Engineering Commons^™

The Effect Of Four Decades Of Deregulation On Competition And Productivity Of The U.S. Freight Transportation Industry, Seungjae Shin

Theses and Dissertations

This study reviews the competition and productivity of the U.S. freight transportation industry for the past 41 years. This study investigated the trends of HHI market concentration index values and labor productivity values of rail and truck sectors and tried to find any relationships between the two values in the separate periods before and after the abolishment of the ICC. This study also investigated how the existence of a regulatory body impacted productivity of the freight transportation industry by using a Cobb Douglas production function on annual financial statement data in the U.S. stock exchange market. This study found that: …

Construction Management Students Using Technology In The Field, Anthony D. Bongi

Construction Management

This research paper examines the affect technology has had on the desire for college graduates to pursue a career in the field. The idea of college graduates entering directly into a field leadership position was contemplated and discussed. Historically, soft skills such as leadership and communication have been the predominate attributes of any worker expected to run construction in the field. While the importance of these skills hasn’t changed, the importance of technological skills has increased to be considered alongside soft skills. Through an anonymous survey of industry professionals with 10+ years of experience as well as interviews of two …

Managing Stochastic Bucket Brigades On Discrete Work Stations, Peng Wang, Kai Pan, Zhenzhen Yan, Yun Fong Lim

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Bucket brigades are notably used to coordinate workers in production systems. We study a J-station, I-worker bucket brigade system. The time duration for each worker to serve a job at a station is exponentially distributed with a rate that depends on the station's expected work content and the worker's work speed. Our goal is to maximize the system's productivity or to minimize its inter-completion time variability. We analytically derive the throughput and the coefficient of variation (CV) of the inter-completion time. We study the system under two cases. (i) If the work speeds depend only on the workers, the throughput …

Overcoming The Downsides Of Personal Internet And Cell Phone Use In The Workplace: An Exploratory Empirical Analysis, Kaustav Misra, Michael D. Stackhouse, Arundhati Bagchi Misra, Gregory Berry

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

The now taken-for-granted introduction of internet usage into the workplace changed the dynamics of work, productivity, and management, and this is now further complicated by the ubiquitous availability of personal cell phones, going beyond company supplied and (partially) controlled computers with internet connections. This paper studies the connection between internet and cell phone usage by employees and firm productivity. Using primary data collected via a self-reported survey, we conduct an empirical analysis utilizing information based on firm and industry characteristics. Results indicate that the level of non-work-related internet and cell phone usage is significantly associated with firm productivity. Some of …

Flexibly Serving A Finite Number Of Heterogeneous Jobs In A Tandem System, Yun Fong Lim, Bingnan Lu, Rowan Wang, Wenjia Zhang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Many manufacturing and service systems require a finite number of heterogeneous jobs to be processed by two stations in tandem. Each station serves at most one job at a time and there is a finite buffer between the two stations. We consider two flexible servers that are cross-trained to work at both stations. The duration for a server to finish a job at a station is exponentially distributed with a rate that depends on the server, the station, and the job. Our goal is to identify an efficient policy to dynamically assign the servers to the stations such that the …

Employee Engagement And Job Satisfaction’S Impact On Productivity In The Distribution Industry, Jessica Copeland

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Productivity deficiencies in distribution services are detrimental to profitability, annually causing billions of dollars in reporting losses industry-wide. Understanding employees’ motivating factors in meeting metric-based expectations is essential to enhancing overall performance. Grounded in the motivation-hygiene theory, the purpose of this correlational study was to examine the relationships among employee engagement, job satisfaction, and productivity within the distribution industry. Electronic survey data were analyzed for 47 participants who completed the Mensah Employee Engagement Survey, Mensah Job Satisfaction Survey, and Utrecht Work Employee Engagement Survey. The results of the multiple linear regression were significant, F(2, 44) = 36.84, p = .001, …

A Quantitative Evaluation Of The Productivity Of The Mercedes-Benz Production System, Derrick Tajuan Shaw

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Productivity of automotive manufacturing production systems have been an area of study among researchers since the industrial revolution. Automotive manufacturing production systems that are implemented properly increase productivity in production environments. Researchers have demonstrated that productivity can be improved through modeling the Toyota production system. However, researchers have not established how implementing Mercedes Benz production system (MBPS) impacted Mercedes-Benz cars' productivity between 1999 and 2017. The purpose of this quantitative research study was to examine the effect of implementing the Mercedes-Benz Production System (MBPS). A survey was administered to 35 Mercedes-Benz employees that consisted of operation managers, plant managers, manufacturing …

Classifying Interdependencies In The Food And Agriculture Critical Infrastructure Sector, John Doerpinghaus

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This work classifies examples of infrastructure interdependencies found in the food and agriculture critical infrastructure sector. Interdependencies are identified through an examination of rice and poultry agriculture throughout the state of Arkansas. The subtleties of interdependence examples in the food and agriculture sector are inadequately captured by the well-studied interdependence classification taxonomies. Through 39 interviews, we develop an understanding of the subtle temporal, geographic, and productivity scales of interdependence in over 100 examples and present five new, distinct classifications of interdependence: (1) dynamic physical, (2) dynamic geographic, (3) deadline, (4) delay, and (5) human, economic, and natural resource interdependencies. An …

Slides: Impacts Of Energy Deficits In Cooking, Illumination, Water, Sanitation, And Motive Power, Paul S. Chinowsky

2012 Energy Justice Conference and Technology Exposition (September 17-18)

Presenter: Dr. Paul Chinowsky, Director, Mortenson Center in Engineering for Developing Communities; Professor, University of Colorado

25 slides

How Many Acres Per Hour?, J G. Drever

Journal of the Department of Agriculture, Western Australia, Series 4

MANY farm tractor operators don't know exactly how much land is covered in an hour by implements drawn by their tractors. This information, useful on any farm where tractors are used, is of particular value in contract work.

The capacity of the machine or implement, or in other words, its rate of working, depends on the width of the machine, how fast it travels, how efficiently it is operated and the time it works.