Innovative Redesign Research Articles

Transformation by Design

The evolution of care delivery from an acute care and inpatient standard to the outpatient setting and health promotion model is generating the need for innovative workforce and infrastructure adjustments to meet the new paradigm of population health management. Successful transformation of the nursing workforce necessitates a positive style of thinking that addresses rational concerns during times of difficult transition. Nurse leaders are called to recognize and appreciate the strengths of the nursing workforce by involving them in the course of change through collaboration, planning, and discussion. One unique way to plan and develop new care delivery models is to adopt the framework used in health facility planning and design for new services, units, or hospitals. This framework is flexible and can be adjusted easily to meet the objectives of a small nursing workforce innovation project or expanded to encompass the needs of a large-scale hospital transformation. Structured questioning further helps the team to identify barriers to care and allows for the development of new concepts that are objective and in accord with evidence-based practice and data. This article explores the advantages and disadvantages of implementing innovative workforce redesign and workforce reduction strategies.

Humanising research through research: The inclusion of student voice in curriculum renewal

AbstractThis study engages with student voice as a way of practising a university's transformative ideal of embracing humanising pedagogies. The study explicates the prototyping of a particular process of curriculum experimentation in the BEd Honours curriculum renewal journey in the Education Faculty of the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University. The project, through the innovative redesign of a module, sought to teach the theories and practice of research, thereby creating valued spaces within which students were authorised to speak to the rigorously researched ‘data’ of their own and others' experiences, knowledges, analyses and reflections related to the BEd Honours programme offered at this university. Within this research project, a partnership with students was created in which curriculum renewal was explored and practised as a joint responsibility. A qualitative research design was employed and six major themes linked to student voice emerged from an analysis of multiple data sources. The six them...

Moving Corporate Boundaries: Consequences for Innovative Redesign

The latest century has witnessed two major transformations of the business landscape through which the boundaries of firms were modified substantially. The first was the establishment of the large‐scale integrated hierarchies, like the Ford Motor Company, in the beginning of the 20th century. The second was the disintegration of these hierarchies at the end of the same century. In both cases, the objective of the boundary movement was to improve the opportunities for innovative redesign. Because the strategic approaches to achieve this objective were quite different, the interplay between innovative redesign and changes of the boundaries of firms deserves further exploration. This article is based empirically on previous research on these two types of transformations. The information from these studies is used to formulate seven propositions concerning the interplay between innovative redesign and corporate boundaries. Three main findings spring from this study. First, the boundaries of firms are multifaceted. In addition to the ownership boundary, it is demonstrated that influence boundaries and awareness boundaries are central in innovative redesign. Second, corporate boundaries are dynamic. The study shows that sometimes they function as buffers in relation to other firms, while in other situations, they serve as bridges. Third, for the individual firm's boundary setting, two issues appear to be critical: one concerns the trade‐off between specialization and integration, and the other relates to the interaction between the internal capabilities of the firm and those that are accessible from business partners.

TRIZ-based trimming for process-machine improvements: Slit-valve innovative redesign

This paper proposed a TRIZ-based integrated trimming process to resolve a process-machine problem by re-designing the problematic processing machine. Applied on a slit-valve failure of chemical vapor deposition equipment in one of major Taiwanese foundry companies, the proposed problem solving process successfully identified the critical key disadvantages of the problem and solved the slit-valve failure with breakthrough results. A number of solutions were generated by the integrated process which involves a number of TRIZ tools. This paper describes only the solution by the trimming process. Unlike the great majority of engineers use “addition” or “substitution” methods to resolve problems, the proposed trimming process used “subtraction” method to solve problem. The integrated systematic method can be used to address any process-machine related problems. The main contributions of this paper include: (1) Establishing an integrated TRIZ-based trimming process to resolve process-machine related problems capable of breakthrough problem solving and/or significant cost savings; (2) solving the slit-valve problem with 83.3% component count reduction, 95% component cost reduction, 99% operational energy reduction, and completely designed-out the original failure mode. The results have been converted into a patent pending approval.

IT enabled logistics procedure redesign for high value pharmaceutical shipments

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to introduce a method for (re)designing complex logistics networks, which interact with various governmental bodies (e.g. in FDA and USDA) for regulatory clearance and control purpose. The method (the e3‐control methodology) is demonstrated to be a useful approach to analyzing and redesigning international logistics procedures in reaction to a technological innovation in a government‐business (G2B) network.Design/methodology/approachAn action research method relying on Living Lab study was used in this research. To illustrate and better understand the application of the e3‐control methodology, the authors place the development of e3‐control as a design tool for deploying the pharmaceutical case. The authors collected data with multiple methods including workshops, semi‐structured interviews and document analysis.FindingsThe e3‐control methodology has been successfully applied in this paper to carry out a step‐by‐step redesign for an international pharmaceutical logistics network. It was found that a win‐win situation can be achieved if business and government see each other as partners and share the responsibility of carrying out government regulatory and Customs controls. In this situation, Customs administrations can be relieved from redundant control tasks, and businesses will be rewarded with simplified procedures.Originality/valueThe authors' e3‐control methodology is an innovative redesign methodology for analyzing and redesigning business logistic networks including government agencies. With this approach, one can achieve a clear overview on critical problems within the logistics chains; disclose unclear procedures and in the meanwhile take into consideration the different concerns of the partners within the network.

Multicore acceleration of Discrete Event System Specification systems

Parallel discrete-event simulation on heterogeneous multicore platforms requires innovative redesign of existing algorithms in return for better performance. Based on the Discrete Event System Specification (DEVS) methodology, a technique called Multicore Acceleration of DEVS Systems is proposed for efficient parallel discrete-event simulation on the IBM Cell processor. The technique combines multi-grained parallelism and various optimizations to overcome performance bottlenecks, while hiding the technical details of multicore programming from non-expert users. By explicitly exploiting the data- and event-level parallelism inherent in the simulation, the technique significantly accelerates both memory-bound and compute-bound computational kernels in demanding parallel DEVS simulations, as shown in the experimental results. Several key concepts and methods derived from this research can also be applied to other multicore and shared-memory architectures.

Towards Objectives-Based Process Redesign

Continuously growing and changing multinational companies oftentimes struggle with feterogeneous degrees of standardization. Especially in case of redesigning business processes that have been historically grown over decades, the capability of handling semi-structures process is central. Nevertheless, for competitive advantages, it is essential for a company to work on the optimization of all processes. Existing redesign techniques either focus on completely unstructured or structured processes. The Redesign Model presented in this paper transforms semi-structured processes into processes with an increased degree of standardization. Our technique consists of four main steps: (i) we extract the objectives for an efficient business process redesign from existing literature; (ii) we formulate a list of requirements an innovative redesign model has to fulfill; (iii) we present a design science based Business Process Redesign Framework including our Redesign model; (iv) we evaluate our model showing its applicability and completeness.

The Library of Birmingham Project: Lifelong Learning for the Digital Age

The Library of Birmingham (LoB) is a £193million project designed to provide a new space for lifelong learning and knowledge growth, a physical and virtual portal for Birmingham's citizens to the wider world. In cooperation with a range of private, public, and third-sector bodies, as well as individual citizens, the library, due to open in June 2013, will articulate a continuing process of organic growth and emergence. Key delivery themes focus on: arts and creativity, citizenship and community, enterprise and innovation, learning and skills and the new media ecology. A landmark design in the heart of the cultural district of the city, the LoB aims to stimulate sustainable economic growth, urban regeneration and social inclusion by offering a wide range of new digital learning services, real and virtual community spaces, and new opportunities for interpreting and exploiting internationally significant collections of documentary archives, photography, moving image, and rare printed books. Additionally, the LoB will offer physical space for creative, cultural, enterprise, and knowledge development. This paper outlines the cultural and educational thinking that informs the project and the challenges experienced in developing innovative service redesign.

Stealthy wind turbines aim to disappear from radar screens

An innovative redesign of wind turbine blades could render them invisible to radar – making them more palatable to air traffic controllers and the military

Restructuring patient flow logistics around patient care needs: implications and practicalities from three critical cases

To make hospitals more patient-centered it is necessary to intervene on patient flow logistics. The study analyzes three innovative redesign projects implemented at three Italian hospitals. The three hospitals have reorganized patient flow logistics around patient care needs using, as proxies, the expected length of stay and the level of nursing assistance. In order to do this, they have extensively revised their logistical configuration changing: (1) the organization of wards, (2) the hospital's physical lay-out, (3) the capacity planning system, and (4) the organizational roles supporting the patient flow management. The study describes the changes implemented as well as the results achieved and draws some general lessons that provide useful hints for those other hospitals involved in such type of redesign projects. The paper ends by discussing some policy implications. In fact, the results achieved in the three cases investigated provide interesting material for further discussion on clinical, operational, and economic issues.

An affordable Reverse Engineering framework for innovative rapid product development

Due to rapidly changing and specific needs of customers, product life cycles shorten and the product varieties increase significantly in today's responsive manufacturing environment. Rapid design of new, good quality and innovative products and/or redesign of existing products without detailed design information as well as the needs to reduce product development time become more critical to maintain competitiveness in the market. Reverse Engineering (RE) approach can play promising roles to compress the product development times. This paper proposes a framework for the rapid response product development using RE approach and associated techniques.

Edmonton, Canada: A Regional Model of Palliative Care Development

Palliative care developed unevenly in Edmonton in the 1980s and early 1990s. Health care budget cuts created an opportunity for innovative redesign of palliative care service delivery. This report describes the components that were developed to build an integrated comprehensive palliative care program, the use of common clinical assessments and outcome evaluation that has been key to establishing credibility and ongoing support. Our program has continued to develop and grow with an ongoing focus on the core areas of clinical care, education, and research.

An e-handbook for designing and implementing a benchmarking project

Growing competition forces companies to optimise their business processes while enhancing the value of products and services delivered to customers. The comparison with recognised standards or outstanding practices, also belonging to different industries, represents an important checkpoint in this proposal. This paper defines, based on existing approaches, a roadmap to successfully perform a benchmarking initiative. The MIT Process Handbook, an online repository of business knowledge coupled with an innovative process redesign methodology, is thus applied to suggest, through the use of illustrative examples, how purposefully created data, alternatives and tools can be used to implement each phase of the roadmap.

Ask the experts: person-centred care

My work covers four domains: Expert clinical practice Working within a critical companionship model has enabled me to challenge practice at the bedside. Reflective sessions within stroke care areas allow me to hear about difficulties staff face and, in turn, for me to challenge practice. Professional leadership and consultancy As a member of the professional executive committee and board of my primary care trust I have an insight into policy development and decision making. This knowledge has enabled me to forge ahead with service developments. Education, training and development Following years of holding formal training and education sessions, I have adopted a practice-based learning approach to education. Ascertaining what clinicians know, what they believe they need to know, and demonstrating how best to build on clinical skills is a very effective method of learning. I am also able to access older people across a range of settings. Primary and secondary prevention of stroke in residential care is vital and I have undertaken work in partnership with both statutory and non-statutory providers. Practice and service development My duty is to be flexible and adaptable, facilitating innovation and service redesign from the patient’s perspective. I have developed a community stroke rehabilitation team based on a study that gathered the views of older stroke survivors and their carers. Listening to and being able to represent their needs provided the stimulus to modernise local services. Research I have undertaken has affected clinical care by ensuring that ethical, sensitive decision making regarding feeding after stroke is person and family-centred. The use of audit and evaluative data ensures that stroke care remains a high priority on each local organisation’s agenda. The role of consultant nurse in stroke care is dynamic and innovative. Eighty per cent of strokes occur in people over the age of 65 and keeping abreast of the needs of older individuals is crucial. It is imperative to be politically aware at local and national levels, and to have the courage to speak out and be innovative. Retaining clinical credibility and having sound leadership skills will ensure that other clinicians learn by example and aspire to consultant practitioner roles. Jane Williams

Book Review: Innovative Redesign and Reorganization of Library Technical Services: Paths for the Future and Case Studies

Book Review: Innovative Redesign and Reorganization of Library Technical Services: Paths for the Future and Case Studies

Innovative Redesign and Reorganization of Library Technical Services: Paths for the Future and Case Studies

Innovative Redesign and Reorganization of Library Technical Services: Paths for the Future and Case Studies

Innovative Redesign and Reorganization of Library Technical Services: Paths for the Future and Case Studies

Innovative Redesign and Reorganization of Library Technical Services: Paths for the Future and Case Studies

Innovative Redesign and Reorganization of Library Technical Services: Paths for the Future and Case Studies (review)

Reviewed by: Innovative Redesign and Reorganization of Library Technical Services: Paths for the Future and Case Studies Peggy Johnson Innovative Redesign and Reorganization of Library Technical Services: Paths for the Future and Case Studies, ed. Bradford Lee Eden. Westport, CT; London: Libraries Unlimited, 2004. 480 p. $45(ISBN 1-59158-092-7) Reorganizing and redesigning technical services departments is a hot topic in libraries because of pressure brought about through technological innovations in formats and delivery, changing integrated library systems, and constant calls for efficiencies and economies in the face of stringent budgets. This edited collection provides an in-depth examination of these issues and others that are affecting technical services, including retirements and personnel turnover, a disconnect between the needs of libraries and the number of qualified catalogers completing library school, changing roles of support staff, and the outsourcing of cataloging. Bradford Lee Eden, editor of this compilation, is a recognized authority on technical services innovation and has compiled an admirable collection of 20 papers by 29 knowledgeable, experienced authors. The first six papers (Part 1) address theory through a literature review, an examination of technical services from a library and information science educator and a practitioner, surveys of staffing trends and changing library technical services operations, an examination of options for performing quality cataloging with reduced funding, and an essay that explores the evolution of cataloger responsibilities from 1997 through 2003. [End Page 134] Part 2, "Case Studies," is more practical in approach and consists of reports of innovative redesign and reorganization initiatives in library technical services units. The libraries represented include large, mid-sized, and small academic libraries, an academic law library, a U.S. government agency, and an academic geospatial information repository. No similar collection of papers has been published in more than 10 years; this collection fills a critical gap in the literature. Readers first are presented with a theoretical context in which to consider the real life experiences recounted in the second half of the book. I found Laurie Lopatin's "Review of the Literature: Technical Services Redesign and Reorganization" and Nadine P. Ellero's "The Name and Role of the Cataloger in the Twenty-First Century" to be particularly interesting. The case studies draw conclusions and implications beyond the immediate context described, letting readers ponder inferences for other libraries. Most chapters are accompanied by references. Some have tables and figures that illustrate the concepts or descriptions presented. I found the organization charts and position descriptions particularly informative. The index is serviceable. Only two flow charts are provided, and the quality of one (p. 219) in the copy reviewed was blurry. More examples of higher quality would have enriched a book with such a heavy focus on process redesign. These are small quibbles and do not affect the overall quality and value of this collection of papers. Without collections (local and remote) and physical and intellectual access to them, libraries are not libraries. Technical services units serve a critical role in acquiring and making resources available. Innovative Redesign and Reorganization of Library Technical Services explores this critical role—what is changing and what remains constant. Ellero starts her paper with a quote from Victor Hugo: "Change your opinions, keep to your principles; change your leaves, keep intact your roots." (p. 119) This book looks at values underlying technical services, as well as means and methods. Peggy Johnson University of Minnesota Libraries m-john@umn.edu Copyright © 2005 The Johns Hopkins University Press

Case study: innovative assessment and curriculum redesign

The Institute for Physiotherapy, part of the Hogeschool van Amsterdam in the Netherlands, engaged in a fundamental change in their curriculum. This change encompassed three fundamental elements: (1) a fully competency‐based programme; (2) a learning environment designed to enable the development of these professional competencies; and (3) an extensive procedure of self‐assessment, preceding each of the (five) summative assessments. No other summative assessments are applied. The majority of the time spent on assessment is of a formative nature. The underlying assumption is that professional education should train students in assessing their own work and of that of their colleagues. This case study discusses some of the considerations and experiences and ends with a brief description of the present situation.

INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE MANAGEMENT

Corporate survival in an information economy requires that IS managers assume the new role of information infrastructure management, an architecture-focused approach that results in an integrated IS and business organization with an integrated strategic plan. The approach enables IS managers to anticipate future organizational demands and stimulate innovative redesign of business processes to continuously improve performance.