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

Although several monographs and edited volumes have discussed scheduling in general, most of these works survey the field by contributing a single chapter to production systems like flow shops. "Flow Shop Scheduling: Theoretical Results, Algorithms, and Applications" is solely dedicated to bringing together a huge body of knowledge on the subject, along distinct design features, in order to help scholars and practitioners easily identify problems of interest. This monograph has been organized into ten distinct flow shop systems and explores their connections. The chapters cover flow shop systems including two-machine, flexible, stochastic, and more. Outside of the traditional flow shops that require a job never revisits any stage, this book also examines the reentrant flow shop, in which a job may cycle back and be reprocessed at the same station or sequence of stations, multiple times.
The authors have made the material accessible to a broad readership, using simplified notation and revealing unifying concepts. The results unique to flow shop research should provide the seed for research in other areas of scheduling and in optimization in general.

Mathematical Programming and Financial Objectives for Scheduling Projects focuses on decision problems where the performance is measured in terms of money. As the title suggests, special attention is paid to financial objectives and the relationship of financial objectives to project schedules and scheduling. In addition, how schedules relate to other decisions is treated in detail. The book demonstrates that scheduling must be combined with project selection and financing, and that scheduling helps to give an answer to the planning issue of the amount of resources required for a project. The author makes clear the relevance of scheduling to cutting budget costs. The book is divided into six parts. The first part gives a brief introduction to project management. Part two examines scheduling projects in order to maximize their net present value. Part three considers capital rationing. Many decisions on selecting or rejecting a project cannot be made in isolation and multiple projects must be taken fully into account. Since the requests for capital resources depend on the schedules of the projects, scheduling taken on more complexity. Part four studies the resource usage of a project in greater detail. Part five discusses cases where the processing time of an activity is a decision to be made. Part six summarizes the main results that have been accomplished.

Corporate Spin-Off processes are very interesting phenomena for management theory and practice. In theory, Corporate Spin-Offs are both a driver and a result of organisational change, offering the possibility to investigate an area where companies are genuinely sharing experience and best practice. In practice, Corporate Spin-Off processes are frequent and highly successful, but not as well-regarded as Merger and Acquisition strategies and less understood by the decision-makers.

Success Factors of Corporate Spin-Offs was designed to meet these demands by analysing the success factors of Corporate Spin-Offs, their relative contribution to the process and the role of the different actors involved. Based on an extensive literature review and a new Spin-Off typology, a broad range of success factors and success dimensions is proposed. Using a combination of multivariate models, the responses from 211 European companies to a questionnaire are analysed and typologies derived.

This book sets out to examine small technologically innovative enterprises in Europe from the viewpoint of ten international researchers. Drawing on original empirical research, the contributions describe the different aspects of the business development and innovation process, including the creation and development of technology-based enterprises, the growth of the firm, different types of networking activities, and various development strategies when the firm is established.

- Authoritative but highly accessible introduction to the underlying economics of airports, their role, regulation and implications. - Written for all aviation managers, relevant local authorities and regulators, as well as serving as teaching material for air transport Masters programmes. - The book uniquely offers economic analysis and presents facts in the context of economic reasoning with clear policy recommendations.

The authors offer proven skills, training, and educational applications that develop individual employee thinking for total quality management, ISO 9000, or other quality-team business programs. It develops the great potential of using cognitive-based learning to empower people for quality and workplace leadership, systems that move beyond traditional behavior-based training techniques. The authors explain what can and cannot be done to increase "creative thinking", insight, and adult intelligence. They provide bottom-line measures for assessing the effectiveness of training procedures and show how a commitment to substantive life-long employee education can build a stronger business and corporate presence in the marketplace of the future.

Quality, Warranty and Preventive Maintenance examines the impact of product quality on warranty and maintenance costs and strategies, from the perspectives of both manufacturers and users. In addition, the theories of warranty and preventive maintenance are introduced and discussed. Common wisdom supports the notion that better product quality means lower warranty costs for the manufacturer, and lower maintenance costs for the users of a manufactured product. This proposition is examined in some detail on the basis of failure time models. The authors investigate what exactly better quality means in warranty and maintenance management, and how it impacts warranty policies and costs for the manufacturer, and replacement and maintenance strategies and costs for the users. In measuring quality improvement, the main concepts and tools used are those of stochastic ordering and mixture models. The theoretical base of the work is a time-varying failure-rectification process. This process includes, as special cases, replacement, minimal repair, and imperfect repair, as alternative rectification modes that may be available to the manufacturer or the user in warranty-servicing or maintaining a product. In addition to serving as a unifying base for the entire monograph, the use of this process enables one to investigate jointly optimal repair-effort/warranty-policy and repair-effort/maintenance-strategy configurations for repairable units. This book should be of interest to researchers in industry and academia, and to quality, warranty and maintenance professionals, specialists, and managers with a technical background. It is suitable as a textbook to support graduate-level seminar courses in OR/MS, IE and business administration curricula.

This book presents a first attempt to systematically collect, classify and solve various continuous-time scheduling problems. The classes of problems distinguish scheduling by the number of machines and products, production constraints and performance measures. Although such classes are usually considered to be a prerogative of only combinatorial scheduling literature, the scheduling methodology suggested in this book is based on two mathematical tools - optimal control and combinatorics. Generally considered as belonging to two totally different areas of research and application, these seemingly irreconcilable tools can be integrated in a unique solution approach with the advantages of both. This new approach provides the possibility of developing effective polynomial-time algorithms to solve the generic scheduling problems. This book is aimed at a student audience - final year undergraduates as well as master and Ph.D. students, primarily in Operations Research, Management, Industrial Engineering and Control Systems. Indeed, some of the material in the book has formed part of the content of undergraduate and graduate courses taught at the Industrial Engineering Department of Tel-Aviv University, the Logistics Department of Bar-Ilan University and the Technology Management Department of Rolon Center for Technological Education, Israel. The book is also useful for practicing engineers interested in planning, scheduling and optimization methods. Since the book addresses the theory and design of computer-based scheduling algorithms, applied mathematicians and computer software specialists engaged in developing scheduling software for industrial engineering and management problems will find that the methods developed here can be embedded very efficiently in large applications.

Business Principles for Landscape Contracting, fully revised and updated in its third edition, is an introduction to the application of business principles of financial management involved in setting up your own landscape contracting business and beginning your professional career. Appealing to students and professionals alike, it will build your knowledge of financial management tools and enable you to relate their applications to real-life business scenarios. Focusing on the importance of proactive financial management, the book serves as a primer for students in landscape architecture, contracting, and management courses and entrepreneurs within the landscape industry preparing to use business principles in practice. Topics covered include: Financial management and accountability Budget development Profitable pricing and estimating Project management Creating a lean culture Personnel management and employee productivity Professional development Economic sustainability.

Der heutige Erkenntnisstand der Betriebswirtschaftslehre im Bereich der Industriellen Produktionswirtschaft soll mit diesem Werk vermittelt werden. Im Mittelpunkt steht dabei die systematische Behandlung technisch-wirtschaftlicher Fragestellungen unter Beachtung wesentlicher Interdependenzen zwischen der Produktion und den angrenzenden Funktionsbereichen Beschaffung, Forschung und Entwicklung sowie Absatz. Die LAsung von FA1/4hrungs- und DurchfA1/4hrungsproblemen erfolgt dabei stets aus der Perspektive des Controlling - der informationellen Sicherung ergebnisorientierter UnternehmensfA1/4hrung. Die Komplexe Grundlagen, FA1/4hrung und Organisation im Produktionsbereich, Produktwirtschaft, Programmwirtschaft, Material- und Dienstleistungswirtschaft und ProzeAwirtschaft werden behandelt.

A hybrid methodology, Lean Six Sigma (LSS) is designed to accommodate global challenges and constraints by capitalizing on Six Sigma and Lean Thinking. LSS incorporates best practices from programs such as the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), Capability Maturity Model, and Total Quality Management.International Lean Six Sigma practitioners must understand the dynamics of LSS, along with its cultural aspects and regulations. Lean Six Sigma: International Standards and Global Guidelines, Second Edition provides this understanding.The book assumes that the overall goal of operational excellence is to ensure that organizational tasks and activities are being performed to the best of their process capabilities. It defines continuous improvement as activities that support and empower environments to make flexible decisions that lead to ongoing improvement and effectiveness. Coverage includes: New global LSS standards International implementation of process improvement programs New international LSS applications International Lean Six Sigma areas of competency The book defines many of the terms popularized by process improvement programs, such as center of excellence and business transformation. It documents these practices and explains how to perform future activities in accordance with the recorded practices. Exploring international approaches to Lean Six Sigma, it details the new ISO Standard for Six Sigma and also addresses the role of project management in LSS. Illustrating the synergies between Lean and Six Sigma and how they partner with other process improvement programs and initiatives, this book is an ideal study guide for those preparing to take the LSS Black Belt certification exam.

This book contributes to the literature on Geographical Indications (GIs) by providing key theoretical reflections from a five-year review process on the potential of GIs for agri-food products in Southern Africa. The contributors reflect on diverse GI processes and dynamics which operate at the local, national and international levels, thus enriching the understanding of GI dynamics and of the variety of policy options available for GI protection in Southern countries. Following a discussion of the legal framework and governance of national GI schemes in Southern countries, the book emphasizes the main dimensions underlying the development of GIs and their potential for enhancing sustainable rural development and market access in particular. This provides the structure for the chapters that build on the different experiences of Southern African industries that have embarked on GI strategies. The book includes chapters on designing an appropriate legal framework and governance system for the development of GIs in Southern countries.

* A fully comprehensive guide to the entire supply chain management process as applied specifically to the fashion industry * Each chapter is complemented by an in-depth case study from a relevant global organization, alongside pedagogy to aid student comprehension, including quizzes, end-of-chapter activities, and role play scenarios. Online resources include chapter-by-chapter PowerPoint slides and a test bank. * Designed as a core textbook for Fashion Supply Chain and Operations Management modules at advanced undergraduate and postgraduate level.

Currently, businesses are forced to be more innovative than ever before. Organizations must be sensitive to global trends -- such as digitization, globalization, and automation -- and at the same time build resilience and flexibility to combat unexpected changes in customer demand. The coronavirus pandemic is just the most recent and pronounced example of this new-normal business necessity. Amidst the disruption, many businesses are caught not knowing how to proceed. How ought one pursue or achieve innovation for the company? Are there different innovation strategies? Why might a business leader choose one over the other? The Lean Innovation Cycle addresses these concerns by introducing a new multidisciplinary framework for both thinking about and pursing innovation. By taking key concepts from the quality management practices of Lean and Six Sigma, the framework augments these tools and disciplines by incorporating other problem-solving and design techniques, including Human-Centered Design. The result is a view of innovation that many business leaders will find fits nicely into their existing paradigm of strategy and operational discipline. After the introduction of the framework, the book turns to understanding the differences, advantages, and tradeoffs in pursuing Lean Innovation in lieu of traditional, technologically driven innovation approaches. To this end, the book considers issues of sustainability, organizational strategy, and competitive advantage. The result is a thought-provoking dialogue that informs the reader about the key considerations of how best to pursue innovation within their business and the business environment, as well as the circumstances that might make one innovation strategy more congruent to an organization's culture, goals, and objectives than the other.

Energy efficiency represents a cost-effective and immediate strategy of a sustainable development. Due to substantial environmental and economic implications, a strong emphasis is put on the electrical energy requirements of machine tools for metalworking processes. The improvement of energy efficiency is however confronted with diverse barriers, which sustain an energy efficiency gap of unexploited potential. The deficiencies lie in the lack of information about the actual energy requirements of machine tools, a minimum energy reference to quantify improvement potential and the possible actions to improve the energy demand. Therefore, a comprehensive concept for energy performance management of machine tools is developed which guides the transition towards energy efficient machine tools. It is structured in four innovative concept modules, which are embedded into step-by-step workflow models. The capability of the performance management concept is demonstrated in an automotive manufacturing environment. The target audience primarily comprises researchers and practitioners challenged to enhance energy efficiency in manufacturing. The book may also be beneficial for graduate students who want to specialize in this field.

Pulling aside the curtain of 'Big Data' buzz, this book introduces C-suite and other non-technical senior leaders to the essentials of obtaining and maintaining accurate, reliable data, especially for decision-making purposes. Bad data begets bad decisions, and an understanding of data fundamentals - how data is generated, organized, stored, evaluated, and maintained - has never been more important when solving problems such as the pandemic-related supply chain crisis. This book addresses the data-related challenges that businesses face, answering questions such as: What are the characteristics of high-quality data? How do you get from bad data to good data? What procedures and practices ensure high-quality data? How do you know whether your data supports the decisions you need to make? This clear and valuable resource will appeal to C-suite executives and top-line managers across industries, as well as business analysts at all career stages and data analytics students.

The project has become fundamental to international development and humanitarian practice, playing a key role in defining objectives, funding streams and ultimately determining what success looks like. This book provides a much needed overview of the project in international development practice, guiding the reader through the latest theoretical debates, and exploring the core tools and stages of planning and design. The book starts with an overview of the role of the project through development history, before taking the reader through the stages of a standard project management cycle. Each chapter introduces the stage, the most common tools used to support that phase of planning, and the critical debates that exist around it, with examples to illustrate discussion from around the world and a range of development fields. The book explores the challenges to working effectively in contemporary aid conetxts, including the role of politics and the pressures wrought by the demands to demonstrate quantified results. Throughout, the book argues for the need to see the project as a form of governmentality that arranges resources and people in time and space, and which extends neoliberal forms of managerial control in the sector. Ending with suggestions for innovation, this book is perfect for anyone looking for an accessible and engaging guide to the international development project, whether student, researcher or practitioner.

Beginning in the mid-2010s, the Fourth Industrial Revolution has seen remarkable changes in information technology which have blurred the boundaries between the physical, digital, and biological worlds. Industry 4.0 has enabled so-called "smart factories" in which computer systems equipped with machine learning algorithms can learn and control robotics with minimal need for human input. While smart technology has enabled many manufacturing businesses to increase efficiency and cut costs, many others are still struggling with implementing it. This book aims to help students, practitioners and industry leaders to become change agents and take their first steps on the path of transformation. Smart Business and Digital Transformation addresses the challenge of becoming "smart" from three different perspectives: smart factory, smart industry, and smart environment. Covering technologies including the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud, artificial intelligence (AI), mobility, 5G, Big Data analytics, the book shows how enterprises can take advantage of them and ultimately beat the competition. The book considers the importance of operational processes, business models, and organizational culture. The contributing authors and editors, based at Corvinus University, present a multi-dimensional picture of industry 4.0 which is both diverse in its voices and unified in its vision. Smart Business and Digital Transformation meets the growing demand for a textbook that not only presents the latest concepts and theories but is also practical for planning, managing, and implementing digital transformation in practice. The chapters include case studies to demonstrate the practical applications, and each chapter ends with review and discussion questions to develop students' skills and competencies. Students of business and digital transformation on advanced undergraduate and MBA courses will find it an indispensable guide to a vibrant and challenging topic.

Quality-Oriented Design of Business Processes introduces a modeling method, Integrated Enterprise Modelling' (IEM), which is related to ISO standards and provides manufacturing organizations with the means of analyzing, improving, and redesigning their business processes. The purpose of the book is to improve the quality of products and organizational performance through optimizing complex business processes and organizational design. Clearly, changing markets and innovative competitors force each company to study and improve its organization, its business processes, and the technologies it employs. Whoever drops behind in these times loses market share and endangers the long-term existence of the company. Hence, it is critical to realign the entire corporate planning and design throughout the value-added chain to speed up the business processes. The book is the result of a scientific study funded by the German Federal Ministry for Research and Technology. The authors develop the concept of Quality-Oriented Design of Business Processes, which is the underlying motivation for IEM. Moreover IEM is the engine for achieving the integration of quality management into the design and planning of business processes. The book discusses the IEM method thoroughly and applies it to the concept of Quality-Oriented Design of Business Processes' throughout the book. This concept is illustrated with an example of a company. A computer-aided tool kit, called MOOGO (on a CD-ROM), is provided with the book. This software tool kit enables an organization to involve all appropriate personnel for purposes of modelling and optimizing business processes. Finally, the book describes the entry of the IEM methodinto national, European and international standardization.

Effective service delivery requires a transition from high-volume, long-run operations to low-volume, short-run output. In conventional terms, inefficiency is inherent in such a shift. The Japanese experience suggests, however, that this convention is in error; success is available if we can only organize operations away from capital toward labor intensiveness with emphasis on multipurpose machinery and multiskilled workers as the foundation. Wholly new devices that accept the inevitability of bottlenecks and focus on managing them are required for managing work flow. A century of mass production has set in place habits and concepts of operations management that are inappropriate to the need. A new vision is needed. This book outlines an operations vision based on proven principles of management and organization science that can guide the way into an emerging service era.

Glenn Bassett looks at a variety of service industries from the perspective of cost and quality management. He argues the basic inevitablitity of suboptimized plant and equipment utilization. The potential for conflict between commodity and noncommodity dimensions of service is examined. Basic methods of cost control and work flow management are described. The varied and sometimes shifting bases of service quality are described in considerable detail, industry by industry where necessary. Methods for selecting and training effective service-providers are reviewed. Reform of government service as metaphor and model for the service revolution is detailed. The focus always is on sound, cost-effective, high-quality service delivery using the best available operations methods. It is sound operations management that will contribute genuine value to tomorroW's service industries. The basics of that discipline are the subject of this book.

The aim of the book is to present the emerging environmental issues in organization and management of transport logistics. The scope of the book includes set of solutions which show different stakeholders' viewpoints on sustainability. It points out how the transport operations organized and conducted in companies and regions might be consistent with the concept of sustainable development. The scope of the book takes into consideration trade-off relations between actors directly and indirectly involved in transport networks. Therefore, the authors present, in individual chapters, innovative approach to eco-friendly organization and coordination of transport processes, as well as management of transport networks.

Modeling Remaining Useful Life Dynamics in Reliability Engineering applies traditional reliability engineering methods to Prognostics and Health Management (PHM), looking at Remaining Useful Life (RUL) and predictive maintenance to enable engineers to effectively and safely predict machinery lifespan. One of the key tools used in defining and implementing predictive maintenance policies is the RUL indicator. However, it is essential to account for the uncertainty inherent to the RUL, as otherwise predictive maintenance strategies can be incorrect. This can cause high costs, or alternatively, ineffective predictions. Methods used to estimate RUL are very numerous and diverse, and broadly speaking, fall into three categories: model-based, data-driven, or hybrid, which uses both. The book starts by building on established theory, and applying cutting edge research to it, such as artificial intelligence models and deep learning. It looks at traditional reliability engineering methods through their relation to Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) requirements and presents the concept of RUL loss rate. Following on from this, the book presents a general method for defining a nonlinear transformation enabling the MRL to become a linear function. It also touches on topics such as Weibull distribution, gamma distribution and degradation, along with time-to-failure distributions. Features: Provides both practical and theoretical background of RUL Describes how the uncertainty of RUL can be related to RUL loss rate Provides new insights into time-to-failure distributions Offers tools for predictive maintenance_ The book will be of interest to engineers and researchers in reliability engineering, Prognostics and Health Management and industry management.

Optimization in Quality Control presents a broad survey of the state of the art in optimization in quality, and focuses on industrial and national competitiveness. Each chapter has been carefully developed and refereed anonymously by experts in the area of optimization in quality control. Some of the topics covered in this volume include: fundamentals of optimization techniques contemporary approaches to optimization models in process control economic design of control charts determining optimal target values in multiple criteria economic selection models examining quality improvement schemes by trading off between expected warranty servicing costs and increasing manufacturing costs designing optimal inspection plans. This book will serve as an important reference source for academics, professionals and researchers.