Search

In Hong Kong, 6-day construction cycle always being used for constructing one typical floor of concrete building superstructure in a week. Work-zones are defined in the working platform for better allocation of limited resources. Once the work-zones are defined, the resources (labour, plant, materials) will be allocated to a specific zone to deliver the works on a particular day of the 6-day construction cycle. In practice, the definition of work-zone is dependent on the experience of project manager. Yet, there is no past research studied the evaluation of work-zone definition schemes. As such, in this research study, three heuristic rules are proposed for choosing better scheme of work-zone. The heuristic rules are based on (i) lengths of work-zone dividing line, (ii) fluctuations of daily duration, and (iii) utilisation rates of resource. To illustrate the steps of evaluating the scheme, an illustrative example is given. To illustrate the method application of the rules, a practical case study of constructing a 40-storey housing is given. The proposed rules were verified based on sensitivity analysis and expert validation. Conclusions are drawn by expressing the contributions and limitations of the proposed rules, followed by suggesting future research works.

In recent years, the increasing concern about the labour market implications of technological change has led economists to look in more detail at the structure of work content and job tasks. Incorporating insights from other traditions of task analysis, in particular from the labour process approach, as well as from recent research on skills, work organisation and occupational change, in this paper we propose a comprehensive and detailed taxonomy of tasks. Going beyond existing broad classifications, our taxonomy aims at connecting the substantive content of work with its organisational context by answering two key questions: what do people do at work and how do they do their work? For illustrative purposes, we show how our approach allows a better understanding of the impact of new technologies on work, by accounting for relevant ongoing transformations such as the diffusion of artificial intelligence and the unfolding of digital labour platforms.

El tema central de este artículo gira alrededor de la funcionalidad de Microsoft Teams como plataforma virtual educativa en la formación superior, desde las perspectivas conceptuales, pedagógicas, técnicas hasta las reglamentarias. Tras la revisión bibliográfica, los resultados revelaron que Teams permite aplicar el plan de diseño instruccional para ejecutar cursos virtuales de forma organizada y detallada. A esto se suma su cumplimiento con las disposiciones contenidas en normativas nacionales sobre educación virtual (específicamente). Con Teams es posible contar con áreas y subáreas de información, comunicación, contenido de trabajo, recursos y evaluación. No obstante, para el funcionamiento en su máxima capacidad, Teams cuenta con requisitos del sistema y los equipos. En efecto, es oportuno anotar que la innovación en un programa académico virtual o asignatura/módulo no está exclusivamente en las posibilidades tecnológicas, sino también en el diseño tecnopedagógico, siendo una verdadera solución y no un problema.

The Complexity Index method is an approach developed to help manufacturing companies quantify complexity in production. This paper sheds light on the connection between complexity and manufacturing problems and how the Complexity Index method was used to capture the areas in a production line with high levels of complexity to determine the sources of manufacturing problems related to labour time, surplus production, and manufacturing error. The main areas perceived as complex were due to Work Instructions, Work Content, and Product Variants. The perceived complexities were assessed for proper actions to be taken to decrease their level of complexity. The correlations between complexity and manufacturing problems were used for tracking related issues and ways for improvement. This study presents data on the use of workers’ perception to uncover the areas of complexity, which could be used by the management team to pragmatically capture difficulties and issues related to manufacturing problems to improve the production system.

Production engineering (2020). doi:10.1007/s11740-020-00998-1, Published by WGP, Hannover

The aerospace industry ranks among the largest manufacturing industries in the world facing a significant growing phase as well as an increased competition. This paper addresses the scheduling of a set of jobs in a paced assembly line in presence of uncertainty affecting the availability of production resources, stemming from the assembly process in the aircraft manufacturing industry. The production problem is modeled as a no-wait paced permutation flow shop and solved providing a robust scheduling solution minimizing the conditional value-at-risk (CVaR) of the residual work content, i.e., the amount of workload that cannot be completed during the cycle time in the stations, due to a lack of available resources. A branch-and-bound approach is developed and applied to randomly generated instances as well as to an industrial problem related to the production of aircrafts.

The transformation of schedules can be innovative if the actors concerned participate in it and if their professional logics are different. In activity ergonomics, it takes into account the content of the work and is discussed by all the actors to choose the best compromise. The objectives of this communication are to show that schedules and work content are interdependent, that the transformation of schedules is an opportunity to re-establish an inter professional discussion on current and future work, and that this discussion facilitates the appropriation of solutions. The methodology is deployed in a pneumology unit for three years. An inventory of the initial work situation is first constructed from observations and interviews. The design solutions are then projected in groups with work simulation. The three groups, which bring together the different professional logics of the service, are recorded and analyzed on Actograph®. The effects of the groups are studied during the testing of the new schedules, based on observations, interviews and internal data. The results first show that the increase in nurses' day-night overlap (schedules) is dependent on improved patient flow and coordination with physicians (work content). Inter professional discussions, equipped by the simulation, made it possible to project future working conditions, but above all to talk about current working conditions. They also enabled the actors to take ownership of the verbalized conditions for success: most of these conditions became a reality in the service during the test of the new schedules.

Cyber-Physical-Social Systems (CPSS) performance for industry 4.0 is highly context-dependent, where three design areas arise: the artifact itself, the human-agent collaboration, and the organizational settings. Current HF&E tools are limited to conceptualize and anticipate future human-agent work situations with a fine-grained perspective. This paper explores how rich insights from work analysis can be translated into formative design patterns that provide finer guidance in conceptualizing the human-agent collaboration and the organizational settings. The current manual work content elicited is disaggregated into functional requirements. Each function is then scrutinized by a multidisciplinary design team that decides its feasibility and nature (autonomy function, human function, or hybrid function). By doing so, we uncover the technical capabilities of the CPSS in comparison with subject-matter experts' work activity. We called this concept technological coverage. The framework thereof allows close collaboration with design stakeholders to define detailed HAT configurations. We then imagined joint activity scenarios based on end-users work activity, the technological capabilities, and the interaction requirements to perform the work. We use a study on technological innovation in the aircraft maintenance domain to illustrate the framework's early phases.

This paper takes the assembly line of household refrigerator A of H company as the research object, and calculates the balance rate of the production line through on-site measurement, and finds that the production line has big problems. Through Flexsim simulation analysis, the bottleneck process was found, and the ECRS principle and operation improvement method of industrial engineering were used to adjust the work position process, divide the work content, adjust the number of staff, and improve the method of on-site layout to achieve the improvement and optimization of the assembly line balance, which achieved obvious results effect.

The main competence of 21st century technical and vocational education and training (TVET) teachers is the ability to integrate technology into the learning process effectively. However, the concept of learning is now shifting to technological involvement, learning approaches, and needs in accordance with the curriculum of the world of work must be integrated to produce learning outcomes that are able to compete in obtaining work opportunities. The technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) model used in general learning needs to be assessed according to the context of innovation in the TVET learning field. The purpose of this study is to analyze the teaching and learning of TVET teachers who are professionals with the approach of Technology, Andragogy and Work towards Content Knowledge (CK). Study of qualitative methods in the form of document analysis is identified by the philosophy of the learning approach at TVET and the current TVET learning model. The analysis results recommend that the technology andragogy work content knowledge (TAWOCK) model is considered important to be developed in TVET learning. Characteristics of these findings include the involvement of learning using technology, increasing the level of learning for andragogy, adjusting work competence, and curriculum content developed on the concept of knowledge. Finally TPACK has been modified to TAWOCK to study in the TVET field.

The development of smart substations is the future trend of power systems. This paper proposes a scheme for building a whole process management system for the secondary system of the intelligent substation. In the secondary system management system, a specialized model of four roles management of individuals, engineering, equipment, and materials in the building and administrative intelligent substation was established, and a specialized process of the secondary system management system was established. The key technologies such as graphic display technology and model file design consistency check are analyzed. Then, we created a pilot project in the new 220 kV Gaohua smart substation in Shenyang. The management and control of the intelligent substation construction process, intelligent substation equipment, and configuration files are realized. We can clarify the responsibilities of each department to ensure the consistency of the work content of each link and the design of the model documents.

Shipbuilding projects are gaining in complexity and volume. To face this demand shipyards tend to share work content and constitute shipbuilding networks. The paper describes an approach to design these project specific shipbuilding networks. The approach focusses on the idea of evolving core competences for each shipyard in the network. Implementation of competence profiles for shipyards combined with profiles of capacity demand for shipbuilding projects enable to reveal deficits in a shipbuilding network and deduce possible adjustments. To evaluate network configurations and possible adjustments considering the dynamic production sequence in shipbuilding, a simulation model for shipbuilding networks is introduced.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate entrepreneurial competencies of students in practicums within departments of electrical engineering and computer sciences (EECS) in universities of technology. In total, 71 faculty members who advised in entrepreneurial competitions in universities of technology were participants in the questionnaire survey to find the entrepreneurial competencies during practicums of the EECS students. Design/methodology/approach Analysis was carried out based on the literatures related to off-campus internship in universities of technology and entrepreneurship competency. Then, through the questionnaire survey, the authors can understand what the entrepreneurial abilities should have when they after off-campus internships. The entrepreneurship competency expected of off-campus internship students within EECS was analyzed to derive at the important conclusion in this study. Findings As the results of this study, the authors found that entrepreneurial processes, entrepreneurial traits/behaviors, communications and interpersonal skills, and digital skills are the entrepreneurial competencies that are emphasized during practicums. Originality/value The paper suggests that, first, the EECS students take up innovative entrepreneurship programs and take electives such as marketing management, financial management, and related business administration courses. Second, respective universities of technology and internship organizations may co-arrange the incorporation of project-based learning (PBL), PBL into the internship work content. Third, establishing a platform that bridges communication for off-campus internship students.

Aircraft manufacturers are challenged with increasing demand requiring customers to place orders months in advance respect to the time aircrafts will be operative. Consequently, customers decide aircraft’s size but have additional time to select cabin fittings. Nevertheless, manufacturers must promise a delivery time, regardless real aircraft configuration and resource availability at the production sites. We propose a novel framework for order allocation and sequencing in aircraft manufacturing minimizing the risk for manufacturing costs. Different degrees of uncertainty affecting products, work content and resources are considered as time advances and decisions to be taken change. An industrial application is also presented.

Background of INCASI Project H2020-MSCA-RISE-2015 GA 691004. WP1: Compilation The aim of this article is to analyze work content and its components in translation agencies. In the conceptual part of the article, we refer to concepts taken from the sociology of work and translation studies. In the analytical part, we use data produced by Stelmach in her study carried out in a small translation agency in Poland using the technique of self-observation (Stelmach 2000). The aim of Stelmach's study was to record and analyze all the activities that form part of the production process of a translation service. Because the observation was continual in time, it provided a complete list of all the activities carried out by the permanent staff occupying two internal jobs. Stelmach's approach was quantitative and not focused on specific, translation-related work organization. In this article, we reinterpret these activities as the content of the work in translation-related internal positions, and compare it with Gouadec's model of translation service provision process (Gouadec 2002, 2005a, 2005b, 2007). The data analyzed show the importance of outsourcing in the everyday activity of translation agencies and (partly as a consequence of this outsourcing) the magnitude and importance of the management activities carried out by the staff.

A cellular bucket brigade is a way to coordinate workers along an aisle with work content on both sides. Each worker in a cellular bucket brigade works on one side of the aisle when he proceeds in one direction, and he works on the other side when he proceeds in the reverse direction. Although the cellular bucket brigade eliminates the unproductive walkback, it requires more hand-offs to assemble a product than a traditional (serial) bucket brigade. These hand-offs may waste significant production capacity as each of them requires an exchange of work, which can be complicated and time consuming in practice. This motivates us to investigate the impact of hand-off times on the cellular bucket brigade's performance. We identify sufficient conditions to ensure no workers are idle in the long run and for the system to self-balance in a model with hand-off times. Our results suggest that even with significant hand-off times, the cellular bucket brigade can remain substantially (about 50%) more productive than the traditional bucket brigade especially if the team size is small and the workers’ work velocities are close to their walk velocity. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

The nature of work, including how, where and when it is done, is changing rapidly these days. Employees are constantly engaging in modern ICT that permits them to work anywhere, at any time and in any way. Remote working, mobile working, flexible schedules and compressed workweeks are some of the many work adjustments or combinations of adjustments in use in different companies worldwide. ICT naturally reduces the need for physical mobility in a globalised world by means of telepresence and videoconferencing in the face of globalisation, which increases the physical mobility needs (consumerism, offshoring, global sourcing and others). Generally, it was found that work/life balance policies are a remarkable tool for the improvement of performance, high productivity, morale and commitment. The aim of this paper is to analyse the initial issue of mobile teleworking as a problem for work/life balance in an international sports company. The method used is Skype interviews with 12 mobile teleworkers. There is gender equality (six males and six females). The main objectives are to understand if issues in the work/life balance are obstacles to mobile working, in addition whether this kind of work is becoming more common and is expanding, and lastly if mobile telework intensifies the delimitation of work and life. Our results show that mobile teleworking involves readiness to travel and is equated with a high level of autonomy in work and self-discipline. Further, work/life balance is endangered by high mobility, which can be decreased when customers are educated. Moreover, mobile life is not a long-term option, and mobile life is a suitable tool to fit in with family arrangements. Generally, focus on work content is more important than the workplace.

Nowadays World class manufacturing organizations continuously try to provide highest quality products at the lowest price by implementing innovative approaches for optimizing their production system. Mechatronics play an important role in meeting such requirements, because “Quality is Free”. With this aim the processes are studied for optimizing work method and time. The optimization of work method can be done by reducing work content by improving the processing methods and the time can be optimized by automating the process. This systematic approach of process improvement is illustrated with a case study. The case study has been carried out in a leading car manufacturing industry (Ford India Limited) The process is improved by designing a mechanism and was mechanized by applying Mechatronics concepts for obtaining higher accuracy and quick processing. Here two kinds of solution were suggested and compared as well. The both new setups eliminate the drawbacks in the existing method (Manual Processing). Actually, Manual processes will lengthy, tedious, time consuming and consequently error prone. The proposed machine setups designed completely and demonstrated successfully.

The present study provides an ergonomic assessment of a wire terminal crimping workstation in a wiring manufacturing company for the automotive industry. It aims to evaluate the WMSD risk. To provide this assessment two methods were used: EWA and RULA. The first show us that the main problems were postures and movements, work content, repetitiveness of work and the thermal environment. The second show us that the worst body posture and movements were in the arms, forearms, wrist and trunk. The results show that there is a need to mitigate the problems encountered, so we suggested two kind of measures: engineering measures (presenting a redesign of the workplace using anthropometric data) and organizational measures.

Reconfigurable assembly system (RAS) is an innovative manufacturing paradigm which is an extension of reconfigurable manufacturing system (RMS) having the advantage of both dedicated serial lines and flexible assembly systems to address the challenges of dynamic market conditions. The primary goal of RAS is to improve the responsiveness of assembly system to fluctuating market demand by enabling rapid and cost-effective reconfiguration. In this paper, a model for optimizing the schedule plan with three objective functions related to RAS namely reconfiguration cost/time, delivery schedule, and work content balance is proposed. Finding the optimum sequence of a product in the product family while optimizing the three given objectives while meeting the customer demand are the main focus of this optimization framework.

This paper describes the development of using virtual reality for work content in one application area over a decade. Virtual reality technology has developed rapidly, from walk-in CAVE-like virtual environments to head-mounted displays within a decade. In this paper, the development is studied through the lens of diffusion of innovation theory, which focuses not only on innovation itself, but also on the social system. The development of virtual technology is studied by one case, which is cabin design in the mobile work machine industry. This design process has been especially suitable for using virtual reality technology.

International audience; In order to implement the human-centric manufacturing and sustainability concepts in industry, an important effort should be done in order to model working conditions for human operators and improve them. Several studies have been conducted for mass production assembly lines where short cycle times make the work content highly repetitive. However, the case of low-volume production with long cycle times and different impacts on human operators has been rarely considered in the literature. In this paper, we develop a model to take into account the associated ergonomic risks in assembly lines with long cycle times. An optimization method is also developed in order to schedule tasks and assign the required tasks to a set of human operators taking into account the existing ergonomic risks.

Higher vocational training (HVE) is a new form of post-secondary education that was introduced in 2009 in Sweden. The aim for HVE is to address the demands of a highly skilled Swedish workforce. Compared to other forms of adult and higher education it is less institutionalized and, based on Swedish standards, gives great opportunities for the provider to decide regarding the contents and design. The purpose of this study was to analyze a) the quality of the course, Learning at Work (LIA), and (b) to develop instruments and indicators to explore the quality of the student learning in working life as part of HVE. The design of research instruments was based on hypotheses to uncover the background, the learning process and effect parameters In LIA offered at 12 different HVE sites in Sweden within the areas of health care, computer science, technology and business administration. The survey data of forty-two students and thirty-six workplace supervisors were analyzed. The results of the study show that the quality of the learning at work (LIA) varies considerably between different programs and different students. In most programs, it has a significant development potential. A well-functioning LIA is characterized by adequate learning content, an open work climate between colleagues, accuracy and dedication, frequent supervisor feedback, and regular communication between the Program Director and the supervisors. It is important that the educational provider requires workplaces with capacity to offer the students relevant and qualified work content. LIA should offer qualified work content providing knowledge of breadth and depth. Knowledge gained from school-based training should be challenged and must achieve curriculum goals. An important finding is the lack of definitions and criteria for quality, and the risk of quality differences between educational providers. Another significant problem identified in the study is the unclear division of responsibilities between the educational provider and the partner from the world of work. Most of the supervisors, who were skilled workers or professionals, had a fragmentary understanding of HVE. They gave instructions, but did not stimulate their students to reflect theoretically on what they learned during LIA. Integration between school-based learning and experience of work life was limited. There was a shortage of instruments for assessing the quality of what was taught in the workplace. A large proportion (75 %) of the students was employed soon after graduation. For those who did not, their skills run the risk of rapidly becoming obsolete.

During the past years, overload at work leading to psychological diseases, such as burnouts, have drawn more public attention. This paper is a preliminary step toward an analysis of the work patterns and possible indicators of overload and time pressure on software developers with mining software repositories approach. We explore the working pattern of developers in the context of Mozilla Firefox, a large and long-lived open source project. To that end we investigate the impact of the move from traditional to rapid release cycle on work pattern. Moreover we compare Mozilla Firefox work pattern with another Mozilla product, Firefox OS, which has a different release cycle than Firefox. We find that both projects exhibit healthy working patterns, i.e. lower activity during the weekends and outside of office hours. Firefox experiences proportionally more activity on weekends than Firefox OS (Cohen's d = 0.94). We find that switching to rapid releases has reduced weekend work (Cohen's d = 1.43) and working during the night (Cohen's d = 0.45). This result holds even when we limit the analyzes on the hired resources, i.e. considering only individuals with Mozilla foundation email address, although, the effect sizes are smaller for weekends (Cohen's d = 0.64) and nights (Cohen's d = 0.23). Moreover, we use dissimilarity word clouds and find that work during the weekend is more technical while work during the week expresses more positive sentiment with words like "good" and "nice". Our results suggest that moving to rapid releases have positive impact on the work health and work-life-balance of software engineers. However, caution is needed as our results are based on a limited set of quantitative data from a single organization., MSR 2017 conference, short paper

The information systems field started with the expectation that information and technology will significantly shape the nature of work. The topic provides ample scope for significant scholarly inquiry. Work content, process, and organization are now different from what they were in the 1960s and 1970s, which provided a foundation for theories and understanding. Although investigations about the changing nature of work have been made for years, this special section recognizes that the time of reckoning has come again. There is a growing need for deeper understanding of information, technology, and work. The specific contributions of this special section are at the heart of new frontiers of research in information, technology, and work. We observe a continued need to study their relationships, and to separate short-term and long-term effects. We expect continued surprises and conclude that patience is required to achieve increased understanding in this important domain.

Wei, Z.; Xiao, X., and Pei, P., 2018. Design of mobile interactive terminal system for ship's remote wireless scheduling. In: Liu, Z.L. and Mi, C. (eds.), Advances in Sustainable Port and Ocean Engineering. Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 83, pp. 770–775. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208. At present, the mobile interactive terminal system based on metaphor understanding for ship's remote wireless scheduling has slow response and high energy consumption. Therefore, a design method of mobile interactive terminal system based on Android for ship's remote wireless scheduling is proposed. First of all, the design elements of the mobile interactive terminal system is discussed, the overall design scheme of mobile interactive terminal system for ship's remote wireless scheduling is determined, and the system in the A/D conversion module and storage module are designed. Finally, the system software module is designed by analyzing the work content of the system, and the software comp...

We address the stochastic multi-mode resource-constrained project scheduling problem in the case where the project activities require multiple renewable resources, constrained by total availability. In our study, we introduce uncertainty by characterizing, in each activity, each required resource with a work content following some known distribution. Furthermore, the set of feasible resource allocations is a continuous and well defined interval of real values. In turn, any allocation must also comply with the resource maximum total availability at any point during the project execution. We propose a mathematical model that relies on a discrete and finite partition of the timespan when evaluating activity schedules and enforces equal durations yielded by each required resource, within each activity, in expectation. The objective is to determine the start times and the mode (defined by the resource allocations) which minimize the expected total project cost. We implemented a method relying upon two global optimization metaheuristics - the electromagnetic-like mechanism and the evolutionary algorithm to solve the problem.

Currently, methods for the evaluation of human reliability are mainly applied in safety critical industries (aerospace engineering, nuclear engineering). The Expert System for Task Taxonomy (ESAT) was developed to evaluate the error rate of control and surveillance activities in safety critical areas. In contrast, currently industrial assembly processes are mainly developed concerning an optimal use of the time factor. In this article, the suitability of ESAT for the evaluation of human reliability in manual assembly operations will be examined. By the analysis of an exemplarily considered assembly process it is shown whether and how its work content can be depicted by the ESAT method. In this context, it is also analysed how a modification of the marginal conditions – e.g. the level of specification – affects the calculation results. In the first analysis six manual assembly operations from the automotive industry were analysed and appropriate ESAT-data for its sequences of action were calculated. As a r...

In Bangladesh, leather and leather products sector plays a vital role for economy development. Productivity improvement can be helped to enrich profit of a leather products industry by minimizing excess work and developing new method for particular operation. Now a day, productivity improvement is a popular topic for any kinds of industry. So that improving productivity is one of the main concerns of leather products industries. Work study is most important tools that can help to increase productivity in leather products industry. Hence, this study helps to identify the bottleneck and suggest appropriate system to improve productivity. For this purpose, method study has been carried out by applying questioning techniques concept where recording and critical analysis of all related information has been performed in particular production line. As a result considerable amount of work content is reduced in the new improved method. Then time study has been taken by stopwatch and determined the basic time for all operation sequences and the capacity of each workstation per day has been calculated. By applying method study and work measurement in the industry at production line-Surma for ladies bag, productivity has been improved by 12.71%.

The term “synchronization” in manufacturing refers to the provision of the right components to the subsequent production steps at the right moment in time. It is still unclear how manufacturing system characteristics impact synchronization. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of manufacturing systems’ characteristics on the emergence of logistics synchronization in them. We conduct a discrete-event simulation study to examine the effect of three system characteristics: (1) material flow network architecture, (2) work content variation, and (3) order arrival pattern. Our findings suggest that the material flow network architecture and the work content variation are related to logistics synchronization. Linear manufacturing systems with stable processing times such as flow shops operate at high logistics synchronization levels, while highly connected systems with high variability of processing times such as job shops exhibit lower synchronization levels.

Bucket brigade order picking is a method for retrieving orders from a storage rack where workers follow a fixed sequence and dynamically adjust to variability in work content along the rack. The method is simple and has been shown to provide superior performance in many applications. In this article, we analyze how the location in which products are stored in the rack affects throughput. We identify conditions where storage decisions have a large impact on throughput (e.g., a 20% increase in productivity) and conditions where the impact is minimal. Conditions associated with high impact are high variation in worker skill, high variation in SKU volume, and a moderate level of walking-to-picking work content per pick list.

Work sharing between stations in assembly lines can reduce cycle time and improve throughput rate. This research addresses assembly lines in which tasks may be shared with their immediate upstream or downstream stations only. This study consists of three stages. In the first stage, we assume that all work content in the line can be shared. Then, the balanceability of the line, which is defined as its ability to achieve a perfect balance (identical workload in all workstations) via work sharing, is examined. An algorithm and a linear programming formulation is proposed to provide the sharing proportion, namely, the percentage of the cycles each station performs the shared task. In the second stage, a line with partial sharing is investigated; conditions for balanceability are provided as well as a solution approach for obtaining the sharing proportions of the shared tasks. The last stage considers the most practical model in which sharing costs are involved, and the identity of the shared tasks is to be de...

In many practical applications of resource-constrained project scheduling a work content (e.g., in man months) is specified for each activity instead of a fixed duration and fixed resource requirements. In this case, the resource usages of the activities may vary over time. The problem then consists in determining the resource usage of each activity at each point in time such that precedence constraints, resource scarcity, and specific constraints on the evolution over time of resource usages are respected and the project duration is minimized. We present two priority-rule methods for this problem and report on results of an experimental performance analysis for instances with up to 200 activities.

It is thought that there are problems related to the safety system or safety climate of an organization even when an accident is triggered by the result of an individual's work. To solve these problems, an organization needs to make an assessment to determine how to deal with the issues. To prevent accidents caused by human errors, we have to assess what the events (human errors) are that make the accident and what factors (human factors) infl uence on the occurrence of events. We have therefore developed a technique for on-site level of railway organizations. This is aims to analyze the background factors behind human errors rightly and easy. Three analyzing processes integrate into this (Fig.1). In the fi rst stage, we clarify what actions (human errors) are the events that lead to accidents. Therefore, we put related elements such as work content (S), the actions of workers and inspectors (L) and machine conditions (H) in time series expressions (Fig. 2) in time series expressions (Fig. 2). The range of investigation includes the contents of instructions and plans to examine whether there are problems that may have caused human errors. Time series is place in order of PDCA cycle (Plan-Do-Check-Action). The PDCA cycle is a management concept to improve the quality of an organization or work performance and to draw continuous improvement. To ensure that the results of the action of a worker (D) are appropriate, the plan and instructions (P) at the preceding stage must be appropriate. Moreover, to ensure that the plan and instructions (P) are appropriate, the check and record (C) and any action taken to deal with trouble (A) at the preceding stage must also be appropriate. In the second stage of the analysis, we track the cause (background factor) that generates the events (human errors) linked with accidents by means of "why and why analysis." It is thought that, in the background of a problem event, there are multiple reasons which may lead to the event. Further, there may be deeper background factors that lie behind these reasons. When we pursue an accident event to its root cause, we repeat the analysis on "why it has become so" several times to determine a clue for solution. To avoid the repetition of irrelevant questions "why," it is important that "what the problem event is as the object of analysis" is defi nitely grasped at the fi rst stage. Furthermore, we check whether the viewpoint for analysis has multiple aspects and whether tracking efforts have reached the management factors. To implement multi-viewpoint analysis, it is advisable to deploy multiple analyzers. After collecting information in depth on the background factors at the fi rst and second stages, we fi nally discuss accident prevention measures. We select functions out of number of conceivable candidate concepts and combine to achieve maximum effectiveness. Even though the contents of measures may have no faults, those who implement them are human beings. To prevent unexpected problems caused by new measures, therefore, it is more important than the measures contents that the reason why they are being implemented is understood throughout the organization. Specifying deviation by“Time Series Contrastive Analysis”

We consider the project scheduling problem where each project activity has a prescribed work content that must be completed by a so-called work-content resource, and the activities' resource usage may be varied over time. In each period, the amount of resources allocated to an activity must lie within a prescribed range and cannot be changed for a minimum number of consecutive periods. The amount allocated determines an activity's requirements for further resources. The activities must be scheduled such that the project makespan is minimized. For this problem, we devise an MIP-based heuristic that schedules the activities sequentially. To determine more efficient resource allocations among multiple activities, subsets of activities are rescheduled periodically. Our computational results for a standard test set from the literature indicate that the proposed approach provides very good feasible solutions for small-sized instances, and that it outperforms the state-of-the-art methods for large-sized instances.

Despite impressive amount of literature on Indian software industry, research on the nature of software work (programming) is inadequate, especially by the social scientists. This paper attempts to fill the gap by examining whether task fragmentation (Taylorism) is present in the software work. Data was collected from 114 software workers in Bangalore on a task inventory. Statistical analysis of the responses did not support the task-fragmentation view. It suggests that work content does not mirror the discrete stages of software production process, and there is no clear-cut division of conception workers and execution workers. Some, India-specific, possible reasons are given to support the conclusions of the paper.

In this paper, we develop a metaheuristic procedure for solving the discrete time/resource trade-off problem in the field of project scheduling. In this problem, a project contains activities interrelated by finish-start-type precedence constraints with a time lag of zero, which require a single constrained renewable resource. Each activity has a specified work content and can be performed in different modes, i.e. with different durations and resource requirements; as long as the required work content is met. The objective is to schedule each activity in one of its modes in order to minimize the project makespan. To tackle this problem, we use a genetic algorithm in which a new method based on the resource utilization ratio is developed for generation of crossover points and also a local search method is incorporated with the algorithm. Comparative computational results reveal that this procedure outperforms the best available results in the literature.

In this study, an investigation was conducted into the extent to which ergonomic requirements for work on computers are met in Greek office workstations. The ergonomic requirements considered were those included in Council Directive 90/270/EEC (1990) of the European Union and the ISO 9241 (1997) standard. 593 office workstations were assessed using an assessment tool consisting of 70 assessment points. The assessment results show that the ergonomic requirements that are independent of the specific characteristics of individual work spaces and environments (e.g., design standards for seats, monitors, and input devices) are adequately met. Ergonomic requirements that should take into consideration the specific characteristics and constraints of individual work content, work spaces, and environments (e.g., requirements dealing with workplace layout, environmental conditions, software, and work organization) are inadequately met. Based on these results, issues are indicated on the effort ergonomists should fo...

In this paper, we develop a general framework to analyze the influence of system load on service times in queueing systems. Our framework unifies previous results and ties them to possible future studies to help empirical and analytical researchers to investigate and model the ways in which load impacts service times. We identify three load characteristics: changeover, instantaneous load, and extended load. The load characteristics induce behaviors, or mechanisms, in at least one of the system components: the server, the network, and the customer. A mechanism influences the service-time determinants: the work content, service speed, or in-process delay. We identify and define mechanisms that cause service times to change with load and use the framework to categorize them. We argue that an understanding of the relationship between load and service times can come about only by understanding the underlying mechanisms.

A fundamental assumption in the basic RCPSP is that activities in progress are non-preemptable. Some papers reveal the potential benefits of allowing activity interruptions in the schedule when the objective is the makespan minimization. In this chapter we consider the Maxnint_PRCPSP in which it is assumed that activities can be interrupted at any integer time instant with no cost incurred, that each activity can be split into a maximum number of parts, and that each part has a minimum duration established. We show how some procedures developed for the RCPSP can be adapted to work with the Maxnint_PRCPSP and we introduce some procedures specifically designed for this problem. Furthermore, precedence relationships between activities can refer to portions of work content or periods of time. In single-modal project scheduling when interruption is not allowed, both are equivalent but not when preemption is considered. We present a study of generalized work and time precedence relationships and all conversions amongst them.

For executing the activities of a project, one or several resources are required, which are in general scarce. Many resource-allocation methods assume that the usage of these resources by an activity is constant during execution; in practice, however, the project manager may vary resource usage by individual activities over time within prescribed bounds. This variation gives rise to the project scheduling problem which consists in allocating the scarce resources to the project activities over time such that the project duration is minimized, the total number of resource units allocated equals the prescribed work content of each activity, and precedence and various work-content-related constraints are met.

A project scheduling model tailored specifically for software development projects is proposed in this study. The model incorporates uncertainties related to activity durations and network topology. The first type of uncertainty exists due to error-prone coding which might result in elongated task durations caused by validation and debugging sessions. Furthermore, in practice, macro-activities represent groups of sub-tasks in order to simplify the planning and monitoring of the project. Due to the aggregation, it is more difficult to be precise on the duration of a macro-activity. The uncertainty related to the network topology is due to common database design issues or program modules shared among parallel tasks in the project network. These tasks become associated with each other through uncertain Start-to-Start (SS) precedence relationships. On the other hand, SS lags may also be the outcome of technological precedence relationships among pairs of activities. However, the imprecision underlying the work content of a predecessor activity leads to uncertain SS lags. Software development projects are human-intensive projects and hence, the duration of a task depends on the skill of the person assigned to the job as well as his/her learning rate. Thus, a task may be realized by alternative staff members which results in different expected task durations. Hence, a realistic model proposed for software development projects should incorporate staff assignment features under the uncertainties discussed above. In this study, we develop a mathematical model for software development projects and propose heuristic solution methods to be used by the project co-ordinator in preparing the project plan. The heuristic algorithms developed here are tested on real data provided by a consulting firm undertaking software development projects from manufacturing companies in Turkey.

Worksharing occurs in serial manufacturing when machines are not uniquely assigned to workers. For example, two workers can operate three machines by alternating usage of the middle one. In some other worksharing systems operators move down the line carrying an item (or batch) with them, working on it at each machine until they are met by another worker who is coming back upstream. The work is then handed off even if the operation is underway. “Bucket Brigade” and “TSS” are worksharing systems based on this idea. This paper examines worksharing in a variety of situations, including unequal work content across machines, uncertain processing times, unequal workers, handoffs with and without preemption, and a range of machine-to-worker ratios. Some systems restrict workers to “zones” of machines. Work zones must overlap if sharing is to occur. The appropriate size of the overlapis shown to depend on the circumstances. Inventory-based rules to control access to shared machines are demonstrated to increase productivity when processing times vary. Worker sequence is found to be quite important; Slowest-to-Fastest is recommended for some situations, but is shown to perform poorly in others. Finally, the issue of whether or not to allow preemption is shown to have a large impact on productivity if inventory is not allowed, and to strongly affect the choice of designs when inventory is allowed. With and without preemption, proper combinations of worker sequence, zone size, and production control rules are shown to nearly eliminate idle time.

One aim of multimodal learning analytics is to analyze rich natural communication modalities to identify domain expertise and learning rapidly and reliably. In this research, written and multimodal representations are analyzed from the Math Data Corpus, which involves multimodal data (digital pen, speech, images) on collaborating students as they solve math problems. Findings reveal that in 96-97% of cases the correctness of a group's solution was predictable in advance based on students' written work content. In addition, a linear regression revealed that 65% of the variance in individual students' domain expertise rankings could be accounted for based on their written work content. A multimodal content analysis based on both written and spoken input correctly predicted the dominant domain expert in a group 100% of the time, exceeding unimodal prediction rates. Further analysis revealed a reversal between experts and non-experts in the percentage of time that a match versus mismatch was present between their oral and written answer contributions, with non-experts demonstrating higher mismatches. Implications are discussed for developing reliable multimodal learning analytics systems that incorporate digital pen input to automatically track consolidation of domain expertise.

The production of large-dimensioned, customer specific goods like machinery, investment goods, and special vehicles is a demanding challenge because of the integration of numerous customer specific features and the need for short delivery times. In addition, complex assembly operations require highly skilled workers to ensure the flexibility of production, which is needed to cope with varying workloads and assembly procedures. The presented paper introduces a concept for planning and controlling the production of those products, with a focus on personal allocation and assembly order development. After giving a brief problem statement, which highlights the major aspects to be considered, an overview of the literature, which copes with comparable problems, is given. The following sections introduce three means of control used in the concept and present a computational investigation of these under varying settings concerning hindering effects in assembly operations. The paper is closed by a discussion of the achieved results and a brief summary.

While conventional search engines demonstrate the power of delivering information to ones’ fingertips, the complexity of enterprise information raises a number of challenges to enterprise search engines in the nature of unstructured contents, task-relevance, result presentation and multiple languages. We show how we tackle the challenges in aviation field through the development of an enterprise search engine for English-Chinese MRO (Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul) task cards, called TaskCardFinder. It enables technicians and planners to quickly find out bilingual task cards related to a specific service request coming from airlines. Several context-awareness features is demonstrated, including context-aware preference search and recommendation, recall search by context, keywords suggestion, navigational and analysis-oriented search, bilingual search support and dynamic result presentation. A user study is done at an international aviation MRO company. The system is demonstrated in the video, www.youtube.com/watch?v=vj7u_VfRFZw .

In aviation, Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul (MRO) refers to the actions of fixing an air craft when it becomes out of order, or performing routine actions to keep the air craft in working order. MRO services are carried out strictly under the instruction of corresponding MRO task cards, which detail all the information including work content, procedure, equipment, etc. needed for MRO technicians to complete a MRO service. A task card is usually prepared in a word document. It may contain over a hundred pages, and possibly in multi-languages for international MRO service providers. While English task cards are assumed to be available along with air planes, their multilanguage translation remains a tedious and time-consuming problem. In this paper, we demonstrate an English-Chinese bilingual MRO task card generator system called TaskCardGeneratore2c. Given the work content input by the user, TaskCardGeneratore2c examines the existence of similar bilingual MRO task cards in the local repository, and returns the one to the user directly if it exists, or otherwise, does the English-to-Chinese translation over the corresponding monolingual English task card. The translated bilingual task card will be sent back to the user for final proof. With TaskCardGeneratore2c, human's repetitive time-consuming efforts on bilingual task cards preparation can be greatly reduced, improving the working efficiency and quality of MRO services. A field study was conducted at an international MRO service company to further evaluate TaskCardGenerator.

Based on the ERP system implementation process, the heavy data preparation work load, many participators in the personnel, complex work content, difficulty in control and other characteristics, this article proposed the principles, requests and specification of the setting up material code system, introducing the Xianyang petroleum steel pipe steel cable Limited liability company's CIMS project as the case to exemplify.