A study has been conducted into improving construction design through the application of the lean thinking paradigm. Its objective was to identify the issues relating to design efficiency and how a lean thinking approach might address these issues. The investigation consisted of examining work already undertaken in the field by other researchers"to identify the state of the art. The change order request system was examined to gain first insights into waste in construction design, and to gauge the size of the opportunity for the application of lean thinking. An Electronic Data Gathering Tool (EDGT) was then developed to allow further exploration of the design decision making process at the system / sub-system level. The EDGT was used on three live construction projects. From the data recorded a design planning tool, Design Decision Planner (DDP), was created to help improve control of the design process and lead to a more standardised approach to construction design. Standardising the approach to product development is an important component of lean thinking. The main recommendations for making construction design lean are: Use DDP to plan and improve control of the design decision making process, assign design responsibility and to make the process more transparent. 2. Measuring progress against planned design is a useful process metric. 3. Improve the designer's cost and programme visibility when choosing between design options. 4. Redefine the role of the quantity surveyor from cost controller to value for money assessor. The role needs to be better integrated into the design process to reach its full potential. 5. Need to develop more rigorous methods of assessing the buildability of design options. This problem could be eased in the short-term by incorporating construction professionals into the early design phases. 6. Designers need to use more process reason drivers when choosing between design options, not just functional criteria. 7. The change order request system could be redesigned to identify the root causes of contract issue design changes and, hence, improve the design decision making process.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1969. / Typescript. Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

This study conceptualizes the married woman's experience of relocation as a passage through a moving 'career'. This passage follows a prescribed, regularized sequence of stages involving decision-making, planning, relocation, and settling-in. Such a conceptualization allows the examination of geographic mobility as a process occurring over time and within the context of other life events; and of the role of the previous environment in shaping the definition of, and response to, the new social world. The data for this study were collected through interviews with 123 married women who moved with their spouses into the metropolitan area of Hamilton and Burlington, Ontario. All had moved within Canada, but not less than 35 miles; had not lived in the target area within the preceding five years; and were interviewed within a year of their move. They were contacted through the cooperation of national van lines agents, a federal government mobility programme, and a municipal department of social services. A focus of the research is on the wife's role in and response to her moving career. Her control over that career varies considerably with each stage. Women have little control over the initiation of the passage during the decision-making stage, but have substantial control over what they consider to be the 'mundane' tasks which comprise the planning and relocation stages. During the settling-in stage, however, most women play the key role in establishing the home and making the move successful for their families. Thus many women feel responsible for the success of a moving career which they had little role in initiating. This research also addresses the question of whether, why, and in what ways women perceive their experience of relocation as different from that of their spouse. Most wives felt that moving was more difficult for them than for their husbands. The major differentiating factor was not the husband's occupational career per se, but rather the continuity of that career through working for the same employer or in a related field. Few women in this study experienced such occupational continuity. The husband's experience of relocation not only differed from but also complicated that of his wife. This was most apparent in his leaving for the new community weeks or months before the wife and children. Although rarely examined by migration researchers, this sequencing of the moving career is an important aspect of wives' experiences of relocation. Many women found this period of separation from the spouse the most difficult and disruptive stage of the moving career. Family life cycle stage also emerged as an important factor distinguishing wives' experiences of geographic mobility. Women who became mothers or whose children left the nuclear family at the time of the move found themselves in competing status passages. Relocation complicated the experiences of those who became mothers; for those who launched children from the home, the moving career both initiated and complicated passage through this family life cycle stage. Migration researchers fundamentally disagree on whether the experience of relocation has primarily beneficial or disruptive consequences for people. In the short term, most women found moving to be highly disruptive of routine, taken-for-granted reality, and social life. There was no support for the proposition that as familiarity with the role of mover increases, women learn techniques for easing the disruptiveness of the passage. While the wives could generalize the passage so that the physical aspects of relocation became easier, the experience of social and emotional disruption actually increased with repeated relocation. Nevertheless, most women felt that they had personally benefitted from geographic mobility, by becoming more independent, confident, and assertive. The long term consequences of relocation are more uncertain, however. Many women suffered a sense of rootlessness and lacked a concept of a life-plan, of where and who they would be when the moves were over. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

In the early stages of new product development, project selection is dominantly based on managerial intuition, rather than on analytic approaches. As much as 90% of all product ideas are rejected before they are formally assessed. However, to date, little is known about the product screening heuristics and screening criteria managers use: it has been suggested that their decision process resembles the "fast and frugal" heuristics identified in recent psychological research, but no empirical research exists. A major part of the product innovation pipeline is thus poorly understood. This research contributes to closing this gap. It uses cognitive task analysis for an in-depth analysis of the new product screening heuristics of twelve experienced decision makers in 66 decision cases. Based on the emerging data, an integrated model of their project screening heuristics is created. Results show that experts adapt their heuristics to the decision at hand. In doing so, they use a much smaller set of decision criteria than discussed in the product development literature. They also combine heuristics into decision approaches that are simple, but more complex than "fast and frugal" strategies. By opening the black box of project screening this research enables improved project selection practices.