution to the safety of our daily and work settings.

Researching Patient Safety and Quality in Health Care: A Nordic Perspective is an anthology based on contributions from leading researchers on quality and safety in healthcare in the Nordic countries together with four internationally renowned patient safety authors. Research on patient safety and quality has been dominated by countries such as the USA, England, Canada, and Australia. This book addresses the current debates in research on patient safety and quality in healthcare from a Nordic perspective. What are the flavours of Nordic research within these topics? What does it add to the international research literature? This book illustrates the unique nature of researching patient safety and quality with the Nordic perspective as well as showcasing representative work. The book presents an overview of the status and evidence of international and Nordic research on quality and safety in healthcare. Four different perspectives are used to present the trends within the research field: a patient perspective, a methodological perspective, a theoretical perspective, and a clinical perspective. The book then presents the status of Nordic research in the field and displays a set of illustrative work and current research topics within the Nordic context, concluding with a discussion of the characteristic features of Nordic research on patient safety and quality in healthcare. The anthology presents an inter-professional perspective and researchers from disciplines such as medical and nursing sciences, humanities, social sciences and engineering. It is written to contribute to the patient safety cause with translational knowledge that will be useful to researchers, policy makers and healthcare managers within Nordic countries and internationally.

Many business-to-business (B2B) managers think that customers act rationally and base decisions mostly on price, customer loyalty isn't considered. Companies outsource various activities, which enable them to improve efficiency, reduce costs, focus more on core competencies and improve their innovation capabilities. Supply Chain Management synchronizes the efforts of all parties-particularly suppliers, manufacturers, retailers, dealers, customers-involved in achieving customer's needs. Despite much research, the relationship between customer loyalty and the supply chain strategy remains insufficiently explored and understood by practitioners and academics, while the theme has been extensively developed within marketing literature. Customer Loyalty and Supply Chain Management is the result of years of work by the authors on different projects concerning the overlapping areas of supply chains, logistics and marketing, drawing a connection between the literature to provide a holistic picture of the customer loyalty framework. Emphasis is given to the B2B context, where recent research has provided some clues to support the fact that investment in operations, new technologies and organizational strategy have had a significant role in understanding B2B loyalty, particularly in the context of global supply chains. Moreover, the book provides a modernized and predictive model of B2B loyalty, showing a different methodological approach that aims at capturing the complexity of the phenomenon. This book will be a useful resource for professionals and scholars from across the supply chain who are interested in exploring the dimension of customer loyalty in the challenging supplier and customer context.

A Druid looks at quality control for product and service industries, amplifying from his earlier book Right first time . Some highlights: Quality is a religion, with the same trappings and pitfalls as other religions; humanity can be distorted, but not abolished, by managerial decree and organizatio

Social Inclusion and Usability of Innovative ICT-enabled Services is a cutting-edge research book written for researchers, students, academics, technology experts, activists and policy makers. The book explores a wide range of issues concerning innovative ICT-enabled digital services, their usability and their consequent role in social inclusion, It includes the impacts of the use of ICT-enabled digital services on individuals, organisations, governments and society, and offers a theoretically informed and empirically rich account of the socio-technical, management and policy aspects of social inclusion and innovative ICT-enabled digital services. This publication offers insights from the perspectives of Information Systems, Media and Communications, Management and Social Policy, drawing on research from these disciplines to inform readers on diverse aspects of social inclusion and usability of innovative ICT-enabled digital services. The originality of this book lies in the combination of socio-technical, management and policy perspectives offered by the contributors, and integrated by the editors, as well as in the interdisciplinary and both theoretically framed and empirically rich features of the various chapters of the book. While providing a timely account of existing evidence and debates in the field of social inclusion and technology usability, this book will also offer some original insights into what practitioners, experts and researchers are to expect in the near future to be the emerging issues and agendas concerning the role of technology usability in social inclusion and the emerging forms and attributes of the latter. Through a collection of high quality, peer reviewed papers; Social Inclusion and Usability of Innovative ICT-enabled Services will enhance knowledge of social inclusion and usability of innovative ICT-enabled digital services and applications at a diver

Global Business Intelligence refers to an organization's ability to gather, process and analyze pertinent international information in order to make optimal business decisions in a timely manner. With a challenging economic and geopolitical environment, companies and executives need to be adept at information gathering in order to manage emerging challenges and gain competitive advantages. This book Global Business Intelligence assembles a cast of international experts and thought leaders and explores the implications of business intelligence on contemporary management. Global Business Intelligence will be a key resource for researchers, academics, students and policy makers alike in the fields of International Business & Management, Business Strategy, and Geopolitics as well as related disciplines like Political Science, Economics, and Geography.

Covering the prediction of outcomes for engineering decisions through regression analysis, this succinct and practical reference presents statistical reasoning and interpretational techniques to aid in the decision making process when faced with engineering problems. The author emphasizes the use of spreadsheet simulations and decision trees as important tools in the practical application of decision making analyses and models to improve real-world engineering operations. He offers insight into the realities of high-stakes engineering decision making in the investigative and corporate sectors by optimizing engineering decision variables to maximize payoff.

Operations Management (OM) is a multi-faceted blend of myriad academic andpractical disciplines - from engineering and economics via mathematics and marketing, to systems and psychology. To capture the state of the art, the bookreviews contemporary and classic scholarship in one of the oldest business and management disciplines. To offer the reader a thought-provoking point of entry into the selected sources, the book curates its content as an imaginary exhibit, eachchapter a thematic OM 'gallery' (process; planning and control; people; strategy and measurement; technology) introduced by a description of some extraordinary artefacts, paintings, sculptures and architecture. The content has been curated around three principles intended to benefit the casual reader and both new and established OM scholars. First, it incorporates works that build on, or help to distinguish, fundamental tenets from more transitory fads. Second, the text makes significant efforts to try and balance the gravitational pull of the factory, (even though this may not offer an accurate representation of the majority of the field) and third, to try to keep managerial rather than technical/ analytical concerns to the fore. This concise book provides a useful overview of current and classic OM research. Written by a leading authority, it is intended to be a valuable and engaging resource for both students and scholars of business.

Interest in the phenomenon known as "lean" has grown significantly in recent years. This is the first volume to provide an academically rigorous overview of the field of lean management, introducing the reader to the application of lean in diverse application areas, from the production floor to sales and marketing, from the automobile industry to academic institutions. The volume collects contributions from well-known lean experts and up-and-coming scholars from around the world. The chapters provide a detailed description of lean management across the manufacturing enterprise (supply chain, accounting, production, sales, IT etc.), and offer important perspectives for applying lean across different industries (construction, healthcare, logistics). The contributors address challenges and opportunities for future development in each of the lean application areas, concluding most chapters with a short case study to illustrate current best practice. The book is divided into three parts: The Lean Enterprise Lean across Industries A Lean World. This handbook is an excellent resource for business and management students as well as any academics, scholars, practitioners, and consultants interested in the "lean world."

Utilizes advanced concepts, guidelines and requirements from the latest ISO 9000 and 10000 series of standards, as well as other models, including TQM (Total Quality Managment). The text shows how to define a policy and explain it clearly. It offers procedures for developing a quality manual, to be used by personnel performing quality-related functions and for external auditors and customers.

This title was first published in 2001: Product and particularly customer profitability are black holes in most managers' understanding of their business. Identifying customer revenue is easy but identifying what they cost - so we can understand whether or not they are profitable - is difficult. In a world in which competition, regulation and the increasing use of the Internet put ever greater pressure on margins it is vitally important to understand both product- and customer-profitability. Activity Based Management (ABM) enables you to do this. This book explains the power of using ABM to increase the profitability of your business. It provides step-by-step guidance on basic principles, comparisons between traditional methods, definitions of processes, activities and cost-drivers as well as details of data collection techniques and implementation steps. Through the book's numerous detailed examples a logical picture builds up of how to obtain the benefits that ABM can deliver. On its own ABM will change management decision-making: by showing how ABM also supports other profit improvement initiatives such as Business Process Reengineering, Shareholder Value Added and Customer Relationship Management, managers will learn how they can use the best possible toolkit to put their business firmly on the road to leaps in profitability.

Offering a model, an implementing strategy, as well as traditional and nontraditional methods for the successful enhancement and maintenance of quality, this work establishes a rationale for the continuation of Total Quality Management (TQM) in all organizations. It considers leading quality-related topics, such as unusual charts, supplier-organization-customer relationships, customer needs and expectations, instructional design, adult learning, advanced quality planning, and reliability.

Adopting a strategic approach to risk management can maximize competitiveness and profitability. Total Safety and Productivity approaches offer managers a set of methods and tools to apply a Total Safety Management (TSM) philosophy to achieve this. The capability to anticipate, assess and plan for risks associated with future operations is a critical success factor, for enterprises of all types and sizes. The ability to risk assess actual operations with an easy to apply, resilient methodology can offer significant benefits in terms of the capacity to improve safety and performance.

This book describes approaches that can be used alone or jointly to improve safety management in any organization. The methods are based on academic best practice and have been developed by leading experts, but are presented here in a practical way for application in industry by non-experts. The book outlines a professional approach to risk and safety management, which requires goal setting, planning and the measurement of performance, and encourages a safety management system that is woven holistically into the fabric of an organization so that it becomes part of the culture, the way people do their jobs, and helps ensure that issues are correctly prioritized and managed as they emerge.

This book is essential reading for professionals, at both expert and non-expert level, who are interested in applying the TSM philosophy within their organization.

In an approach that combines coverage of safety and human error into a single volume, Safety and Human Error in Engineering Systems eliminates the need to consult many different and diverse sources for those who need information about both topics. The book begins with an introduction to aspects of safety and human error and a discussion of mathematical concepts that builds understanding of the material presented in subsequent chapters. The author describes the methods that can be used to perform safety and human error analysis in engineering systems and includes examples, along with their solutions, as well as problems to test reader comprehension. He presents a total of ten methods considered useful for performing safety and human error analysis in engineering systems. The book also covers safety and human error transportation systems, medical systems, and mining equipment as well as robots and software. Nowadays, engineering systems are an important element of the world economy as each year billions of dollars are spent to develop, manufacture, and operate various types of engineering systems around the globe. A rise in accidental deaths has put the spotlight on the role human error plays in the safety and failure of these systems. Written by an expert in various aspects of healthcare, engineering management, design, reliability, safety, and quality, this book provides tools and techniques for improving engineering systems with respect to human error and safety.

This book provides how-to guidance and examples for three types of maps, namely relationship map, cross-functional process map, and flowchart. It helps readers to effectively apply all three types of maps to make work visible at the organization, process, and job/performer levels.

This book reflects on the models of leadership espoused by ancient Indic traditions, in particular the Advaita Vedanta tradition. Focusing primarily on the Rajarshi - 'the philosopher king' - the essays in this volume showcase how using these models in contemporary society could lead to the creation of self-aware and empathic leaders and an inclusive society. The book explores examples of the Brahmarshi, or the wise scholar; Rajarshi, or the wise ruler; and Devarshi, or the visionary, to bring together all the ideal virtues of inclusive leadership in the current cultural and political space. The essays in the volume adopt a critical sociological, philosophical and management lens to analyse Indic traditions and dharmic concepts. The volume uses concepts such as dharma, karma and, yoga along with organisational psychology, technology, and management, to arrive at the concept of transcendental leadership. It theorises new definitions of the Rajarshi ideal, which can be used towards public service, social transformation and self-discovery. The volume will be useful for scholars and academics interested in Indic philosophies of leadership and governance, sociology, and social and political inclusivity. It will also be useful for readers in public administration, business and management.

Contamination problems have become a major factor in determining the manufacturability, quality, and reliability of electronic assemblies. Understanding the mechanics and chemistry of contamination has become necessary for improving quality and reliability and reducing costs of electronic assemblies. Designed as a practical guide, Contamination of Electronic Assemblies presents a generalized overview of contamination problems and serves as a problem-solving reference point. It takes a step-by-step approach to identifying contaminants and their effects on electronic products at each level of manufacture. The text is divided into four sections: Laminate Manufacturing, Substrate Fabrication, Printed Wiring Board Assembly, and Conformal Coatings. These sections discuss all aspects of contamination of electronic assemblies, from the manufacture of glass fibers used in the laminates to the complete assembly of the finished product. The authors present detection and control methods that can help you reduce defects during the manufacturing process. With tables, figures, and fishbone diagrams serving as a quick reference, Contamination of Electronic Assemblies will help you familiarize yourself with the origination, detection, measurement, control, and prevention of contamination in electronic assemblies.

In today's high-technology world, with flourishing e-business and intense competition at a global level, the search for the competitive advantage has become a crucial task of corporate executives. Quality, formerly considered a secondary expense, is now universally recognized as a necessary tool. Although many statistical methods are available for determining quality, there has been no guide to easy learning and implementation until now. Filling that gap, Statistical Design of Experiments with Engineering Applications, provides a ready made, quick and easy-to-learn approach for applying design of experiments techniques to problems. The book uses quality as the main theme to explain various design of experiments concepts. The authors examine the entire product lifecycle and the tools and techniques necessary to measure quality at each stage. They explain topics such as optimization, Taguchi's method, variance reduction, and graphical applications based on statistical techniques. Wherever applicable the book supplies practical rules of thumb, step-wise procedures that allow you to grasp concepts quickly and apply them appropriately, and examples that demonstrate how to apply techniques. Emphasizing the importance of quality to products and services, the authors include concepts from the field of Quality Engineering. Written with an emphasis on application and not on bogging you down with the theoretical underpinnings, the book enables you to solve 80% of design problems without worrying about the derivation of mathematical formulas.