Industrial Engineer articles from December 2005

Industrial Engineer archives from December 2005

Life by the book.(editor's desk)(Editorial)
December 1, 2005... The wheels are spinning as fast my legs will power them as I glide my bike the half-mile from home to downtown. It's a big day circa 1972: I'm getting full access to the library; the adult stacks are no longer beyond my reach. I park my bike...

Stronger than steel, harder than diamonds: researcher developing numerous uses for extraordinary 'buckypaper'.(Buckypaper)
December 1, 2005... Imagine working with a material 10 times lighter than steel but 250 times stronger. If this material also had amazing properties that made it highly conductive of heat and electricity, it would start to sound like something out of science...

Containers clog ports: strategies to boost their productive use.
December 1, 2005... Empty freight containers stacking up in seaports present challenges in managing business assets and protecting the environment. Engineers from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, are proposing new strategies to deal with the issue at a...

Voices of experience.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... How could colleges and universities better prepare industrial engineering graduates for their careers? "Teach IE graduates how to define and communicate the business value of their work. IEs who can articulate the benefits of their...

Modeling a better energy system: efficiency, infrastructure, and sociology under investigation.
December 1, 2005... America's energy is constantly moving, constantly bought and sold, constantly subject to human decisions, and constantly vulnerable to disruptions. Iowa State University researchers are building computer models to study those challenges....

Mini winter wonderland.(retired engineer builds dollhouses as a hobby)(Interview)
December 1, 2005... Retired industrial engineer Don Coffey figures it takes him about six months to build one of his dollhouses. That means he started work on his award-winning Christmas-themed creation--with snow-frosted trees in the yard and adorned with...

The price of excess.(obesity costs US companies)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... The typical cost of obesity at a firm of 1,000 employees could soon exceed $285,000 per year. Source: American Journal of Health Promotion, September/October 2005

Tinker, and the world laughs with you.(Finkbuilt)(Steve Lodefink)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... Finkbuilt (www.finkbuilt.com) offers up the musings, projects, and design challenges of Steve Lodefink, a designer and Web producer for The Walt Disney Internet Group in Seattle. An inveterate tinkerer, Lodefink evinces his love for good design...

RFID rules.(Radio Frequency Identification )(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... "This is no longer a 'take-it-on-faith' initiative. This study provides conclusive evidence that EPCs increase how often we put products in the hands of customers who want to buy them, making it a winning situation for shoppers, suppliers, and...

UN urged to up science capacities: more innovation needed for poverty goals to be reached.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... In September 2000,189 nations committed that by 2015, they would significantly reduce global poverty and the related problems of illiteracy, hunger, discrimination against women, unsafe drinking water, and degraded environments and ecosystems....

Sick or slacking? When injury looks like poor performance.
December 1, 2005... Early nerve damage caused by repetitive strain injuries can trigger "sick worker syndrome," characterized by malaise, fatigue, and depression. And these symptoms are often mistaken for poor performance, according to a study by Ann Barr, Ph.D.,...

Simulation congregation.(MUST-DO EVENT)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... Co-sponsored by IIE, the Winter Simulation Conference provides a comprehensive program ranging from introductory tutorials to state-of-the-art research and practice. A one-day Introduction to Simulation for Management debuts this year and is...

Share the data.
December 1, 2005... MANY PEOPLE DO NOT KNOW THE cost of the processes they own. Many industrial engineers I talk with focus primarily on reducing headcount or overtime as the way to save money, and most production and operations supervisors focus on simply making...

Old warehouse, new space.(management)
December 1, 2005... A CLIENT'S DISTRIBUTION CENTER WAS bursting at the seams, so the company's managers decided to relocate it from an urban location in the Northeast to a larger, lower cost DC in the rural Midwest or Southeast. They also considered splitting...

Objective tyranny.(human factors)
December 1, 2005... MANY ENGINEERS CONSIDER HUMAN factors to be a subjective endeavor, which, in many circles, is the moral equivalent of using the most pejorative invective that can be invoked. I'd like to address briefly the use of both subjective and objective...

Lean extended: it's much more (and less) than you think.
December 1, 2005... If there were a Nobel Prize for 20th-century manufacturing, the winner, hands down, would be the Toyota Production System. But it is now the 21st century--time to absorb the best of the Toyota system and move on. And there's plenty to move on...

Books, Books, and More Books: A year's worth of relevant reading.
December 1, 2005... Accelerated Product Development Clifford Fiore Productivity Press Customers are accustomed to the luxury of choice; their expectations for new product introductions are high. Coupling the concepts of lean and Six Sigma with the...

Keeping up with cargo: simulation provides alternative ports of call.(Center for Commercial Deployment of Transportation Technologies)
December 1, 2005... U.S. ports are facing the challenge of increasing their capacities to keep up with the dramatically increasing volume of commercial cargo transiting through them. A recent comparison of port throughput and acreage shows that on average,...

In the know on snow: lifelong research leads to safer slopes.( )(Interview)
December 1, 2005... From a safety standpoint, Jasper Shealy, Ph.D., has declared a winner in the interminable war between skiers and snowboarders. After more than 30 years of research on skiing-related injuries, Shealy can say with certainty that skiers have a...

The perfect solution: whatever your industry, whatever your market, if you lean it, profits will come.(SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION)
December 1, 2005... At the dawn of this new millennium in manufacturing, the right answer to better, faster, cheaper is inevitably a lean-based solution that allows an improved position on the globally competitive stage. The following nine companies show their...

Research: executive summaries.
December 1, 2005... This month, we highlight two research projects that were initiated when professors saw an important corporate need. The articles can be found in the December issue of IIE Transactions (Vol. 37, No. 12), an issue focused on scheduling and...

Ask the Expert: answers to your technical questions.
December 1, 2005... Gauge tolerance Q: I am a co-op process engineer trying to figure out the tolerancing of a new gauge I want to build. The gauge itself is a round piece of metal (or plastic) that is going to sit on top of the rim of a quartz crucible....

Designated leaders: log on and vote for your Board of Trustees.(Institute of Industrial Engineers)
December 1, 2005... Election day may have come and passed, but now is the time for IIE members to choose the next Board of Trustees. Electronic polls open Dec. 15 and close Feb. 5, 2006, and all professional IIE members are eligible to vote. (Student members are...

Sound teaching methods: lessons for the iPod generation.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... In October, Stanford University debuted a project called Stanford on iTunes, which provides university-related audio content through the iTunes Music Store, Apple's music jukebox and online music store. Stanford on iTunes will give the public...

Dilbert[R].(Cartoon)
December 1, 2005... YOUR SALARY IS 115% OF THE MIDPOINT FOR YOUR RANGE. ISN'T THAT EXCITING? [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] WHY DON'T YOU SAY IT'S 115% BELOW THE TOP OF THE RANGE WHICH CAN NEVER BE ACHIEVED UNDER OUR SYSTEM? [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] NO...

Gut reaction to lies.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... Your gut knows a lie when it hears one. A University of Texas study suggests that changes in gastric physiology are better than standard polygraph methods at distinguishing between lies and the truth. To test their hypothesis that the...

Emotional decisions.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... Emotional responses have a profound effect on public policy, prompting government officials to make decisions in response to a crisis with little regard to long-term consequences. That's the conclusion of a study by scholars at Carnegie Mellon...