Search

The ability to equip process machinery and auxiliary systems with sophisticated data-collection devices and connect them throughout a plant for on-site or remote analysis is a powerful tool for processors [...]

This study investigates the impact of labor unions on productivity and technical inefficiency of the U.S. manufacturing sector, using state-level panel data on 48 states from 1983 to 1996. The results indicate that while labor unions reduce firms' technical progress, they improve firm efficiency in utilizing the existing technology. The findings also suggest that the decline of unionization rate in the sample period impaired firms' technical efficiency by 2.4 percentage points. (JEL C33, C51, 051, J51)., I. INTRODUCTION The relationship between labor unions and firm performance has garnered a vast amount of attention from scholars, unions, and businesses, as well as from policymakers as extensive studies [...]

Problem statement: The objective of this study was to determine the dominance effects of environmental factors such as Illuminance (lux), relative humidity (%) and WBGT ([degrees]C) on the operators' productivity at Malaysian automotive industry. Approach: One automotive parts assembly factory had been chosen as a subject for the study. The subjects were workers at the assembly section of the factory. The environment examined was the Illuminance (lux), relative humidity (%) and WBGT ([degrees]C) of the surrounding workstation area. Two sets of representative data including the Illuminance, relative humidity (%) and WBGT ([degrees]C) level and production rate were collected during the study. All the data was measured using Babuc apparatus which is capable to measure simultaneously those mentioned environmental factors. The time series data of fluctuating level of environmental were plotted to identify the significant changes of factors. Then Taguchi Method was being utilized to find the sequence of dominance factors that contributed to the productivity of operator at the specified production workstation. From there, optimum level for the three factors will be determine for optimum productivity. Further multiple linear regressions were employed to obtain the equation model in order to represent the relationship of these environmental factors towards productivity. Results: the thermal comfort assessments of this station which was the scale PMV was 2 and PPD is 79% ware likely to be satisfied by the worker. Conclusion: The study revealed that the dominant factor contribute to the productivity at the body assembly production line is WBGT and Illuminance whereas the empirical finding was closely related to the perception study by survey questionnaire distribution. Key words: Productivity, illuminance, humidity, WBGT, optimum, INTRODUCTION Robust design is an engineering methodology for obtaining product and process conditions, which are minimally sensitive to the various causes of variation to produce high-quality products with low development [...]

Today's construction business relies on first-to-market product strategies to gain competitive advantages and increase profit margins. This has created an increased demand for a high performance capital project delivery system that can achieve a dramatic reduction in project cycle time. Very few decision tools and guidelines exist to assist owners in choosing appropriate delivery systems and project strategies to radically reduce the project cycle time from the preplanning stage through start up. The research presented in this paper surveyed the construction owners and architectural/engineering/construction firms to identify projects that have achieved greater than 25% reduction in overall project cycle time when compared to current industry standards. The data collected were analyzed to determine the techniques that facilitate radical reduction in project cycle time. These techniques include, best practices and schedule reduction techniques as well as the various management techniques employed on the projects identified by the Construction Industry Institute (CII). This research also identified the barriers to radical schedule reduction. The research concludes that radical schedule reduction well in excess of 25% can be achieved through the selective employment of management techniques, schedule reduction techniques and CII best practices. Almost every construction manager can utilize this research to improve project performance whether for radical reduction or simply more effective execution. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)0733-9364(2008)134:12(915) CE Database subject headings: Construction management; Best management practice; Scheduling; Productivity; Time factor.

The purpose of the present study was to investigate methods of measuring individual research productivity for counseling psychologists. Using the 60 members of the Journal of Counseling Psychology editorial board, the authors computed a comparison of 6 popular indices of productivity, revealing considerable levels of positive skewness, kurtosis, and overlap with each other. Combining the strengths of the 6 indices, the authors developed a new productivity index entitled the Integrated Research Productivity Index (IRPI). The IRPI measures individual productivity by statistically combining an individual's author-weighted publications, average times cited by other publications, and years since first publication into a comprehensive score. Productivity values and IRPI scores for 3 groups of counseling psychologists (Tyler Award recipients, Kuder Award recipients, and Division 17 Presidents) were computed to provide evidence of discriminant validity among the indices. In contrast to the other measures examined, the IRPI accounts for productivity per year and years in the field and assesses mean citation count per article as opposed to total citation count, thus yielding similar scores for Tyler (lifetime) and Kuder (early career) research award recipients. Keywords: research productivity, publication, measurement

The analysis of project schedules is among the central tasks of construction managers. Parallel to the well-known critical path method, linear scheduling techniques have been researched. The two most fully developed existing methods, the linear scheduling model and the repetitive scheduling method, are reviewed. Based on a discussion of a published example, the new mathematical analysis method for linear and repetitive schedules is introduced. The productivity scheduling method is based on singularity functions that provide a flexible and powerful mathematical model for construction activities and their buffers that are characterized by their linear or repetitive nature. The steps of formulating initial equations, stacking and consolidating them, and deriving information about their criticality are described in detail. The mathematical approach of the new method allows an integrated treatment of activities regardless of the number of changes in productivity within them and does not depend on the graphical representation of the schedule. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)0733-9364(2008)134:9(711) CE Database subject headings: Scheduling; Critical path method; Network analysis; Time dependence; Location; Linear analysis; Geometry.

This paper compares the relative productivity of construction industry sectors with significant off-site fabrication with more traditional on-site sectors. The off-site sectors, such as curtainwall, structural steel, and precast concrete fabrication, consistently show higher productivity growth than on-site sectors. Furthermore, the value-added content of the off-site sectors is increasing faster than that of the on-site sectors, indicating faster productivity growth. However, the off-site sectors are not traditionally considered as part of the construction industry by the U.S. Economic Census, but rather as manufacturing. Ignoring the off-site segments of construction has led to significant underestimation of construction productivity. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)0733-9364(2008) 134:7(517) CE Database subject headings: Productivity; Construction management; Information technology (IT); United States.

A construction process reengineering framework and its corresponding methodologies have been developed by integrating lean principles and computer simulation techniques. Instead of classifying activities into value-adding and non-value-adding activities, or into conversion and flow activities as is common in lean production practices, this framework classifies activities into main and supportive activities and/or into normal and interactive activities. This classification makes it more effective in modeling the construction workflow and reengineering the construction process. It also avoids the confusion of the classification of activities into value-adding and non-valueadding activities encountered in the construction industry. In addition, computer simulation techniques are incorporated into the framework to virtually simulate and assess the efficiency and effectiveness of the reengineered construction process that is achieved based on lean principles. Simulation makes it easier to quantify and assess the effectiveness and efficiency of the reengineered construction process. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)0733-9364(2008)134:5(371) CE Database subject headings: Construction management; Lean construction; Productivity; Simulation; Computer applications.

An overview of the social spaces in Berlin is presented to explore the conflicts that arose over new optical architectural manifestations and urban spaces in the Berlin of the Weimar Republic. The way in which they highlighted the tensions between artisanal and industrial production in architecture in various sociopolitical environments is discussed.

Abstract: In the North Sea, the lesser sandeel (Ammodytes marinus) is the target of an industrial fishery and the principal prey of many top predators. Because of concerns about potential [...]

Many researchers and project managers have attempted to improve project performance by applying new philosophies such as lean principle, just-in-time, pull scheduling, and last planner. However, very little research has been conducted on setting definite quantitative goals for performance improvement while considering the defect rate involved in the construction operations. This research explores practical solutions for construction performance improvement by applying the six sigma principle. This principle provides the metrics required to establish performance improvement goals and a methodology for measuring and evaluating improvement. The proposed approach is expected to achieve more reliable workflows by reducing process variability to fit in a desirable range--thereby improving the overall performance through the evaluation of the quality level in current construction operations. To verify the suggested methodology, two case studies have been presented and process simulation analyses are performed to observe the performance changes based on the six sigma principle. Critical total quality control, as the sigma level rises, is also discussed. CE Database subject headings: Quality control; Simulation; Productivity; Construction management.

Using an econometric case study approach, the various methods employed by economists in evaluating the role played by human resource management practices in improving productivity performance of a retail trade are analyzed.

This paper investigates the association between total factor productivity growth and the R&D expenditures of Swedish manufacturing firms in the presence of domestic- and international R&D spillovers. The paper assumes that the principal channel of transmission of new technology is through I/O relations. Econometric evidence suggests that international as well as domestic inter-industry R&D spillovers are important determinants of firms' productivity growth in the long run. The R&D spillovers generated within the industry and following I/O links seem to be of minor importance in explaining productivity growth. It seems likely that within-industry productivity spillovers follow other channels than I/O flows, such as horizontal spillovers through copying of new products and processes, or labour turnover. The use of a convergence parameter is one way to check for such within-industry technology flows. Our results indicate that a catch-up process exists by which the non-frontier firms in the Swedish manufacturing sector absorb knowledge spillovers from the leading firms in the industry. Finally, a firm's own R&D efforts are found to be more or less positively correlated with the TFP growth, maybe the contribution from R&D efforts in some sense are underestimated. Keywords TFP growth * R&D expenditures * convergence * R&D spillovers JEL Classification O31 * O33

Data envelopment analysis is used to evaluate the productivity of industries that are located at the Hsinchu Science Park in Taiwan.

A new panel data evaluating model RTFA (Recursive Thick Frontier Approach) is introduced for estimating production and cost functions in manufacturing industries.

Byline: Maria Conceicao A. Silva Portela (1), Emmanuel Thanassoulis (2) Keywords: Efficiency; Malmquist Indexes; Bank Branches Abstract: Traditional approaches to calculate total factor productivity (TFP) change through Malmquist indexes rely on distance functions. In this paper we show that the use of distance functions as a means to calculate TFP change may introduce some bias in the analysis, and therefore we propose a procedure that calculates TFP change through observed values only. Our total TFP change is then decomposed into efficiency change, technological change, and a residual effect. This decomposition makes use of a non-oriented measure in order to avoid problems associated with the traditional use of radial oriented measures, especially when variable returns to scale technologies are to be compared. The proposed approach is applied in this paper to a sample of Portuguese bank branches. Author Affiliation: (1) Universidade Catolica Portuguesa, Centro Regional do Porto, R. Diogo Botelho, 1327, 4169-005, Porto, Portugal (2) Aston Business School, Aston Triangle, B4 7ET, Birmingham, U.K Article History: Registration Date: 13/01/2006 Article note: Maria Conceicao A. Silva Portela - The authors acknowledge the financial support of the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, and the European Social Fund. The contents of the paper are the responsibility of the authors.

The Hamilton Markov chain regime model is extended for analyzing the impacts of extended business cycles on a firm's output is presented.

A new model for testing the presence of innovative complementarity production strategies in manufacturing firms is presented. This model uses the innovative profiles of each company.

A study on production effectiveness of different bank branches of South Africa, using Bayesian stochastic frontier analysis, is presented.

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apergo.2005.01.017 Byline: Sandra Verschoof, P. Paul F.M. Kuijer, Monique H.W. Frings-Dresen Abstract: A PCM rolling floor.sup.[R] (RF) was developed to reduce the risk of musculoskeletal complaints among truck drivers. The RF can be used to move packed goods automatically in and out of the cargo space. The efficacy of this intervention on physical work demands, energetic and perceived workload and productivity was evaluated by comparing nine truck drivers working with a RF and a traditional, non-moving floor during a working day. Since the RF was not used during the loading process, no effects were found. The RF reduced the unloading process by 8min, decreased the frequency of lifting and setting down goods by 24%, decreased the frequency of handling goods below knee level by 79%, and decreased the frequency of entering the cargo space by 45%. No effect was found on the energetic and perceived workload. The RF resulted in a small increase in productivity. Author Affiliation: Coronel Institute for Occupational and Environmental Health, AmCOGG, Academic Medical Center/University of Amsterdam, P.O. Box 22700, 1100 DE Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Many studies have measured productivity change and efficiency when an undesirable output is a by-product. We flexibly treat the bad as a technology shifter of an input distance function and model a system of nonlinear equations subject to endogeneity. Theory dictates that we impose monotonicity on all inputs, outputs, and the bad. Since a Bayesian full-information likelihood approach can easily be misspecified, we utilize the Kiln (J. Econometrics 107 (2002) 175) limited-information likelihood (LIL) derived by minimizing the entropy distance subject to the moment conditions from the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimator. This represents an extension of the Bayesian Method of Moments approach of Zellner and Chen (Macroeconom. Dyn. 5 (2001) 673), Zellner and Tobias (Int. Econom. Rev. 42 (2001) 121), and Zellner (in: Bayesian Analysis in Econometrics and Statistics: The Zellner View and Papers, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, 1997; J. Econometrics 83 (1998) 185) which uses entropy maximization but does not incorporate a specific likelihood. Using Bayes' Theorem we combine traditional priors with the LIL, which has a mode at the standard multiple-equation GMM estimator, yielding a limited-information posterior distribution. We generalize the approach of Kim (J. Econometrics 107 (2002) 175) by incorporating an unknown covariance matrix in a Gibbs sampling framework and applying the methodology to nonlinear equations. This allows us to estimate shadow prices, technical efficiency, and productivity change for a panel of electric utilities, yielding result that differ substantially from those obtained using standard GMM. JEL classification: C11; C32; D24 Keywords: Gibbs sampling; Distance functions; Productivity change; Technical efficiency rankings; Generalized method of moments

Byline: Giuseppe Medda (1), Claudio Piga (2), Donald S Siegel (3) Keywords: university R&amp D; total factor productivity; sample selection bias Abstract: Ed Mansfield wrote several papers on the private returns to basic research (e.g. Mansfield, 1980) and the influence of academic research on industrial innovation (e.g. Mansfield, 1991). We extend this line of research by assessing the impact of university research on total factor productivity growth of Italian manufacturing firms. The econometric analysis is based on reduced-form estimation of the R&amp D capital stock model, including controls for two potential sources of sample selection bias, as proposed by Crepon etal (1998) and Piga and Vivarelli (2004). Our results suggest that while there are positive returns to collaborative research with other firms, collaborative research with universities does not appear to directly stimulate productivity. We interpret this result as consistent with recent evidence (e.g. Hall etal 2001, 2003) suggesting that firms engage in collaborative research with universities when appropriability conditions are weak. Author Affiliation: (1) University of Cagliari, Viale Fra' Ignazio, Italy (2) Nottingham University Business School, Wollaton Road, United Kingdom (3) Department of Economics, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 3502 Russell Sage, 110 8th Street, Troy, NY, 12180-3590, United States Article History: Registration Date: 30/12/2004

The co-relation between non-discretionary factors and technical efficiency has been analyzed and the effect such co-relation has on the data envelopment analysis (DEA) has been discussed. The problems of the DEA model are discussed and a solution is provided through a new model that can overcome identified problems.

Byline: Nobuyuki Harada (1) Abstract: In this paper, we estimate the production function of new Japanese firms and examine whether the total factor productivity is affected by the human capital and gender of entrepreneurs. Empirical results show decreasing returns to scale of production, which verifies the assumption of production functions in many previous studies on entrepreneurship. Further, it is shown that the entrepreneur's age has a significantly negative effect on productivity, and the negative effect increases after 60 years of age. Although related business experience before startup has a significantly positive effect, the magnitude is limited and cannot overcome the negative effect of age. The results indicate the importance of starting up while young, at the latest, before 60 years of age. Author Affiliation: (1) Graduate School of Systems and Information Engineering, University of Tsukuba, 1-1-1 Tennodai, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-8573, Japan E-mail Article History: Registration Date: 02/10/2004

Regression analyses indicate that large state-owned enterprises were more likely to generate productivity growth than smaller ones. Education had a significant effect on technical efficiency.

During the 1980's, all Japanese automobile producers opened assembly plants in North America. Industry analysts and previous research claim that these transplants are more productive than incumbent plants and that they produce with a substantially different production process. I compare the production processes by estimating a model that allows for heterogeneity in technology and productivity, both of which are intrinsically unobservable. The model is estimated on a panel of assembly plants, controlling for capacity utilization and price effects. The results indicate that the more recent technology uses capital more intensively and it has a higher elasticity of substitution between labour and capital. Hicks-neutral productivity growth is estimated to be lower, while capital-biased (labour-saving) productivity growth is higher for the new technology. Using the estimation results, I decompose industry-wide productivity growth and find plant-level changes in lean plants to be the most important contributor. Plant-level productivity growth is further decomposed to reveal the importance of capital-biased productivity growth, increases in the capital-labour ratio, and returns to scale.

This paper analyses the interactions between growth and the contracting environment in production. With incompleteness in contracting, viable production relationships between firms and workers, and therefore the profitability of industries, depend on the rates of innovation and growth. The speed at which new innovations arrive in turn depends on the profitability of production, for the usual reasons examined in the endogenous growth literature. We show that these interactions can have important implications which are consistent with observed phenomena in both the micro and macro environments. In particular, we demonstrate that a technological shock (increasing productivity of research) can, through this interaction, lead to a productivity slowdown and a shift in labour market contracts away from firms providing implicit guarantees of lifetime employment and towards shorter-term 'contractor' type arrangements. We show the consistency of an increase in the proportion of the labour force under short-term employment, increased relative returns of workers in high-productivity sectors, and increased income inequality, with a productivity slowdown of finite duration.

The comparison of total factor productivity changes of mainland China and Taiwan at the industry level through 1960 and 1993, are presented.

Byline: Marisa Ramirez Aleson (1), Manuel Espitia Escuer (1) Keywords: JEL Classification: L10; Key words: Product diversification, performance, firms, Spain Abstract: We analyze the impact of product diversification on performance. This topic has been discussed in the literature, and there is no consensus so far as to the significance or the direction of the impact. Performance is measured using Tobin's q for a sample of 103 large, non-financial Spanish firms (1992--1995). Diversification is measured by means of a categorical variable, as suggested by Varadarajan. The principal results indicate that the firms with intermediate levels of product diversification have the highest performance, while the firms with low and high levels of diversification show significantly lower performance, which performance is not significantly different between them. Author Affiliation: (1) Department of Business Management, University of Zaragoza, Gran Via 2, 50005 Zaragoza, Spain (e-mail: mramirez@posta.unizar.es) , ES

Byline: Elhanan Helpman (1,2), Antonio Rangel (3) Keywords: technological change; human capital; productivity slowdown Abstract: How does the economy react to the arrival of a new major technology? The existing literature on general-purpose technologies (GPTs) has studied the role that mechanisms like secondary innovations, diffusion, and learning by firms play in the adjustment process. By contrast, we focus on a new mechanism: the interplay between technological change and two types of human capital--technology-specific experience and education. We show that technological change that requires more education and training, like computerization, necessarily produces an initial slowdown. On the other hand, technological change that lowers the training requirements, like the move from the artisan shop to the factory, can produce either a bust or a boom. We identify three key properties that determine the outcome: (1) the productivity of inexperienced workers, (2) the speed with which experience raises productivity, and (3) the level of general skills required to operate the new technology. Author Affiliation: (1) Department of Economics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 02138 (2) Tel Aviv University, and the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, Israel (3) Department of Economics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305 Article History: Registration Date: 14/10/2004