Industrial Engineer articles from June 2005

Industrial Engineer archives from June 2005

Small world reformation.(editor's desk)
June 1, 2005... MICROSOFT CHAIRMAN BILL GATES TOLD A GROUP OF U.S. GOVERNORS last month that American high schools are obsolete. He even wrote a column in an April edition of the Houston Chronicle contending that the type of education required to succeed in...

HR for ROI's sake: a well-managed program boosts manufacturers' profits.(Front Line)(human resource management)(return on investment)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2005... Investments in human resource management pay off for manufacturers. And the improved organizational operations and financial results are quantifiable, according to research from the 2005 Census of Manufacturers published by Industry Week and...

Ergo assessment tool.(SITE TO SEE)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2005... Liberty Mutual's Research Institute for Safety has revised its Manual Material Handling Tables and makes them available free on its Web site (www.libertymutual.com/researchinstitute). The tables aid in evaluating risk for lifting, lowering,...

New danger: 'BlackBerry hand': heavy use of handheld electronics can lead to repetitive motion ailments.(Front Line)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2005... The boom in handheld consumer electronics can lead to more than just maxed out credit cards. The American Society of Hand Therapists issued an "education alert" advising users of such items as BlackBerrys and iPods to avoid the onset of...

Training by watching: people can learn motor skills by observation.(Front Line)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2005... People can unconsciously learn complex motor behaviors by watching others perform them, researchers have found. Experiments by Andrew A.G. Matter of McGill University and Paul L. Gribble of the University of Western Ontario indicate that...

Plugging the capital gap.(QUOTE, UNQUOTE)
June 1, 2005... "Unless we bring more women and minorities into science and engineering fields, we will not have the intellectual capital to compete in the global marketplace to address the major economic, environmental, health, and security issues facing our...

Events.(Brief Article)(Calendar)
June 1, 2005... > JUNE JUNE 6-8 * Six Sigma Green Belt seminar, Norcross, Ga. JUNE 6-9 SUPERCOMM, Chicago; (703) 907-7723; www.supercomm2005.com > JULY JULY 11 * Six Sigma Green Belt seminar, IIE online JULY 22-27...

Standardizing assessments: global team develops instrument to appraise patients.(Front Line)
June 1, 2005... University of Wisconsin-Madison industrial and systems engineering professor David Zimmerman is among researchers from 26 countries who announced a new standardized suite of instruments that health care providers can use to assess patient...

Giving voice to tech investments.(PRIME NUMBER)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2005... The No. 1 technology investment priority for manufacturing enterprises is Voice over Internet Protocol, followed closely by supply chain management and customer relationship management. Source: "Manufacturing Industry: 2005 IT Budget &...

Inefficient victory: annual contest celebrates convoluted contraptions.(Front Line)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2005... An apparatus that took 125 steps to turn on a flashlight was suitably complex--and inefficient--to take top honors in the April National Rube Goldberg Machine Contest. The winning team, from Purdue University, also won the event's People's...

Off the cuff.(Front Line)
June 1, 2005... TELLY VISION Describe the format and content of a television show you would like to see about industrial engineering. "The ideal industrial engineering television show would take elements from 'The Apprentice' and 'Win Ben Stein's...

Science projects.(UNCOMMON IE)
June 1, 2005... The mere mention of daunting devices such as the Spallation Neutron Source or a high flux isotope reactor are enough to make even the most inquisitive among us run screaming for the hills. But Terry Payne, Ph.D., who is not a scientist but...

Predicting physical limitations: the human factors of military service.(Front Line)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2005... Researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia have developed a computer model that will predict the heat stress for U.S. military personnel at work in the extreme conditions of the Middle East. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The model can...

Man of letters: first engineering Ph.D. honored with postage stamp.(Front Line)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2005... Josiah Willard Gibbs, who earned a doctorate in engineering from Yale in 1863, was the first person to earn such a degree in the United States. Gibbs was one of four pioneering American scientists featured on a set of new 37-cent postage stamps...

Innovation anxiety: agree or disagree: true breakthrough innovations are required to win in my industry.(Front Line)(Brief Article)(Illustration)
June 1, 2005... [GRAPHIC OMITTED] Percentage of respondents Agree Agree strongly Energy 50 36 Health care 28 53 Technology...

Organizational weight loss.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
June 1, 2005... Introducing readers to the guiding principles behind lean thinking, Lean Manufacturing that Works provides step-by-step advice about how to create a lean process for any type of manufacturing company. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Written by...

Hot simulations: software predicts direction and speed of forest fires.(Front Line)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2005... Simulation software being developed at Texas A&M may help control fires. The software, being designed by assistant professor of industrial engineering Lewis Ntaimo, Ph.D., will predict the direction and speed of ignited forest fires. The...

Why won't they mind?(performance)
June 1, 2005... MANY IMPROVEMENT INITIATIVES fail because people won't change. Why is this so difficult? We're working with adults, so why won't they mind their superiors? We give incentives to help facilitate change. We punish those who don't change with...

Will we ever learn?(management)(ABC Co.)
June 1, 2005... "Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." --Albert Einstein ABC CO. IS A LARGE, WELL-KNOWN manufacturer of electrical hand tools based in the United States that performs operations at five...

The simulated user.(human factors)
June 1, 2005... SIMULATION IS AS MUCH A TOOL OF the engineering domain as computers and quality improvement methods. Can you think of any engineering discipline that doesn't use simulation as part of its design and development processes? So why are human...

The next big lean: groundbreaking author James Womack finds a new frontier in consumption.(Interview)
June 1, 2005... HOW FRUSTRATED ARE YOU AS A consumer? With so many dependent parts, complicated operating instructions, and unhelpful customer help lines, a basic purchase can become a basic nightmare. Even the steps it takes to acquire a product in today's...

TOC in the DC: warehouse management gets a makeover with a manufacturing staple.(distribution centers)
June 1, 2005... IN AN EFFORT TO REDUCE ORDER processing cycle time in Intel Corp.'s component distribution centers, industrial engineers developed a new approach to operations management--the novel idea of applying the theory of constraints to warehousing. By...

United notions: as U.S. scientific dominance wanes, global innovation swells.
June 1, 2005... AS WE STAND ON THE CUSP OF SCIENCE'S bold new frontiers--fuel cells, nanotechnology, biotechnology, and more--the United States looks to its population of engineers and scientists to uncover the latest and greatest discoveries. But it seems as...

Let it flow: how lean product development sparked a revolution.
June 1, 2005... IN THE BEGINNING, ALL PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT processes were lean, and it was good. New products flowed swiftly from concept to delivery. The same person would conceive an idea, design the product, and supervise its manufacturing. Value was added...

Flexibility first: keeping the automotive supply chain responsive through build-to-order.
June 1, 2005... SUPPLIERS IN ANY INDUSTRY MUST BE ABLE TO RESPOND to changing demand patterns in the market, but in the motor vehicle industry, where typically 60 percent of the product's value derives from internally and externally supplied components,...

Research: executive summaries.
June 1, 2005... The current issue of IIE Transactions focuses on quality and reliability. Two articles from that issue are highlighted below. One of the articles is concerned with finding the best set of tolerances for situations in which the tolerances...

Ask the expert: answers to your technical questions.
June 1, 2005... If the shoe fits Q: What is the importance of footwear flexibility during human walking? And how can we know what degree of flexibility is suitable for users? A: The importance of footwear flexibility is an interesting but subjective...

Raise your glass: 2005 honors and awards winners receive their laurels.(FOCUS)
June 1, 2005... Albert G. Holzman Distinguished Educator Award John Casali, Ph.D. Award for Technical Innovation in Industrial Engineering Wallace Hopp, Ph.D. Captains of Industry Award Bill Swanson David F. Baker Distinguished...

We built this city: middle-school students propose future metropolises.(FOCUS)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2005... The Future City Competition, now in its 13th year, is one of several successful National Engineers Week initiatives designed to get students interested and involved in engineering. Using Electronic Arts' SimCity 3000 software and a...

Regional conference roundup.(CHAPTER CHECK-IN)
June 1, 2005... Region 5: Readying for the real world Kansas State University's IIE chapter hosted the 46th annual Region 5 Paper Conference March 3-5. The primary focus of the two-day event was the presentation of technical papers written by students and...

Kudos: celebrating member achievements.(Focus)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2005... Senior member Olivier Girod, Ph.D., was named deputy managing director, plant operations, at the U.S. Government Printing Office in Washington. He takes the position after 10 years at The Washington Post. Girod holds a bachelor's degree in...

Outstanding scholars: 2005-06 IIE scholarship winners.(Focus)(Institute of Industrial Engineers)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2005... A.O. Putnam Memorial Scholarship ($600) Joseph Burns, University of San Diego Benjamin Willard Niebel Scholarship ($1,000) Emily Curtis, Auburn University C. B. Gambrell Undergraduate Scholarship ($600) Jennifer Cloud,...

Golden gazette.(IN OTHER PUBLICATIONS)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2005... The Engineering Economist, a refereed journal published jointly by IIE and the Association of Engineering Education, celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. In addition to Gerald Thuesen's editorial history of the past 50 years, the...

Summer school.(FOCUS)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2005... Move to the head of the class by enrolling in an IIE summer seminar. From Six Sigma to advanced ergonomics, the Institute's continuing education offerings are an invaluable way to augment your skill set. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] For a...

Beyond 9 to 5: members describe their joy of work.(FOCUS)(Book Review)
June 1, 2005... In the new book Be Happy at Work: 100 Women Who Love Their Jobs, and Why, author Joanne Gordon has assembled interviews with women working in a wide spectrum of fields. From celebrities such as actress Stockard Channing and musicians the Indigo...

Cap and gown.(ASK IIE)(Institute of Industrial Engineers)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2005... Q: I graduated this spring and I'm due to renew my IIE membership next month. Will I have to pay the full professional rate? A: No. IIE is a valuable resource for those who are just beginning their career or continuing on to post-graduate...

Ergonomically aware.(Pick List)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2005... Nine new ergonomics posters from Humantech provide immediately recognizable reminders about issues and solutions for improving workplace ergonomics. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Available in two series--Awareness and Art--the posters are...

Enabling excellence.(Pick List)(iGrafx)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2005... Comprising several distinct modules, iGrafx 2005 presents itself as a process excellence enabler. The software represents a set of solutions for business process analysis and modeling that allows companies to develop and maintain their process...

Manufacturing intelligence.(Pick List)(DataWorks Systems)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2005... Incuity Enterprise Manufacturing Intelligence software is an enterprise decision support system that integrates plant floor production data and enterprise business information from throughout a company, providing context for the data so that...

Minding the gap.(Pick List)(AutoPak Engineering Corp)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2005... AutoPak's Gap Transporter helps pharmaceutical and nutraceutical manufacturers increase flexibility and maximize productivity by preventing product loss. In its most basic format, the unit prevents spilled product and debris from reaching...

Hot pick system.(Pick List)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2005... Designed to reduce response time for priority orders while improving warehouse throughput, the FastPic IC Hot Pick Module allows organizations to suspend current order picking operations with the click of a button to process last-minute orders...

Managing discrete costs.(Pick List)(Brief Article)(Illustration)
June 1, 2005... An updated edition of the aPriori cost management platform allows Fortune 100 discrete part manufacturers to reduce costs and improve margins by accurately measuring, controlling, and reducing the cost of goods. Version 3.7 provides real-time...

Pallet load leveler.(Pick List)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2005... Presto's P4 hydraulic load leveler aids the manual loading and unloading of pallets to improve worker productivity and reduce their fatigue. Its platform lowers to floor height so that pallets can be placed and removed using a hand pallet...

Visual lit search.(Pick List)
June 1, 2005... RefViz is a text analysis and data visualization tool for the researcher's desktop. The newest incarnation, RefViz 2, allows researchers to extend the reach of a single search to all their desired online resources. The Reference Retriever...

Organizational mismatch: the way we sort things isn't universal.(Outliers)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2005... If you've ever been baffled by the way a colleague files information, you're not alone. In an age of endless ways to sort electronic data, there is no inherently good way to do it. In fact, a research team led by professor Tom Ormerod of...

Staged science.(Outliers)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2005... Engineers of a literary bent will find this contest thrilling: The University of California Santa Barbara has launched an international script competition open to plays about science and technology. The winning script writer in the...

The variable variable.(Outliers)(Mathematics variables research)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2005... It doesn't take much to confuse people. In fact, it takes only about four variables to make a problem difficult to solve. Add one more variable and the task is nearly impossible. To perform their research, Australian cognitive scientists...