Awareness and implementation of process improvement strategies, like Six Sigma, Total Quality Management, and Lean Management have increased since the 1980s. In more recent history, lean management thinking has shown its significance in the manufacturing world. Kuwait, being a country in which its whole dependence is on revenues of oil...
This work explores a framework for the gathering and analysis of information rich customer needs, with the goal of informing inclusive product design practice. The goal is to be able to provide information and experience to designers so that they can better understand the needs of exceptional users and include...
The outsourcing of data storage and related infrastructure to third-party services in the cloud is a trend that has gained considerable momentum in the last decade due to the savings it affords companies in both capital and operational costs. Although encryption can alleviate some of the privacy concerns associated with...
Current product design methodologies are not conducive to creating inclusive products (products that meet the needs of persons with and without disabilities). In order to reduce the effort and expense involved in creating inclusive products, empathic design principles are applied to discover whether customer needs for people with disabilities can...
Monte Carlo simulation is used to quantify and characterize uncertainty in a variety of applications such as financial/engineering economic analysis, and project management. The dependence or correlation between the random variables modeled can also be simulated to add more accuracy to simulations. However, there exists a difference between how correlation...
This research addresses fleet-sizing for reusable containers that are used for
protection, transportation, and storage of parts between a component plant and
assembly plant. These reusable containers are often expensive and occupy a
large amount of storage space when empty and full. Having a large container
fleet comes with higher...
Critical success factors (CSFs) are those things that must be done correctly for a project to be successful; however, CSFs are not sufficient by themselves to guarantee success. CSFs, as identified in the literature, vary from study to study. In addition, previous studies have not typically included contextual details for...
This research studied the role of shared ownership on virtual team effectiveness, using student teams enrolled in engineering management coursework at Oregon State University and Virginia Polytechnic Institute. After a thorough review of the literature, the concept of shared ownership was developed. This concept was operationalized as the extent to...
Air travel presents several problems for passengers with disabilities.
One in particular is how they get from their wheelchair and to an aircraft seat.
The commonly used manual transfer method is hazardous to the assistants
and the passenger. There are other alternatives, but they have plenty of room
for improvement....