Taking Control The book that bridges the gap between the shop floor, engineering, and management. Written in simple to understand language, Taking Control takes you step by step to turn average performance into world-class performance. Read stories of individuals and how they met and overcame challenges to be their best. Test your knowledge using the workbook and study guide.

In his best-selling book Japanese Manufacturing Techniques, Richard J. Schonberger revolutionized American manufacturing theory and, more important, practice. In that breakthrough book, he revealed that Japanese manufacturing excellence was not culturally bound. Offering the first demystified explanation of the simple techniques that fueled Japan's industrial success, he demonstrated how the same methods could be put to work as effectively in U.S. plants. Now, in World Class Manufacturing, Schonberger returns to tell the success stories of nearly 100 American corporations -- including Hewlett-Packard, Harley-Davidson, General Motors, Honeywell, and Uniroyal -- that have adopted the famed just-in-time production and "total quality control" strategies. Based on his firsthand experience as a major consultant to American industry, he examines how they did it -- and illustrates how the same concrete, specific steps used by these top companies can be implemented in any factory today. What's more, Schonberger shows that his bold concepts and reforms apply equally to all industries, whether the product is computers, pasta, or trucks, and to all divisions -- from manufacturing and engineering to accounting and marketing. According to Schonberger, world-class manufacturing depends on blended management -- rather than domination by a separate group of managers -- which marshalls resources for continual rapid improvement. To achieve world-class status, companies must change procedures and concepts, which in turn leads to recasting relations among suppliers, purchasers, producers, and customers. Acknowledging the difficulty inherent in such changes, Schonberger stresses that employee involvement and interaction, both on the shop floor and in the decision-making/problem-solving process, is key. Wary of those who view improvement in terms of modernizing equipment, he points out that making maximum use of people and current machinery is a company's first priority; automation, if necessary, should come much later. World Class Manufacturing also includes Schonberger's 17-point action agenda to guide innovators toward manufacturing excellence, from getting to know the customer to cutting the number of suppliers, reducing error in production, and deciding when and how to automate. Indispensable for all manufacturing innovators who aim to keep ahead of the competition, this inspiring, groundbreaking volume does much more than just recommend or theorize about the new manufacturing approach. Plainly, realistically, and logically, it explains how it's done.

were published in the series as the contributed volume, Process Control Performance Assessment: From Theory to Implementation with Andrzej Ordys, Damian Uduehi, and Michael Johnson as Editors (ISBN 978-1-84628-623-0, 2007). Along with this good progress in process controller assessment methods, researchers have also been investigating techniques to diagnose what is causing the process or control loop degradation. This requires the use of on-line data to identify faults via new diagnostic indicators of typical process problems. A significant focus of some of this research has been the issue of valve problems; a research direction that has been motivated by some industrial statistics that show up to 40% of control loops having performance degradation attributable to valve problems. Shoukat Choudhury, Sirish Shah, and Nina Thornhill have been very active in this research field for a number of years and have written a coherent and consistent presentation of their many research results as this monograph, Diagnosis of Process Nonlinearities and Valve Stiction. The Advances in Industrial Control series is pleased to welcome this new and substantial contribution to the process diagnostic literature. The reader will find the exploitation of the extensive process data archives created by today’s process computer systems one theme in the monograph. From another viewpoint, the use of higher-order statistics could be considered to provide a continuing link to the earlier methods of the statistical process control paradigm.

Successful engineering projects require a clear vision and long term strategy. Therefore, effective business initiatives have been applied to the engineering environment in order to enhance its management perspectives. Business Strategies and Approaches for Effective Engineering Management brings together the latest methodologies, principles, practices, and tools for engineering management. By providing theoretical analysis and practical applications, this book is a useful reference for industry experts, researchers, and academicians regarding progressive strategies for successful management.

These Proceedings, consisting of Parts A and B, contain the edited versions of most of the papers presented at the annual Review of Progress in Quantitative Nondestructive Evaluation held at the University of California San Diego, in La Jolla, California on July 19- July 24, 1992. The Review was organized by the Center for NDE at Iowa State University and the Ames Laboratory of the USDOE in cooperation with a number of organizations including the Air Force Wright Laboratory Materials Directorate, the American Society for Nondestructive Testing, the Center for NDE at Johns Hopkins University, the Department of Energy, the Federal Aviation Administration, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the National Science Foundation IndustrylUniversity Cooperative Research Centers, and the Working Group in Quantitative NDE. This year's Review of Progress in QNDE was attended by approximately 475 participants from the U. S. and many foreign countries who presented over 380 papers. With such a large volume of work to review, the meeting was divided into 36 sessions with as many as four sessions running concurrently. The Review covered all phases of NDE research and development from fundamental investigations to engineering applications or inspection systems, and it included all methods of inspection science from acoustics to x-rays. During the last twenty years, the participants of the Review have contributed to its steady growth. Thanks to their efforts, the Review is today one of the largest and most significant gatherings of NDE researchers and engineers anywhere in the world.

Since the invention of double-entry book-keeping, managers have judged a comapny's worth by sales and profits. This book exposes the fallacies of this practise and redefines excellence in terms of competence, capability and customer-focused, employee-drive

From the automotive industry to the semiconductor industry, manufacturers are suffering from an overabundance of automation methods that they cannot fully comprehend or afford, and glamorous leadership techniques that are simply not sustainable. In this respect, management has lost its way. Beyond World-Class Productivity shows why a return to traditional tools and the power of people can help companies meet today’s challenges in the manufacturing sector. Beyond World-Class Productivity gives readers a balance of essential information, theory and case studies. Readers can expect to gain new insights into engineering approaches to productivity, profitability and real or non-real gain, including: • useful tools for industrial engineering • effectiveness in unit labor costs; • feasibility studies • work simplification; and • developing mind innovation. Practical examples and their accompanying commentary come from the author’s 40 years of real-world experience on the shop floor and in the boardroom. Figures are also provided to illustrate actual productivity results from real companies. Both managers and engineers can appreciate Beyond World-Class Productivity as an enlightening guide to the improvement of productivity and profitability within the manufacturing sector.