Book Description

The way in which regulation works is a key concern of industries, consumers, citizens, and governments alike. Understanding Regulation takes the reader through the central issues of regulation and discusses these from a number of disciplinary perspectives. The fundamental strategies, institutions, and explanations of regulation are reviewed and the means of identifying 'good' regulation are outlined. ... Read more

Book Description

This collection draws on international comparisons from the main industrialised countries in a key field - the construction industry. One only has to walk around almost any major city in the industrialised economies of the world to see how well the construction industry is doing and this study is a timely analysis of a growing field.
... Read more

Book Description

The search for the key to economic growth has proved elusive and contentious. This book uses new empirical evidence to propose an integrated approach for achieving strong industrial and technological capabilities to form the basis for regional and national economic development.

The authors use the experiences of countries in Europe and Latin America to show that socio-technical constituencies play a fundamental role in innovation-based economic development at both a regional and national level. By blending insights from the industrial cluster and national innovation system approaches with the socio-technical constituencies approach, the authors successfully integrate long standing debates such as agency structure and micro-meso-macro analysis. The work is based both on a theoretical effort to build a new framework for economic growth, and on a number of concrete experiences from a number of countries in Europe and Latin America.

Knowledge Flows in National Systems of Innovation will prove essential reading for scholars of innovation, technology and economic development. ... Read more

Book Description

Based on over twenty years of experience, the author of this practical guide provides the executive with a comprehensive discussion of the issues and tools involved in the location or relocation of a business operation. A company's search for the ideal site is one of the most important managerial functions. The author walks the reader through each stage in the process, from planning the move, organizing and administering the search, and selecting the general area to evaluating a specific community and site and assembling a final report. The book provides helpful tables and survey samples, making it easier to utilize the information effectively. Besides executives involved in the process, economic development specialists and students will find the book useful. ... Read more

Book Description

Industrial Machinery Repair provides a practical reference for practicing plant engineers, maintenance supervisors, physical plant supervisors and mechanical maintenance technicians. It focuses on the skills needed to select, install and maintain electro-mechanical equipment in a typical industrial plant or facility.

The authors focuses on "Best Maintenance Repair Practices" necessary for maintenance personnel to keep equipment operating at peak reliability and companies functioning more profitably through reduced maintenance costs and increased productivity and capacity.

A number of surveys conducted in industries throughout the United States have found that 70% of equipment failures are self-induced. If the principles and techniques in this book are followed, it will result in a serious reduction in "self induced failures".

In the pocketbook format, this reference material can be directly used on the plant floor to aid in effectively performing day-to-day duties. Data is presented in a concise, easily understandable format to facilitate use in the adverse conditions associated with the plant floor. Each subject is reduced to it simplest terms so that it will be suitable for the broadest range of users. Since this book is not specific to any one type of industrial plant and is useful in any type of facility.

úThe new standard reference book for industrial and mechanical trades

úAccessible pocketbook format facilitates on-the-job use

úSuitable for all types of plant facilities ... Read more

Reviews (3)

"Best Pocket Guide Ever Written on Maintenance Repair"
"Industrial Machinery Repair is a must reading for all maintenance personnel and management. It clearly shows how to improve equipment reliability and performance. Ricky Smith does a wonderful job at making the complicated day-to-day maintenance issues very plain and simple. If you are serious about maintenance in your organization, then you must read Industrial Machinery Repair."

A book for all maintenace professionals
We have recommended this book to all our maintenance personnel in the US and Europe as a "must have" in their locker.

The New Standard for Industrial Machinery Repair Guides
I keep pouring over my new copy of Industrial Machinery Repair - Best Maintenance Practices Pocket Guide as each chapter is better than the last. This handbook is a must have for anyone involved in industrial maintenance and machinery repair. Ricky Smith and Keith Mobley speak in human voices that we can all understand and they offer information that can be put to immediate use. In addition, the handbook includes a very comprehensive maintenance skills assessment that is worth the the entire price. Buy a copy for every maintenance person at your plant. Terrence O'Hanlon, Reliabilityweb.com ... Read more

Book Description

Lean Machines: Learning From The Leaders Of The Next Industrial Revolution provides readers with a unique compilation of interviews with some of the country's most respected executives who have deep intellectual and emotional experience in implementing lean.

CEOs, vice presidents, consultants, Wall Street analysts and accountants provide readers with their perspectives on how to implement a lean business system. They are the architects of such successful implementations as Pratt & Whitney's Achieving Competitive Excellence program, the Danaher Business System, the Alcoa Production System and Freudenberg NOK's hugely successful six-step lean process.

Each of the 15 offers advice on how to overcome the barriers from the shop floor, to mid-level management, to the board room. They provide their personal experiences, insights and recommendations on the most important aspects of embedding lean systems within a corporate culture. All have successfully implemented a fundamentally different and often counter-intuitive system of running their business based on the lean principles of build to order, continuous improvement and the elimination of waste.

The interviews were conducted by Manufacturing News Editor & Publisher Richard McCormack and include the following individuals:

o George Koenigsaecker, Former CEO, HON Industries and Principal, Simpler Consulting;

o Michael Joyce, Corporate Vice President of Operating Excellence at Lockheed Martin;

o Robert Weiner, Senior Vice President of Global Manufacturing, Exide Technologies;

o Mark DeLuzio, Architect, Danaher Business System & President of Lean Horizons;

o James Womack, President, Lean Enterprise Institute and author of Lean Thinking and The Machine That Changed The World;

o Dave Logozzo, Director of Manufacturing Operations, Delphi Corp.;

o Cliff Ransom, Director of Research, Janney Montgomery Scott LLC;

o Ken Kreafle, Vice President of Quality at Toyota, Georgetown, Ky.;

o Keith Turnbull, Executive Vice President, Alcoa Business System;

o Allen Haggerty, General Manager of Engineering, Boeing;

o Brian Maskell, President, BMA Inc., Lean Accounting;

o Art Byrne, President and CEO of Wiremold Co.;

o Major Gen. Dennis Haines, Warner Robins AFB;

o Joseph Day, CEO, Freudenberg-NOK; and

o Dan Yurovich, CEO, Barry Controls

o Lt. Col. Fred Hart, Commander, U.S. Army Red River Depot ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Very useful insights into lean manufacturing, on target!
A lot has been written about lean, but nothing yet compares to what this book has done.... It's the first time anyone has provided straight answers about the true nature of lean. The author asks the right questions and gets surprising responses. Having spent 20 years in the automotive business, I found this book extremely useful.

Virtuosos of Lean Production
This is a hot book! I coached a team of manufacturing managers who worked in a large traditional factory. Our job was to study manufacturing operations in companies that had adopted Toyota's productivity methods and policies. While the men and women on the team had read about lean production, they were disquieted and perhaps even disturbed by obviously highly performing plants that were organized and operated according to principles foreign to their beliefs. At each plant we visited their discomfort deepened. Then, somewhere between the second and fourth visit, each manager had an epiphany. There was some kind of logical reorganization of the manufacturing furniture in their minds and they "got it", as they described the event. Others said, "the light came on." They saw the fundamental logic and sense underlying each lean factory even though each facility assembled pieces of Toyota's productivity methods and policies into its own unique manufacturing system. Interestingly, each member of the visit team became a passionate believer of lean manufacturing. The greatest skeptics became the most outspoken advocates. They called it "getting religion."

People who successfully implement lean manufacturing must be strong believers and must have a personal mental model of lean that functions at the level of a craft - a creative skill for assembling productivity methods and policies into powerfully efficient manufacturing machines. As the great Japanese coaches from Toyota teach Westerners, there is no cookbook, lean is a way of thinking.

The literature on lean production is disappointing. Lean manufacturing books tend to be long dreary laundry lists of productivity methods and technical techniques for quality. There is little available that gives insight into how the great master craftsmen and craftswomen put together marvelous lean machines of production - until now.

This book by Richard McCormack finally brings us face to face with the creative processes of great designers of production systems. Imagine yourself as a novice artist sitting down for a conversation with Auguste Renoir, Vincent Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec or Michelangelo. That is what McCormack brings us in this book - chats with the virtuosos of lean production. Forget those paint-by-numbers books. Either go see the real thing or read "Lean Machines". ... Read more

Book Description

This is the first book that directly links industrial growth to specific management practices. There are many books that eloquently describe theories and management fads for consumer and retail companies. This is the first no-nonsense book that explains what management should and should not do to accelerate profitable top-line growth in any industrial company. ... Read more

Book Description

An Industrial Engineer Magazine 2003 Engineer's Bookshelf selection! ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Wriiten for Implementers
Michel Baudin has written a very concise book on the subject of Lean assembly. So many authors tend to focus on the planning and motivation of the subject; this book delves into the practical implementation of Lean in an assembly process and presents the tools to do it.

I've used the concepts with my clients - they work! Mr. Baudin has an in-depth knowledge of the subject matter which will benefit all practitioners.

Lean Assembly
This excellent book should be read by all who are involved in lean systems. It is written with the practitioner in mind and is full of the type of information that you would expect from an experienced consultant such as M. Baudin. This well developed book shows practical tools and techniques that are not found in other lean books. For example, chapter 2 shows how to use Product-Quantity analysis for production layout. This important tool is virtually ignored in the current popular lean literature. Another one of the strengths of this book is that the author discusses how the different lean tools should be applied in different manufacturing settings. For example, he recognizes the differences between automotive assembly and electronic assembly and shows what will and will not work in these different settings. So, no matter what your product is or your production volume, you will find this book to be invaluable. If you only read one book on lean manufacturing, this should be it. So many of the current books on lean manufacturing are written at such a high level that they are virtually useless to those who must actually design and operate a lean manufacturing system. Baudin's book will help you implement lean, not just talk about it. ... Read more

Book Description

The subject of management for quality has undergone rapid and drastic change as a result of competition in the marketplace and the vulnerability of industrialized societies that depend heavily on the quality of goods and services. In this companion volume to his acclaimed Juran on Planning for Quality, J.M. Juran provides top-level managers with the specific, field-tested methods they need to successfully lead their companies on the quest for superior quality.

Managers have long recognized that the most sound response to a competitive challenge is to become more competitive. Today, informed managers also realize that quality improvement is the best source of competitive advantage. They know that return on investment in quality improvement projects is among the highest available. Yet, the means by which management can supply the leadership necessary to attain quality goals remains elusive. J.M. Juran has drawn on the experiences of thousands of chief executives in companies around the world to create a clear plan of action applicable to any industry, whether service or manufacturing.

The famous "Juran Trilogy," clearly presented step-by-step, shows how to apply the familiar business concepts of planning, control, and improvement to quality leadership. For each concept, Dr. Juran provides a succinct and proven series of actions. He gives criteria for selecting project-by-project improvements and mobilizing a team to carry them out. He also describes a realistic timetable of implementation and directs the formation of an ongoing quality council whose job is to launch, coordinate, and "institutionalize" annual quality improvement. The membership of this council, as Dr. Juran insists, must come from the ranks of senior managers; the stakes are too high for upper managers not to personally become the leaders and members of this vital council. Using real-world case examples of highly profitable quality improvements in such companies as Bethlehem Steel and Florida Power & Light, Dr. Juran illustrates how to guide a company into a continuing steep rate of improvement. The key, as Dr. Juran emphasizes, is that quality must be implemented from the top down. This essential handbook makes executive leadership the key to a company's quality revolution -- and to producing the real cost benefits over both the short and long run that superior quality brings. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

QUALITY
Guality in the broadest sense of the term must become an obsession in every corporation throughout America. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Nothing like it, excellent resource
The ultimate reference for performance testing (certainly testing, more so than actual tuning, though the latter is covered well in the last few chapters). The author's approach is complete in that it addresses how to test along with what, when, to what degree, and with what kind of staffing resources. I'm already thinking of ways we can improve our own change control processes, and based on tools and methods covered by the author I'm convinced I can do so cheaper and with less impact to my users than I previously thought possible. Case in point, look into the two chapters on tools for testing and monitoring: in this alone, the book will pay for itself in short order. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Quick Service Restaurants, Franchising, and Multi-Unit Chain
Loaded with case studies and statistics.
Little or no practical applications. ... Read more

Book Description

Completely revised and updated, this new edition of a classic reference focuses on the financial approach to the subject—a methodology that produces quantifiable results allowing a TPM program to be sustainable. And while clarifying what TPM is and what it is not, it clearly presents the economic value of TPM and shows how to calculate the Return on Investment (ROI) that a company can expect. It is the perfect resource for anyone who is considering implementing TPM or looking for ways of improving their current process.

New Features You’ll Find

- Various case studies that show how to explain the value of OEE to everyone in the organization, from the senior executive to the shop floor personnel.
- OEE discussions showing how to "dollarize" results and present the financial terms to executive financial personnel.
- A clarification of the goals and objectives of TPM, allowing TPM Champions to clearly present a TPM business case to their organizations.
- Explanations of the pitfalls that may be encountered during TPM implementation and how to avoid or correct these problems. ... Read more

Book Description

Lean Supply Chain Management A Handbook for Strategic Procurement Jeffrey P. Wincel

Lean Supply Chain Management provides procurement and supplier development professionals with a powerful and profitable method for strategic procurement.

Unlike other strategic procurement guides, Lean Supply Chain Management considers an organization's "business condition" as a contributing factor in the development of a strategic procurement strategy. That is, rather than taking a "one-size fits all" approach, the authors' more individualized approach illustrates techniques specific to organizations operating in a "standard" environment or "crisis" environment. In addition, Lean Supply Chain Management is the only book that incorporates lean methodologies as the key factor in its supply chain strategies.

Highlights include:
· Methods for developing and tracking strategic procurement initiatives
· Planning in the "standard" and "crisis" environment
· Coordinating supply chain management and lean manufacturing
· Performance measurement tools

Lean Supply Chain Management provides purchasers and supplier development professionals with the tools needed to transform procurement from a mere cost center to a profit generator. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Using the book
After reading Lean Supply Chain Management, we began adopting the practices in our operations in the U.S. and in England. We immediately saw improvements that we expected would take months to achieve. Without a doubt, we will continue to implement the improvements Mr. Wincel writes about in his book.

A Practical Guide to Collaborative Supply Chain Success!
With a 'no holds barred' approach to a complex topic, Jeffrey 'tells it like it is' in his first book, Lean Supply Chain Management: A Handbook For Strategic Procurement. Based upon his career as a procurement executive, he shares his thoughts and strategies in this insightful book combining theory and practical tools in an easy-to-read format. The case study interspersed throughout the book provides the real world, 'tools-in-action' perspective.

With 60% to 70% of the cost of a company's manufactured product now residing within the value chain of suppliers (i.e., bought out), he champions the creation of a Chief Procurement Officer to underscore the vital contribution that purchasing makes to corporate profits.

His book's underlying theme is the collaborative approach to supply chain management - working with the suppliers to improve designs and processes, optimize costs and reduce lead times while surprising and delighting the customer. Encouraging companies to put away the big sticks when they deal with their suppliers, he provides solid advice for supply chain management in standard as well as crisis environments. He demonstrates how sound principles of lean theory and action can be coordinated with enlightened supply chain management practices to add value to bottom-line profits.

This book puts the strategic focus back into the purchasing function. I highly recommend this book. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

A book about Clarence, NY
This book is about a gypsum mine in Clarence, NY ... Read more

Book Description

This is the real-life story of how Ken Melrose, CEO of The Toro Company, adopted and implemented a model of "servant-leadership" in his organization, and made it work in a real-world-and often challenging-situation.

His mission as CEO of The Toro Company has been to build an environment that not only serves the needs of the corporation, but also provides a climate for its constituents-the employees-to grow and develop as human beings. In Making the Grass Greener on Your Side, he shows how cultivating an environment for individual growth creates a win-win situation for the company and the employee.

Making the Grass Greener on Your Side helps readers take stock of where their company is now, and shows how to cultivate the soil and prepare a "seed-bed" that will allow for the deep rooting of value-centered leadership principles. Melrose tells how to develop a culture that will allow for sustained growth, and describes the abundant fruits of the long-term approach that occur all along the journey. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Hands on examples of how to carry out your Focused Improv...
Three years ago I used to work for a corporation that used absorbed the TPM (Total Prodictive Maintenance) methodology and made it its own with certain in house touches.

As you may know TPM consists of several pillars, one of which is Focused Improvements (or FI, as it is sometimes called). The FI pillar is focused on reducing critical losses which are beyond the scope of the Autonomous Maintenance (AM) and Progressive Maintenance (PM) pillars.

This nice little book happens to show a good deal of samples of how to put to practice this methodology, beginning by quantifying and analyzing the loss at hand, determining ideal states, and developing action plans to achieve them.

It's highly recommendable for people who work on a manufacturing floor. ... Read more

Book Description

The Knowing Organization is the first text to look at how organizations behave as information-seeking, information-creating, and information-using communities, and offers models of how organizations behave and how information participates in that behavior. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

An invaluable introduction for HR and IT professionals.
"This book brings together", Chun Wei Choo writes, "the insight developed from research in organization theory and information science into a generel framework for understanding the richness and complexity of information use in organizations. Research in organization theory suggests that organizations create and use information in three strategic arenas. First, organizations interpret information about the environment in order to construct meaning about what is happening to the organization and what the organization is doing. Second, they create new knowledge by converting and combining the expertise and know-how of their members in order to learn and innovate. Finally, they process and analyze information in order to select and commit to appropriate courses of action...The book has the following objectives. First, it analyzes and compares the principal modes by which an organization uses information strategically to make sense of its changing environment, create new knowledge for innovation, and make decisions that reflect past learning and ongoing adaptation. Second, it examines the structure and dynamics of information seeking...Third, it proposes a new framework of the knowing organization (from the Preface)."

In this context, Chun Wei Choo divides his book into seven chapters, and he:

* introduces the theories of organizations as sense-making communities, knowledge-creating enterprises, and decision-making systems, and show how the three modes of information as sense making, knowledge creating, and decision making use complement each other by supplying some of the missing pieces necessary for each mode to function.

* identifies and relates the major elements that influence the behavior of the individual when seeking (starting, chaining, browsing, differentiating, monitoring, extracting, verifying, and ending) and using (selection and processing of information) information.

* shows how organizations, as social systems of people, structures, and processes, use information to make sense of the environment, create new knowledge for learning and innovation, and make decisions that enable action.

* examines the theory and process underlying the knowing organization.

* describes the tensions as tensions in sense making, tensions in knowledge creating, and tensions in decision making that are inherent in the knowing processes, and how the dynamics of balancing these tensions enable the knowing organization to be effective in the short term, and adaptive over the long term.

This book is highly recommended for HR and IT professionals.

An informative, information-packed book!
A highly informative examination of a type of organization that is successful by using information strategically to make sense of its changing environment, creating new knowledge for innovation, and making decisions that reflect past learning and adaptation. Provides a general model for understanding information use and many other models. Filled with references to research and other publications. This is an informative, information-packed book! Excellent.

one of the original works on organizations
It mainly focuses on information systems as a core of living organizations. I liked and I recommend this work to everybody who likes original works on organizations. ... Read more