Factory Running Research Articles

Establishing a safe and effective shift schedule.

United States Coast Guard has been conducting fatigue studies on its aircrew to establish a that enables around-the-clock alert launch capability utilizing a limited number of personnel. In an attempt to get a better understanding of the effects that has on people, their health, their performance, and their families, it is necessary to look at the history of and the circadian cycle. Throughout the remainder of this paper, the term shift work means working hours that do not fall within the standard definition of a workday, 8:00 am to 5:00 pm. History of Shift Work At the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, took on a new meaning. Bright artificial lighting made it possible to keep the factory running and extend hours far past sunset (Hamermesh, 1998). This resulted in many significant changes to the normal as people wanted to incorporate more leisure into their lives. Instead of working six to seven days a week for shorter periods of time, the weekend became longer and more popular. Weekly hours in the United States dropped sharply during the first 40 years of the 20th century, with a concomitant move away from Sunday, and then Saturday work (Hamermesh, 1998, p.323). Shift is essential in many different industries around the world. Some examples of these include the medical field, industrial manufacturing, law enforcement, fire fighting, customer service, and military operations. Although society has become dependent on work, there are many problems, which are caused by its use. Some of the most common problems associated with it are quality, employee satisfaction, home and family life, and employee health. Disadvantages of Shift Work Performance Research indicates that the greatest number of studies on have been done in the medical field. frequent long shifts that doctors and nurses are subjected to in hospitals have been a controversial topic for many years. Approximately 60% of nurses shifts in excess of nine hours (Burke, 2003). To make matters worse, it is common for interns and less experienced nurses to the longer shifts. Although some hospitals limit the length of shifts, they often allow their employees to back-to-back shifts. A study was conducted in Canada to see if a shortened intervention would have an impact on performance. interns in the study traditionally worked an on-call every third night, with extended shifts up to 28 hours in length (Bernstein & Etchells, 2005). intervention used shifts less than 24 hours. Over a four-week test period, the interns worked 63 hours per week as opposed to the 79 hours with the traditional schedule. Trained physician observers documented the number of mistakes that were made by the interns. The rate of serious medical errors made by interns was 36% higher during the traditional than during the intervention schedule (Bernstein & Etchells, 2005, p.474). decreased efficiency and productivity that results from is substantial. Rajaratnam and Arendt described The cost of sleepiness-related accidents can vary substantially, but in general, the estimated total cost of such accidents per year is US$16 billion in the USA, and US$80 billion worldwide (2001, p.999). Further studies indicate that truck drivers operating between midnight and 2:00 am are twice as likely to be involved in an accident compared to those driving during the day. Pilots flying at night in a simulator have reduced hand-eye coordination, difficulty completing calculations, and reduced flight performance compared to those flying in the day (U.S. Coast Guard, 2001). Other recent studies have related sleep deprivation to blood alcohol content, BAC. average person will start to show signs of decreased performance approximately 12 hours after waking up. …

An ABC approach to handling a strike

A strike triggered by religious holidays and summer breaks nearly brought ABC Consumer Electronics’ flagship maquiladora plant at Juarez to its knees. But it ultimately forced revisions in labor laws which improved the workers’ lot across the consumer electronics industry in Mexico. The dispute over consolidating religious holidays into a “Holy Week” soon escalated into a strike at the end of January 1995, with workers and administrative staff leaving before being blockaded inside the works. A further grievance was the decision to keep the factory running throughout July rather than shutting down for its usual two‐week break. But there were deeper underlying causes, and fanning the flames was maquiladora itself, as a case study by Dowlatshahi reveals.

Disc jockeying

EMI manufactures compact discs and other recordings at a rate of up to a million copies a day. This in itself is not difficult; what makes it complicated is the variety of these recordings. As well as a back catalogue of more than 30,000 titles, the company has to produce and distribute about 9000 new releases, with all the time-critical marketing and the potential for unpredictable demand that this involves. In this environment, scheduling and schedule planning is obviously the key to keeping a factory running efficiently. Only by keeping the bottleneck moving from one machine to another is it possible to run all the stages at a reasonable percentage of their capacity. This process is managed by computer, using a software package called Rhythm. Meticulous forecasting, careful supply chain management and, above all, flexible dynamic job scheduling form the bedrock of an intricate but robust logistics operation, which is what allows the company to survive in a competitive market.

Measurables ofCP violation in Bd→D CP 0 KS at a B-meson factory

In the context of the standard electroweak model, we emphasize that Bd→DCP0KS (DCP0 denotes aCP eigenstate of D0 or\(\overline D \)0) can compete with Bd→→π+π− in studyingCP violation and probing the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa unitarity triangle. We discuss the measurables of direct and indirectCP asymmetries in Bd0vs.\(\overline B \)d0→DCP0KS in the circumstance of an asymmetric B-meson factory running on the γ(4S) resonance, and show that both the weak and strong phases are experimentally determinable even in the presence of unknown final-state interactions.

Operation scheduling with GT and PBC

Generations of managers in industry and of academics in universities, have been intrigued by the problem of how to plan, and more recently how to automate the scheduling of the operations needed to make parts, on the machines and other work centres in a factory. Today, with one possible exception (OPT) (Goldratt 1980), we are no nearer a reliable solution than we were 100 years ago. Early attempts at centralized operation scheduling, were based on Gantt charts or planning boards. Later solutions have used the computer. They all face the problems that with traditional forms of organization, there is a very large number of constraints which affect the solution, and that if a machine-breakdown, absent worker, material shortage or other disaster makes it necessary to change the schedule, it is generally impossible to revise it to suit the new situation quickly enough to keep the factory running. The usual solution is: ‘Tell the foreman to do the best he can’. This paper submits that the introduction of group ...