Industrial Engineer articles from December 2003

Industrial Engineer archives from December 2003

The new metropolis?(Editor's Desk)
December 1, 2003... WHEN SPEAKING OF HIS DESIGN FOR THE DEWITT WALLACE DECORATIVE Arts Museum in Williamsburg, Va., famed architect Kevin Roche told the Christian Science Monitor, "The only real buildings are nonbuildings. The rest is theater." The museum was...

Resource productivity.(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... Let me compliment you on the attention devoted to the topics of sustainable economic development and resource productivity in the September issue of IE magazine. Jane Ammons' work in "Reclaiming the Digital Dump" and Ray Anderson as "The...

Forward movement.(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... I just read the September copy of IE magazine and it looks great. Glad to see that you folks are always thinking of how to make things better. Good luck to you as you move IE forward. RANDALL J. STEGER Chicago

The benefits of lean.(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... I am writing to comment on Charles Parks' article "The Bare Necessities of Lean" (August). I am an industrial engineer for the Hartz Mountain Corp. and a 2000 graduate of the industrial engineering department at Penn State. In the past...

Echoing student requirements.(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... I am a part-time adjunct professor at the University of Dayton currently teaching a production management methods course. One of my course requirements is for students to write a two-page report on a related article to this course. One of...

Postal priorities.(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... I enjoyed reading Charles Parks' article "The Bare Necessities of Lean" (August). Although the U.S. Postal Service does not manufacture anything, the philosophy of lean manufacturing is relevant to improving this service. I am in a...

Maxi demand for individualized cars; Minis are sold before they're even on the lot.(Front Line)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Of all the BMW Minis sold in the United States, 85 percent are uniquely ordered by customers before the car is even assembled. And 95 percent are pre-sold before reaching the dealer. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Consumer demand for...

Good design is good business.(Front Line)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... The marketing department may attribute sales to snappy slogans, but research proves that a product's design, ease of use, and aesthetic appeal have a greater impact on a company's bottom line. "Few studies have attempted to quantify the...

Segue into tech hobby.(Site to See)(scooter)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Safety recall not withstanding, the Segway self-balancing scooter is still hot. But the $5,000 price tag has deterred most people from indulging in the high-tech toy. Computer scientist and robotics entrepreneur Trevor Blackwell of...

Hospitals biased against optimization: simulation, sound management could reduce expenditures.(Front Line)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Health care in the United States and Canada would be much more financially efficient if hospitals applied the same proven techniques used to manage manufacturing, financial services, and other industries, according to a University of Toronto...

Job opportunity has to be good; salary is not enough.(Front Line)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... The job itself, not the salary, is the No. 1 priority in an engineer's mind when searching for a new job. According to a survey by recruitment and staffing firm EPCglobal, almost 60 percent of engineers said it's what a position entails...

Plant capacity low.(Front Line)(Brief Article)(Illustration)
December 1, 2003... Look for U.S. plant capacity to hover around 74.5 percent next year, predicts the "2004 Capital Spending Survey & Forecast" by Gardner Research. If reached, that level will squint above the 2003 average of 74.4 percent but fall well below the...

Human 'chipping' takes off; RFID tags aren't just for product tracking.(Front Line)(VeriChip)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... In September, a journalist walked into a New York City VeriChip Center and had a tiny radio frequency identification tag implanted subdermally for research being conducted on behalf of a technology trade publication. In October, a Mexican...

A sweet alternative.(Uncommon IE)(Anne Rewey)(Interview)
December 1, 2003... Anne Rewey knows how to enjoy the sweet life without counting calories, and it's not just because she is director of marketing for the no-calorie sweetener Splenda. By not allowing herself to be limited by the burden of traditional industrial...

Matters of ownership.(Performance)
December 1, 2003... TWO MONTHS AGO, MY COMPANY went through a change in ownership. In the weeks preceding the unexpected sale of my current employer, there were discussions among the operations team about the significance of ownership and how it affects human...

In praise of politics.(Management)(office politics)
December 1, 2003... A LONG TIME AGO, IN A CAVE FAR away, a primitive primate conspired with a few friends to form a splinter group that would hunt separately from the rest of the clan. Thus was born the noble art of politics. That's not really how it started,...

Subterranean sprawl: at SubTropolis, what lies beneath is a land of industrial opportunity.(Cover Story)
December 1, 2003... THE NAME HAS ALL THE MAKINGS of a science fiction film moniker. If you concentrate, you can almost hear the movie trailer: Deep in the limestone caves of Missouri lies an alternate universe.... While it could be perceived as an alternate...

The engineer's bookshelf 2003; the year's best references, guides, manuals, and essays.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... 1: Every object tells a story Henry Petroski, the engineering professor who gave the pencil personality in a previous book, takes on additional mundane objects in Small Things Considered. Musing on the miraculous nature of such items as...

A different dozen; there's more than one best way to film the beloved book.
December 1, 2003... SINCE ITS PUBLICATION IN 1948, Cheaper by the Dozen has captivated audiences young and old. The story of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth and their prodigious brood remains a staple of junior high school English classes to this day. Industrial...

Revisiting a retail challenge; for Bob's Stores, lean operation leads to a healthy bottom line.
December 1, 2003... IN AN ENVIRONMENT AS COMPETITIVE AS THE RETAIL industry, companies must be vigilant in exploring methods to operate more efficiently and profitably. Finding better ways to move merchandise closer to the sales floor, reduce checkout times and...

Truck-Lite gets a tune up from OCI.(Material Handling Advertorial)(Operations Concepts Inc.)
December 1, 2003... When Truck-Lite Co. wanted to measure development and sought suggestions for productivity and operational efficiency improvement, they used Operational Baseline from Operations Concepts Inc. OCI quickly initiated on-site studies to establish...

MegaLift takes parts storage to a new level.(Material Handling Advertorial)
December 1, 2003... "Our personnel are our most valuable asset, and their safety and health are primary concerns," says Craig Knowlton, Thermo Forma senior planner/analyst. By replacing traditional shelving with a MegaLift vertical storage and retrieval system,...

AutoMod simulates baggage screening systems.(Material Handling Advertorial)
December 1, 2003... "Simulation is critical to ensuring success when integrating new systems in airport operations. With the safety, security, and financial health of the aviation industry on the line, it provides engineers with peace of mind that the systems they...

Modula dispenses airliner parts on the fly.(Material Handling Advertorial)(System Storage Solutions)
December 1, 2003... When Continental Airlines moved the small-parts storage at its Newark Liberty International Airport facility into 12 of System Storage Solutions' Modula units, its floor space increased by more than 90 percent and its inventory control improved...

Research: executive summaries.(Percentile Life and Reliability as Performance Measures in Optimal System Design)(Cost-Variability-Sensitive Preventive Maintenance Considering Management Risk)
December 1, 2003... This edition of Research highlights two problems. The first outlines a new method of designing products to maximize the percentile life--the time through which the probability of the system operating successfully attains some given value. The...

Ask the expert: answers to your technical questions.
December 1, 2003... Formulating turns Q: I have been using the following formula to calculate inventory turn-over ratio: Inventory turnover ratio = Annual sales / Average inventory value Recently, I saw a reference to the following: Inventory...

Get out the vote: board of trustees candidates speak up.(Focus)
December 1, 2003... The 2004-2005 election is upon us. Electronic polls will open Dec. 17 and close Feb. 4, 2004. During that time, all IIE members who are eligible to vote and have obtained an e-signature may cast a ballot. The e-signature is a numeric...

7th Annual Applied Ergonomics Conference: March 8-11, 2004 * Rosen Centre Hotel * Orlando, Florida.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Learning, sharing, networking That's what AEC is all about. The 7th Annual Applied Ergonomics Conference will be the best ever and promises even more real solutions to everyday ergonomics problems and challenges in the workplace. Discover...

Products & services.(Resources)(Directory)
December 1, 2003... work measurement MTM Association * Work Measurement Systems * Work Measurement Software * Industrial Engineering Training and Support * Ergonomics Training * Productivity Improvement Analysis * Profitability...

Creativity linked to mental illness; ingenuity stems from openness.(Outliers)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Psychologists from the University of Toronto and Harvard University have identified one of the biological bases of creativity: The brains of creative people appear to be more open to incoming stimuli from the surrounding environment. A...

Cool man.(Outliers)(engineering the perfect snowman)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Cohesiveness of materials, weight and measurement, structural capabilities, balance and proportion, vertical alignment, compaction... freshman engineering? No, snowman building. Engineering technology students and faculty at Bluefield...

It's good to be king.(Outliers)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... It's not the size of the paycheck but the place in the pecking order that determines happiness. Research by economists and psychologists at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom found that the position a person holds in a company...