Since the introduction of lean manufacturing by Toyota and publication by Womack and Jones, organizations have realized sizeable gains through lean process improvement. The spread of lean practices across organizations and industries – from manufacturing to healthcare and construction – requires adjustments of the lean process and, in the case...
With the growing importance of sustainability, organizations in the non-profit
sector need a way to measure, track, improve, and report their sustainability. Through
research in current literature and a survey of practices within local non-profits, it is
shown these organizations need a simple, flexible process with stakeholder participation
to measure...
A gap exists in the methods used in industry and available in academia that prevents customers and engineers from having a voice when considering engineering risk appetite in the dynamic shaping of early-phase conceptual design trade study outcomes. Current methods used in Collaborative Design Centers either collect risk information after...
This research proposes a Human Fallibility Identification and Remediation Methodology (HFIRM) that supports the systematic identification and remediation of potential human errors. The objective of this research was to develop and test a prototype framework that supports the practical application of human factors knowledge to the analysis and design of...
In this research, a bi-criteria group scheduling problem is investigated in hybrid flow shop (HFS) environments, where the parallel machines in each stage are unrelated, meaning not identical. The objective of the problem is to minimize a linear combination of the total weighted completion times as a means of complying...
Hydrogels have been proposed as candidates for nucleus pulposus replacement due to
their similarity in mechanical behavior to the native tissue when subjected to transient or
static loading; however, given the viscoelastic nature of soft biological tissues, the lack of
dynamic testing is a significant inadequacy in the studies performed...
The study hypotheses, based on sociobiology, were that the more committed and positive the parental relationship, the greater the likelihood of breastfeeding and of later weaning. Data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study was used; sample size was 3635, and over half were African- 2merican. In a logistic...
Distractions and interruptions are common occurrences in an operating room (OR), but little is known about their effects on surgical task performance. Based on human factors research, it was hypothesized that realistic distractions and interruptions in an OR would adversely impact surgical task performance. Because of the concern of patient...
Modern complex mechanical systems have evolved to a point of incredible complexity. Many now operate with significant assistance from automated response functions, and some operate without human operators at all. These increasingly complex systems have also become more expensive and more ambitions in mission, bringing about higher risk to both...
Organizational trust refers to the tendency of individuals or groups within an organization to trust each other. Tschannen-Moran (2004) describes trust as one's "willingness to be vulnerable to another based on the confidence that the other is benevolent, honest, open, reliable, and competent" (p. 17). The purpose of this study...