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As cognitive tasks have displaced physical tasks in today's manufacturing industry, this sector can demand high levels of mental workload from workers. In certain situations, there is a high cognitive load, which affects operators reducing their attention to the task and causing them mental fatigue and distractions, resulting in errors that generate economic costs or even injuries to workers. This literature review aims to provide a comprehensive understanding the use of mental workload in the manufacturing sector. The methodology consisted of conducting a search in four databases. In the search, a combination of keywords was used, classifying each journal according to the mental workload evaluation means, the type of evaluation, and the area of application. Articles not focusing on the manufacturing area were discarded. Of the total of 3839 articles found, 12 have been selected. Regarding the methods used for mental load assessment, the analytic techniques were found to be the most frequently used.

Usability is the characteristic of a software product of being effective and efficient and producing satisfaction for users and traditionally is assessed through questionnaires but most of them are only available in English. A software usability assessment questionnaire (SUAQ) is proposed in two languages: Spanish and English. The methodology comprises four stages: 1) questionnaire development, 2) administration, 3) statistical validation, and 4) sample size determination. Twenty items were evaluated in terms of clarity, consistency, and relevancy. Then, the SUAQ was administered to 95 respondents. Overall, reliability values were acceptable in Spanish and English version, respectively. The factor analysis was feasible since the KMO index, and the Bartlett sphericity test was statistically significant. Both versions of SUAQ were tested to determine their validity. The findings show that the proposed methodology is an effective usability assessment instrument and thus an effective software improvement tool from a bilingual approach.

This chapter presents a knowledge management and Ergonomics implementation in manufacturing systems, through the development and validation of a critical success factors questionnaire. The instrument developed measures the frequency of inclusion of critical success factors for the implementation of Ergonomics and its benefits, validated in the manufacturing industry. The frequency is based on a five-point Likert scale. So far, no instrument able to measure such factors has been found in the literature. The questionnaire comprises 73 questions presented in four main stages: planning, process startup stage, work improvement cycle and long-term development. In addition, it contains a section of benefits regarding health and safety, operational and quality of life at work. The instrument was validated through a pilot test involving 140 participants from seven companies in the manufacturing sector of Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, México, through the use of an intentional selective method.

This paper presents the effects between Logistics Network and Value-Added activities 3PL environments and its effect on the Financial and Strategic Performance of Mexican Maquiladoras companies. The significant increase in outsourcing transportation services in freight transport at the border Mexico-United States has inspired this research. The paper presents four hypotheses, tested with data from 158 responses to a questionnaire applied to engineers from the manufacturing industry in Ciudad Juarez (Mexico). The hypotheses were tested statistically using the partial least squares technique. Results indicate that a good design of a Logistics Network has a positive effect on Strategic Performance through transport logistics planning to reduce distribution times and costs. Additionally, the Value-Added services offered by a 3PL positively affect Strategic Performance through labeling-marking, packaging, and reassembling of products. Also, the Strategic Performance has a positive effect on Financial Performance through flexibility and risk minimization of 3PL provider, and this is the enormous effect that arguing theoretically and demonstrating empirically that the outsourcing of 3PL incremented the economic benefits to the quantity of 76.20% between Financial Performance and provides a reference to make decisions according to strategies to incorporate 3PL in such maquiladora industries. Keywords: 3PL, strategic performance, financial performance, structural equations

Proper inventory management is vital to achieving sustainability within a supply chain and is also related to a company’s cash flow through the funds represented by the inventory. Therefore, it is necessary to balance excess inventory and insufficient inventory. However, this can be difficult to achieve in the presence of stochastic demand because decisions must be made in an uncertain environment and the inventory policy bears risks associated with each decision. This study reports an extension of the single-period model for the inventory problem under uncertain demand. We proposed incorporating a Gaussian stochastic process into the model using the associated posterior distribution of the Gaussian process as a distribution for the demand. This enables the modeling of data from historical inventory demand using the Gaussian process theory, which adapts well to small datasets and provides measurements of the risks associated with the predictions made. Thus, unlike other works that assume that demand follows an autoregressive or Brownian motion model, among others, our approach enables adaptability to different complex forms of demand trends over time. We offer several numerical examples that explore aspects of the proposed approach and compare our results with those achieved using other state-of-the-art methods.

This paper presents the effects between Logistics Network and Value-Added activities 3PL environments and its effect on the Financial and Strategic Performance of Mexican Maquiladoras companies. The significant increase in outsourcing transportation services in freight transport at the border Mexico-United States has inspired this research. The paper presents four hypotheses, tested with data from 158 responses to a questionnaire applied to engineers from the manufacturing industry in Ciudad Juarez (Mexico). The hypotheses were tested statistically using the partial least squares technique. Results indicate that a good design of a Logistics Network has a positive effect on Strategic Performance through transport logistics planning to reduce distribution times and costs. Additionally, the Value-Added services offered by a 3PL positively affect Strategic Performance through labeling-marking, packaging, and reassembling of products. Also, the Strategic Performance has a positive effect on Financial Performance through flexibility and risk minimization of 3PL provider, and this is the enormous effect that arguing theoretically and demonstrating empirically that the outsourcing of 3PL incremented the economic benefits to the quantity of 76.20% between Financial Performance and provides a reference to make decisions according to strategies to incorporate 3PL in such maquiladora industries. Keywords: 3PL, strategic performance, financial performance, structural equations

New environmental tendencies have been incorporated into supply chains, and suppliers are playing an important role. However, the main problem when selecting a green supplier is determining the attributes that contribute to a green supply chain. Moreover, a lot of companies ignore the benefits gained from green suppliers on economic performance and marketing. Therefore, this chapter reports a structural equation model with three latent variables (Green attributes of suppliers, Marketing benefits, and Manufacturing processes benefits) and three hypotheses are proposed with relationship among them. The model is validated with information from 253 questionnaires administered to Mexican maquiladoras and evaluated using partial least squares. Findings demonstrate that maquiladoras that consider Green attributes in supplier selection process are gaining marketing and economic benefits, contributing to a green supply chain, and improving the corporate image as socially responsible organizations.

The purpose of this chapter is to present the relationship between the external service provider named Third Party Logistics 3PL and the performance of the logistics process in Mexican manufacturing companies, in order to ascertain the contribution of the aspects considered, allowing companies' suggested improvement actions. Through a field research in Ciudad Juarez and making use of an instrument about 3PL, authors considered four variables: transport, transport management, information technologies, and warehouse. To find the causal model with the relationships between the variables, authors used structural equations modelling. That also identified the relevant aspects in 3PL providers companies' manufacturing and collaboration activities realized in the practice. The results indicate that mainly the information technologies and the transport management have a greater influence on the performance of the logistics process in this type of company.

This chapter presents a literature review about the vendor-managed inventory as well as the methods which improve management, to discover, describe, and analyze methodologies that have been used to support the process of the VMI integration and coordination in the supply chain. Authors focus generally on the advantages that are offered by the VMI to achieve cooperation in a vendor-customer relationship. Results reveal that there is a diversity in the methodologies that were implemented, which perhaps relies on the game theory as a recent methodology that was included to achieve long-term relationships between vendor and customer, because currently supply chains are operating in dynamic environments that require greater efforts of integration among all participants or members.

Background Usability is an essential characteristic of software development, which needs to be evaluated mainly through questionnaires. However, the questionnaires available in Spanish are limited and not available for most software's developers and users. Objectives This work aimed to design and validate a new questionnaire to evaluate software usability, considering the characteristics of efficiency, effectiveness, and satisfaction as defined by the International Standards Organization. Methods The Software Usability Assessment Questionnaire or SUAQ in Spanish language was designed and validated using Kendall's coefficient, Cronbach's Alpha, Factorial Analysis and Scree test. Results The questionnaire's validation was carried out by five experts through an evaluation of the clarity, coherence, and relevance of the proposed items. Once the questionnaire was administered to 95 participants, an overall reliability value of Cronbach's alpha of 0.839 was obtained. The factorial analysis is viable since a value of 0.757 was found in the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) test, and a significant value was obtained in Bartlett's sphericity test. Conclusions The proposed questionnaire proved to be valid and reliable, and therefore, suitable to evaluate software usability in the Spanish language.

This study addresses the transport of fresh fruit and vegetables from an independent transporter in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Even though the main issue relies on the transport itself, an alternate objective function was proposed to maximize profits of the transporter by considering certain constraints. The main objective of this research is to determine the optimal amount of fruit and vegetables that should be purchased to be transported later to the different destinations to generate the maximum profitability that is possible. The problem is tackled by means of classical methods of problem solving. Moreover, the simplex method employed enables to identify the constraints and determine the optimal solution to the problem that satisfies transport requirements and generates the highest profitability. Finally, results demonstrate that the maximum profit that can be gained is $1,840.00 Mexican pesos during a single trip, satisfying demand of three different businesses.

Advanced manufacturing technologies (AMT) acquisition by maquiladoras (foreign-owned manufacturing companies) is a tendency that allows these companies to maximize their commercial benefits. However, it remains unclear how the AMT implementation impacts on their performance. In addition, this research studies 383 responses to a questionnaire about the AMT implementation in the Mexican maquiladora industry and reports an analysis with four latent variables associating obtained benefits after the AMT implementation—human resources, flexibility, production process, and commercial benefits—where their relationships are evaluated through six hypotheses using a structural equation model (SEM). Finally, the outcomes demonstrated that AMT benefits for human resources have a direct effect on flexibility, production process, and commercial benefits. However, the direct effect from human resources benefits, knowledge, and experience on commercial benefits are acquired through indirect effects, using flexibility and production process as mediator variables.

The paradigm of the manufacturing systems was broken in 1980 with the beginning of the Additive Manufacturing (AM). This technology has been considered as the complement of the classic manufacturing technology, where the material is removed from a raw material until getting the final product. The addition of material in layers have been considered the new alternative to face the impact in the environment, the economy of materials and process, and the opportunity to generate new complex shapes limited by the classic manufacturing technology. The present chapter exposes the advances of the Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM), one of the seven technologies of AM which is mostly used during the past three decades. In this field, different adaptations and investigations of the technology have been focused on the increment of the capacity of the production system and improve the quality generated by this technique. The methodology used to determine the advance of AM was to employ a Systematic Literature Review using databases. The search was developed considering the keywords of AM for the construction of specific search syntax of documents associated with this technology. The documents obtained were analyzed to identify the progress in this technology. The results present the advancements of the FDM as a technology that change the industrial processing to customize the process, where the globalization makes possible to have this technology available at each desk.

The present research proposes a structural equation model to integrate four latent variables: managerial commitment, preventive maintenance, total productive maintenance, and productivity benefits. In addition, these variables are related through six research hypotheses that are validated using collected data from 368 surveys administered in the Mexican manufacturing industry. Consequently, the model is evaluated using partial least squares. The results show that managerial commitment is critical to achieve productivity benefits, while preventive maintenance is indispensable to total preventive maintenance. These results may encourage company managers to focus on managerial commitment and implement preventive maintenance programs to guarantee the success of total productive maintenance.

Competitiveness is a well-known aspect that refers to the ability of companies and countries to maintain certain productivity and efficiency advantages in order to reach economic goals and maintain a given market position. The goal of this chapter is to present the concept of competitiveness by briefly explaining its historical evolution and establishing its relationship with the supply chain (SC). Additionally, this chapter will anticipate the difference between competitive advantage and comparative advantage.

This chapter discusses the role of competitiveness in the manufacturing industry considering particular aspects of this industrial sector throughout the history of Mexico. This conceptualization of competitiveness forces us to discuss the main industrial sectors of the country and their importance to the national economy.

This chapter explores the impact of regional aspects on supply chain performance. Some of the aspects to be studied include regional infrastructure, infrastructure and services costs, services, service quality, and the role of the government as regulator. First, we develop simple models associating two latent variables each: one regional aspect and one supply chain performance benefit. Then, we propose more complex models to depict the interactions and effects among regional aspects. Finally, an integrative model is introduced to associate all the regional aspect variables with all the supply chain performance benefit variables.

This chapter discusses some of the most common supply chain evaluation methodologies in the industrial context. The chapter first addresses the use of multivariate techniques; then, we discuss the goal and the characteristics of the methods employed in this research, which include linear regression and factor analysis. The goal of this chapter is to better understand Chap. 9, which provides a comprehensive description of the methodology followed in this book to explore the impact of a series of critical success factors on supply chain performance, namely supply chain competitiveness.

The current paper presents a structural equation model with four variables (Government, Infrastructure, Proximity to market, and supply chain Agility) affecting the Financial performance of a company. Six hypotheses or relationships among variables are proposed, supposing that Government and market Proximity are key elements to achieve a greater Agility in supply chains, considering the regional Infrastructure to determine the impact on Financial performance in manufacturing companies. The model is validated with data from a survey applied to 225 persons in 65 manufacturing companies located in Ciudad Ju&aacute, rez, Chihuahua, Mexico. The model is evaluated using partial least squares, and the findings indicate that there is a direct and positive effect from the Government on regional Infrastructure with a rate of 0.436. When the Government supports the availability of land, energy resources, transportation, telecommunications, mobile telephones, and other services, a positive change is achieved in the Infrastructure and supply chain Agility. Furthermore, the Government also has a direct and positive effect on the market Proximity at a rate of 0.171, consequently, the regional Infrastructure also has an effect on it. Similarly, the market Proximity directly and positively influences the supply chain Agility, as well as a company&rsquo, s Financial performance at a rate of 0.506.

This chapter proposes a series of models to associate Regional Factors with supply chain performance benefits. The relationships between the latent variables are considered as research hypothesis and are validated using data collected from the Mexican export-oriented manufacturing industry. The evaluation results indicate that Regional Factors are essential in supply chain Performance but are also a source of uncertainty for manufacturing industries. In other words, aspects such as infrastructure and government support are important for companies to operate, yet they cannot be controlled inside of the facilities and depend on external forces.

This chapter explores the impact of manufacturing practices on supply chain performance. Four major manufacturing practices are studied: total quality management (TQM), just in time (JIT), machinery and equipment maintenance, and advanced manufacturing technology (AMT). The relationships between these manufacturing practices and supply chain performance benefits are proposed in a series of models. They are later tested and evaluated to determine their validity and statistical significance. Finally, the chapter proposes an integrative model to explore how manufacturing practices are interrelated.

This chapter discusses the exploratory analysis performed on the data collected in this research and used to develop the models that assess supply chain performance. Similarly, we discuss the aspects used to measure supply chain risks, manufacturing practices, and regional impact factors. The survey validation procedure is then discussed as well as the characteristics of the sample. Finally, we address each questionnaire construct to contribute to the understanding of the survey and its results.

This chapter develops three structural equation models. The first two relate the best manufacturing practices with eight supply chain performance benefits. The third one is a second-order model that associates all the regional impact factors, manufacturing practices, and supply chain benefits studied in previous chapters. Each model proposes its own hypotheses to relate the latent variables. Such hypotheses are statistically tested and validated to confirm their feasibility. Then, the direct, indirect, and total effects are interpreted for each relationship between latent variables. Finally, we propose final conclusions and industrial implications for each model.