Industrial Engineer articles from June 2006

Industrial Engineer archives from June 2006

For the record: it's a shame.(editor's desk)(University of Alabama)(Editorial)
June 1, 2006... Fingers are pointing and tongues are wagging as the University of Alabama gives the do-not-resuscitate order on behalf of its industrial engineering program. This fall's freshmen will be the last class to opt for an IE degree there (should any...

University of Alabama drops IE program: bachelor's, master's programs will phase out over several years.(Front Line)
June 1, 2006... The University of Alabama will eliminate its industrial engineering department despite student opposition to the plan. UA Executive Vice President Judy Bonner and President Robert Witt approved a proposal to phase out the program in the next...

Engineering students to need tablets: Virginia tech requires freshmen to bring convertible PCs.(Front Line)(personal computers)(Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University)(Brief article)
June 1, 2006... Virginia Tech's College of Engineering has announced it will require entering freshmen to purchase convertible tablet PCs. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "The tablet PC offers all the functionality of a notebook computer with the addition of a...

Community TV executive producer.(UNCOMMON IE)(Jim Duncan)(Brief article)
June 1, 2006... THE TASK AT HAND: Although it's been more than a decade since 73-year-old Jim Duncan retired as a Boeing industrial engineer, he's retained the habit of arising at 4:30 a.m. "I have lots of energy; I never wear out!" beams Duncan, who has...

Technology mash-up.(SITE TO SEE)(http://makezine.com)(Brief article)
June 1, 2006... Now in its second year of publication, Make magazine has quickly become the do-it-yourselfer's definitive source of mods, hacks, and other high-tech projects. Its companion Web site (http://makezine.com) expands on the print version, offering...

Study: hotel housekeeping dangerous; majority of workers cope with persistent pain on the job.(Front Line)(Brief article)
June 1, 2006... A study released in April points to the ergonomic risks faced by hotel housekeepers. The findings are described in the report "Creating Luxury, Enduring Pain" published by the hotel and textile employee union Unite Here. The report uses...

Groups best at complex problems: the sum is wiser than its parts.(Front Line)(Brief article)
June 1, 2006... Groups of three, four, or five people perform better on complex problem solving than the best of an equivalent number of individuals, says a new study published by the American Psychological Association. This finding may transfer to scientific...

Healthy quality.(PRIME NUMBER)(Brief article)(Statistical data)
June 1, 2006... Patients who check into a hospital rated in the top 5 percent in the country have, on average, a 27 percent lower chance of mortality and a 14 percent lower risk of complications. Source: Hospital Quality and Clinical Excellence study,...

Service delivery success.(BOOK OF THE MONTH)(Managing Service Delivery Processes: Linking Strategy to Operations)(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2006... In Managing Service Delivery Processes: Linking Strategy to Operations, author Jean Harvey focuses on the problem of managing complex service processes. Drawing on examples as well as theory, Harvey offers fodder for professionals and technical...

Eliminating verbal medical order errors: no-tech, no-cost solution.(Front Line)(Brief article)
June 1, 2006... Hospitals have spent millions of dollars on computerized physician order entry systems to reduce medical errors, but a simple change in the way verbal orders are entered in the system--so simple that it costs nothing to implement--has reduced...

Made-to-measure medical textiles.(Front Line)(University of Manchester's William Lee Innovation Centre )(Brief article)
June 1, 2006... The University of Manchester's William Lee Innovation Centre in the United Kingdom has unveiled a new system that knits made-to-measure medical stockings. The system, known as Scan2Knit, will be used to treat patients suffering from venous...

Dilbert.(Cartoon)
June 1, 2006... www.dilbert.com scottadams@aol.com [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] 8-24-05 [c]2005 Scott Adams, Inc./Dist. by UFS, Inc. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [c]Scott Adams/Dist. by United Feature Syndicate, Inc..

NC State celebrates $10 million gift.(Front Line)(academic department at North Carolina State named Edward P. Fitts Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering in honor of donor)(Brief article)
June 1, 2006... At a ceremony held in April, North Carolina State University's Edward P. Fitts Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering became the first named academic department in the university's history. The name recognizes a $10 million endowment...

Economic frontiers.(QUOTE, UNQUOTE)(Quotation)
June 1, 2006... "Engineers will have to be effective collaborators, innovators, risk takers, and communicators, working across shifting boundaries and embracing diversity. They will need to know the human and social dimensions of technology. Our social and...

Are you ensured?(performance)
June 1, 2006... ARE YOU ENSURED? No, THAT'S NOT a typographical error. I am referring to the excessive use of "ensure" that so many companies are guilty of when it comes to defining what they need to do to reach higher levels of performance. We need to...

Caught in the middle.(management)
June 1, 2006... ONE OF OUR RECENT CLIENTS IS emerging from bankruptcy and weighing its options. The company is the largest bulk plastic resin processor in its industry. It operates superbly using lean and Six Sigma principles. Manufacturing yields average...

Wrong again.(human factors)
June 1, 2006... HUMAN ERROR IS A FASCINATING topic because unlike many technical issues, it cannot be fixed. That is, human errors can never be totally eliminated. It takes a while for this realization to sink in, even for those of us who work on the...

Robotics reconnaissance: NIST puts technology to the test when disaster strikes.(National Institute of Standards and Technology)
June 1, 2006... Adam Jacoff is a happy man. He's happy in the way that someone finding a lost treasure in a pile of rubble is happy. It's the kind of happiness that search and rescue professionals can identify with, and they will undoubtedly appreciate it even...

High-stakes creativity: employees with perspective can turn your company into a valuable work of art.
June 1, 2006... When two teams are faced with the same challenge, why does one team occasionally develop a far more creative solution than the other? Consider, for example, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the most significant aircraft development program in...

The future is now: contactless payment systems are becoming ubiquitous.
June 1, 2006... Dan Gorske's life just got a little more complicated. When the Guinness Book of World Records winner for eating the most Big Macs places an order at his neighborhood McDonald's, he'll now have a very important decision to make. The choice...

Evolutionary chain: supply chain management's metamorphosis into corporate strategy.
June 1, 2006... Technological breakthroughs occur at a dizzying pace and often find their way into the workplace well before we feel ready to deal with them. Recent advancements in information management, transportation technology, inventory systems, and...

Demanding proof: engineers are poised to lead an evidence-based management movement.
June 1, 2006... Many management decisions aren't based on sound ideas, established theory, or solid evidence. In fact, many management actions are based on copying what appears to be successful for others, repeating what seems to have worked in the past,...

Custom fit.(SOLUTIONS IN PRACTICE)( Conestoga Wood Specialties Inc.)
June 1, 2006... In early 2005, demand for Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp.'s wide range of finished wood products was booming, but if capacity wasn't ramped up at its custom division in East Earl, Pa., engineers and executives would end up staring down the...

Research.
June 1, 2006... The June 2006 issue of IIE Transactions (Vol.38, No. 6) focuses on quality and reliability engineering and includes the two papers highlighted below. The first is concerned with how best to use both imperfect and perfect observations of wear-in...

Returnable packaging.(ANSWERS TO YOUR TECHNICAL QUESTIONS)
June 1, 2006... Q: I am considering using returnable packaging for the PC boards my company purchases from China. Is it feasible to use returnable packaging for parts coming from offshore suppliers? It seems like it would be overwhelming to keep track of...

Batch vs. flow.(ANSWERS TO YOUR TECHNICAL QUESTIONS)
June 1, 2006... Q: This is a very elementary question, but I need to ask it. I have read about batch vs. flow in several texts, learned about it in school, and I still cannot fully grasp the idea that flow is preferable to batch operations. They say that...

Consulting career?(ANSWERS TO YOUR TECHNICAL QUESTIONS)
June 1, 2006... Q: Is consulting a good career choice? I heard that it is very unstable. Is the pay OK? A: Lumping all of consulting into one pool misses a lot of what is going on in our industry today. There are many different kinds of consulting jobs,...

Equipment payback.(ANSWERS TO YOUR TECHNICAL QUESTIONS)
June 1, 2006... Q: Upper management is determined not to include our overhead rate when determining the payback period for new equipment. Their reasoning is that the overhead does not go away--we still have those expenses. How do I clearly explain this with a...

At the height of his powers: former executive director bestowed the Gilbreth award.(KEEPING PACE WITH IIE)(John Powers)
June 1, 2006... It was around this time last year when the staff at the Institute of Industrial Engineers reluctantly bid John Powers goodbye and sent him off to the North Carolina coast to enjoy the spoils of his retirement: fishing, golf, and a new banjo. At...

Noah's arc of excellence: graduate student receives IIE's highest student honor.(KEEPING PACE WITH IIE)(Kandace Noah wins Institute of Industrial Engineers Student Award of Excellence)(Brief article)
June 1, 2006... Kandace Noah, a Mississippi State University graduate student in industrial and systems engineering, is the winner of IIE's 2006 Student Award for Excellence. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The Houston native, working on a master's degree in...

Scholar successes: 2006-07 scholarship winners.(KEEPING PACE WITH IIE)(Brief article)(List)
June 1, 2006... A.O. Putnam Memorial Scholarship Seth Borin, University of Arkansas Benjamin Willard Niebel Scholarship Cara Noltensmeyer, Oklahoma State University C.B. Gambrell Undergraduate Scholarship Meaghan Faraca, Rensselaer...

Double feature: Lean Management Solutions and Southeast Quality Conferences merge.(KEEPING PACE WITH IIE)(Brief article)
June 1, 2006... The highly popular IIE Lean Management Solutions Conference will join forces with ASQ's Southeast Quality Conference later this year for the new IIE/ASQ Lean and Quality Conference and Exposition. By joining forces, the conference will be able...

Center for Supply Chain Management at Rutgers Business School.(KUDOS CELEBRATING MEMBER ACHIEVEMENTS)(W. Art Chaovalit-wongse receives Faculty Early Career Development Award )(Brief article)
June 1, 2006... W. Art Chaovalit-wongse, Ph.D., assistant professor of industrial and systems engineering and faculty fellow at the Center for Supply Chain Management at Rutgers Business School, has received a Faculty Early Career Development Award from the...

Hong Kong Polytechnic University.(KUDOS CELEBRATING MEMBER ACHIEVEMENTS)(Edwin Cheng Tai-chiu awarded the doctor of science degree by the University of Cambridge)(Brief article)
June 1, 2006... Edwin Cheng Tai-chiu, Ph.D., chair professor of management in the department of logistics at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, has been awarded the doctor of science degree by the University of Cambridge for his distinguished research in...

Hanes Caribe Inc.(KUDOS CELEBRATING MEMBER ACHIEVEMENTS)(Luis J. Diaz)(Brief article)
June 1, 2006... Luis J. Diaz, was promoted to plant manager at Hanes Caribe Inc. in the Dominican Republic. He started as a production supervisor nine years ago and has served as a plant engineer, engineering manager, and, most recently, an operations manager....

College of Engineering at the University of Oklahoma.(KUDOS CELEBRATING MEMBER ACHIEVEMENTS)(Thomas L. Landers)(Brief article)
June 1, 2006... Thomas L. Landers, Ph.D., was named dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Oklahoma after serving briefly as interim dean. Landers came to the university in 1998 to direct the School of Industrial Engineering and became a...

Mail call.(ASK IIE)
June 1, 2006... Q: I'm graduating this spring and I'm moving. How do I make sure I keep getting Industrial Engineer sent to me in the mail? [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A: To ensure the delivery of Industrial Engineer and other IIE materials, student...

Students go KaBoom!(CHAPTER CHECK-IN)(KaBoom Foundation )(Brief article)
June 1, 2006... Members of the Western New England College IIE chapter recently pitched in to help the KaBoom Foundation build a playground at the YMCA in Springfield, Mass. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] KaBoom is an organization that works with Home Depot...

Road warriors.(WHAT ENGINEERS WANT)(Keynamics LLC)(LAKS Inc.)(Solar Style)
June 1, 2006... The new Aviator laptop stand from Keynamics LLC is specifically designed for business travelers who use their computers aboard commercial aircraft. The stand accommodates a reclined seat in front of it as well as the user's comfort. The Aviator...

Work perfect: the day we strive for.(Olabisi Boyle)(Interview)
June 1, 2006... I handle program management for Dodge SUVs. I have a team of folks that work for me, and we lead the team to develop a vehicle from its concept to when we actually launch it in the manufacturing plant. We've got to get all the engineers...