IIE Transactions articles from October 2004

IIE Transactions archives from October 2004

Introduction.
October 1, 2004... Workforce issues are as old as the field of Industrial Engineering itself. The pioneering research of Taylor, Gilbreth and others centered on the effective use of labor. After falling into relative unpopularity for several decades, workforce...

Agile workforce evaluation: a framework for cross-training and coordination.
October 1, 2004... 1. Introduction Global competition has elevated the role of operating practices in manufacturing and service business strategies. Competing on multiple dimensions of cost, quality, delivery time, and product variety requires efficient...

Salesforce design with experience-based learning.
October 1, 2004... 1. Introduction By broadening the range of tasks assigned to individual workers, firms hope to create workforces that are responsive to variability in workloads. In the case of a salesforce, such job flexibility is often implemented by...

Chained cross-training of workers for robust performance.
October 1, 2004... 1. Introduction Cross-training can increase workforce agility and help accommodate workload variability. Monden (1983) claims that multi-functional workers are one key to Toyota's manufacturing efficiency. This makes perfect sense;...

Development and evaluation of cross-training policies for manufacturing teams.
October 1, 2004... 1. Introduction A manufacturing team can be defined as a group of workers responsible for manufacturing a family of various part types. The team makes use of a set of different machines required to manufacture the various part types. Each...

Staff scheduling in high volume service facilities with downgrading.
October 1, 2004... 1. Introduction Workforce scheduling in the service industry is much more complicated than in manufacturing because demand often spans 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Hospitals, mail processing facilities, airline reservation desks, and...

Estimating job waiting times in production systems with cross-trained setup crews.
October 1, 2004... 1. Introduction In recent years, many firms have emphasized workforce agility in the form of cross-trained workers who can perform several different tasks, and can therefore serve flexibly where needed. In fact, one of the key factors in...

Workforce agility through employee involvement.
October 1, 2004... 1. Introduction The benefits of workforce agility have been vaunted for decades (Holstein and Berry, 1972; Fryer, 1974). Recent studies continue to demonstrate these benefits, using modeling approaches (McClain et al., 2000; Van Oyen et...