The introduction of flexible manufacturing systems has resulted in many changes in the workplace. These changes have implications in the area of industrial relations as well as in engineering and economics. The human factors are just as important as the technical aspects, if not more so because they may well determine the ultimate success of the new systems. The management, unions and technicians involved should thus be fully aware of the alternatives available in designing a flexible manufacturing system.
The Industrial Revolution in Europe was the transitory phase from the manufacturing or putting-out system to the factory system. The present paper will attempt to show that management was relevant during the three epochs of the Industrial Revolution in Europe, United States of America and Japan and so it was more of a Management Revolution than an Industrial Revolution.
This study explores patterns of individual boundary-spanning communication in a government-managed research and development setting. Individual position in the organization hierarchy and preference for risk, change, and new experiences are the most significant antecedents of general levels of boundary-spanning communication.
Today, organizations must deal with change on all fronts. The ability to deal with change may become the yardstick by which future managers are judged. But what do good managers need to know about managing the change process? Management literature contains hundreds of sources dealing with various aspects of change management and there are numerous books and case studies which discuss the complete process. After reviewing this material and testing it against interviews conducted with managers of companies that have undergone change programs, the authors have identified six guidelines to facilitate successful change. These six factors are: the need for a catalyst to initiate change; organizational goals must be set which take into account the impact of technical, political, and cultural factors; transition team is required to guide the change; top management must demonstrate commitment to the change as well as to act as change agents; utilizing employee participation and good communication can help overcome employee resistance; and finally, evaluating the change program is extremely important to the success of present and future change programs.
Worker participation in decision-making (PDM) has been advocated as a vehicle to improve organizational effectiveness. A number of studies have shown inconclusive findings on the impact of PDM on various measures of performance. In this paper, it has been hypothesized that this inconclusiveness could be attributed to the perceptual differences between supervisors and the workers. Information theory has been used to measure and compare the perceptual differences as they relate to (1) supervisors and quality circle (QC) workers, (2) supervisors and non-QC workers, (3) QC workers and non-QC workers. The findings indicate that information theory may be a useful paradigm to explain such perceptual differences.
One of the most admired aspects of U.S. technology has been the ability to assimilate and commercialize new science and technology. In light of the rising international competition, there has been new emphasis placed on the commercialization of U.S. science and technology developed in the federal laboratories and universities and indpendent research laboratories. While federal research and development remains the focus of the majority of these laboratories, an additional goal is to facilitate the exploitation of the discoveries, patents, and copyrights developed at the laboratories.
A statistical model is developed which estimates the degree to which an industry is or is not a high-technology industry. Data for the model were obtained from a nationwide survey of individuals with an interest in plant location decisions.
Staff groups in general and corporate engineering departments in particular are feeling pressure from the recent management trend toward decentralization and intrapreneurship, Whether or we, as engineers, agree with such approaches from a business standpoint is of lit· tie relevance, Arguing that staff groups provide needed balance and objectivity will probably reverse this trend, One thing seems certain, however, Operating divisions and other groups who use staff services will continue to reduce the levels of the services they use and/or replace our services with those of or external suppliers, But let's be too hard on our clients, Perhaps some portion of the problem decreased desire to use our services can be traced back to our own inadequacies and complacency, Are we still offering the same basic technical support services that we have provided for the past 5, 10 or even 15 years? What have we done to increase our efficiency? How are we responding when our clients say, would like to use your services more, but we just can't afford to? One approach is creative accounting, This solution would allow us to continue doing the things we have been doing but change the way we bill clients or allocate portions of our costs, Some of this is justified, Our competition often bills on a different basis, Many consulting firms, for example, use the multiplier billing approach, in which the basic man hour costs are multiplied by a factor to account for overheads and profits, This technique provides an engineering organization with a flexible sales tool that can be adjusted, from an accounting standpoint, as the situation warrants, Dealing with in-plant engineering, where plant management feels that there are no ~osts being absorbed because those doing the work are already here, is a more difficult situation, In all cases it is important to engineering organizations and their clients to put all competitors on the same billing basis, A change in accounting procedures alone will solve our dilemma, however, Times are changing rapidly, We are operating in a highly competitive environment. Our challenge today is to improve our services to develop products (services) that provide cost/performance to our clients, These products (services) should be of indisputable benefit to those using them. And if any service we offer does provide some threshold level of cost/ performance, we should expect to be able to it, Moreover, we should even want to sell it, Our first task, then, is to identify our clients' service needs, and second, to respond to them competitively and creatively, But what do engineers know about such things as competition, marketing and market research? Except for certain individuals in large engineering consulting firms, the answer is probably not enough, But this does mean that we cannot learn quickly,
This paper discusses how synchronizing finish times for correspondingly numbered process operations of mating component parts (batches) can help a job shop take advantage of some aspects of the just-in-time philosophy.
The main objective of this paper is to determine whether it is technologically, financially, economically and legally feasible to establish a new computer center in Idah, Benue State of Nigeria. In Nigeria, most of the computer center installations are located in the cities. There is the need to establish whether a computer center can run at a profit in a town in Nigeria.
The information explosion can be viewed as a change in generating, collecting, processing and storing information in a number of ways that make information readily accessible to the user. This explosion has been a result of tremendous achievements through electronic devices, telecommunication networks, computers and transportation. The change is having a great impact on middle management personnel whose work in many cases is being taken over by office robots. Information is vital to any type of organizational activity as an instrument of communication. An organization requires information about prices, competition, technology, and the market situation in order to formulate decisions and execute strategy. Hence, there is need for management to develop, encourage and maintain sophisticated information systems in their organizations for the following reasons (Koontz et aI., 1982): (i) to establish goals for the enterprise; (ii) to develop plans for the achievement of the goals; (iii) to organize human and other resources in the most effective and efficient way; (iv) to select, develop and appraise members of the organization; (v) to lead, direct, motivate and create an environment in which people want to contribute. In gathering information, the following factors should be taken into consideration: (a) the type of information required; (b) the quality of that information; (c) the quantity of information; (d) t~e t~me involved in collecting, storing, retrIevmg and disseminating the information; (e) the accuracy of information; (f) the cost of collecting, storing, retrieving and disseminating the information. The growth of information in technologically advanced societies is exponential. The acceleration curve of Fig. 1 shows how this revolution has been brought about by a number of technological advances. from this curve, one can see that innovations in communications technology during the past century have been extremely efficacious. The networks of telephones, telex, computers and satellites have exponentially increased the density of human contact. Ever since the dawn of the modern electronics communications era, after World War II, more people have been put into contact with one another, more knowledge has been accumulated and recorded, and more people have access to that knowledge than ever before in history (Williams, 1982).
The techniques of quality control have been developed over a number of decades, during which the technology of manufacturing was essentially static in terms of control and strategy. Advances within the past decade have led to substantial changes in the manufacturing environment. Changes in the extent, type, and breadth of application of automation call into question some of the basic assumptions of classical quality control. Changes in the mode of manufacturing, such as JIT and emphasis on smaller lot sizes, raise further questions as to the validity of classical quality control in the modern manufacturing environment. This paper addresses some of the questions raised by recent advances in manufacturing and identifies issues for research in quality and process control in the modern manufacturing.
This paper describes the development and emperical testing of a systems model that focuses on potential contributing causes of job obsolescence. Results indicated that the model is valid. The nature of work, organisational and personal characteristics appear to influence the inhibition or growth of job obsolescence. The relationships between job obsolescence and some context factors such as age, level of education, time since last full-time education, satisfaction with promotion etc., were also examined.
The relationship between an organization's technology and the effect it has on its infrastructure is receiving considerable attention from several research specialist that focus on organization theory. Most of the research is empirical, however some good theoretical work is starting to surface. Suggested approaches and methods for encouraging technological innovation and change are abundant in the literature. One approach called social innovation deals with public policy and regulations to enhance technological innovation at the macro-level [1-4]. Another approach at the macro-level deals with establishing the creative environment necessary for technological innovation and change at the national level [5-11]. Some suggestions are tax incentives for increased business investment, development of new energy sources, reduced government regulations, channelling of investments to industries with the greatest growth potential, and one article grappling with the ethics of it all. This is by no means all of the suggestions offered. However, at the micro-level some of the literature is very specialized to narrow areas of technology implementation [12,13]. These may be subjects describing how the computer can bridge a technology gap, while another explains the advantages of using operations research models to optimize the planning and execution of technology. The planning, implementation, and management of technology in a large corporate environment has spawned numerous articles and books [14-28]. Specific areas of interest from several of these references will be detailed further throughout this perspective on creativity, technology, and the management of technology. One very good research study did a review of seventy-five articles concerned with innovation characteristics as they related to the adoption and implementation of innovation [29,p.40]. They found that three of the innovation characteristics compatibility, relative advantage, and complexity had the most significant and consistent relationships to innovation adoption of the ten characteristics evaluated in their study. Compatibility and relative advantage were found to be positively related to adoption while complexity was negatively related. Another excellent research study evaluated the various aspects of environmental uncertainty and their impacts on innovativeness of new products and processes at fifty-four different organizations. The findings showed that perceived uncertainty in the areas of competition, customers, and government regulations have little or no influence on major process adoption [30,p.2]. However, these three areas
The first part of the paper presents a strategic planning system applicable to higher education institutions. Four levels of strategy are identified: (1) institutional strategy; (2) faculty-wide strategy; (3) program strategies; and (4) program level functional strategies. The second part addresses strategic issues relating to the institutional strategy for a proposed “Faculty of Electronics and Industrial Technology” to be established in the Benha industrial region. The paper recommends a formation scheme based on a multi-stream, modular approach geared to industrial and technological human resources requirements for technologists in the Benha region. The options offered lead to a Bachelor of Technology, B.Tech., after five years of study in one of the following specializations: Manufacturing Technology and Production Management; Mechanical Systems and Materials Technology; Control, Instrumentation and Fluid Power Technology; Command, Control, Communication and Informatics (C3I) Technology. The proposed study programs are based on a sandwich approach with heavy involvement from industry in the implementation of four training modules.
