No description available.

Thesis (M.S.)--Oregon State University, 2007. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 113-116). Also available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 101-112).

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1979 H35 / Master of Science

No abstract available / Economics / M. Com. (Economics)

D.Comm. / The point of departure of this study is that South African manufacturing organisations are far from being competitive in world-class terms, and that lean thinking has become a strategic necessity for many South African manufacturing organisations that want to compete successfully in today’s globalised economy which is characterised by fierce competition. However, even amongst the pioneers and advocates of lean thinking there is uncertainty as to the reasons why lean sometimes fail or do not achieve the same results as is the case at Toyota, the organisation that pioneered lean thinking as a business management strategy. Given the former stated problem the primary objective of this study is to identify the critical success factors for the successful implementation of lean thinking in South African manufacturing organisations. The literature study conducted identified the theoretical critical success factors, the independent variables in this study, as mindset and attitude; leadership; ordinary employees; strategic driver; basic stability; promotion office; lean tools and techniques; and integration. The indicators of lean thinking success, the dependent variables of this study, were identified as cost reduction and customer satisfaction. A convenient sample was used to collect primary data by means of a self developed questionnaire or measuring instrument. A factor analysis of the data yielded 5 critical success factors, which were labelled as philosophy and principles; people or soft issues; basic stability; strategic driver; and promotion office. The research further revealed that lean thinking has a very low success rate in South African manufacturing organisations (thereby justifying the reason for this study); that senior leadership has the biggest impact or influence on the sustainable success of lean thinking; and that trade unions are considered to have a limited positive impact on successful lean implementation. The emerged factors were interpreted and operationalised, and translated into practical recommendations for the successful implementation of lean thinking in South African manufacturing organisations. The most important recommendations relate to the role of people and leadership in a lean transformation; finding of an experienced facilitator; and lean thinking as a strategic driver. Recommendations for further research include the role of, and skills required by the human resources function and practitioners in a lean thinking organisation; and lean thinking training on tertiary level in South Africa. The study thus has theoretical, practical and methodological value for successful lean thinking implementation in South African manufacturing organisations.

M.Com. / Please refer to full text to view abstract

How do we shape our safety destiny? It is within the limits or our own making, that is, our capability. But, how do we know it is on the right track? In other words, how do we take the pulse? These questions set the context and scope of the research in which a number of key issues related to capability building and evaluation were addressed. In recent years, the approach of capability development has been widely researched by economists, organizational psychologists and management theorists. Unfortunately, because of its complex nature, the assessment of capability in professional context has not been properly addressed in the literature. The problem is two-fold. First, is criticality, or more accurately the lack of understanding about what capabilities are critical to our future success. The second one is concerned with the evaluative aspects of capability development. Using safety management as a study platform, this research introduced a contingency model of “strategic capability development” (SCD) as a plausible alternative to some of the well-established approaches. To address the evaluation issues, an innovative method for assessing capability maturity was constructed. The key variables were based on people’s pro-activeness and their self-efficacy beliefs. Through meta-analysis, a set of critical capabilities or indicators was identified and used as the key variables for designing the survey instrument, the Safety Management Efficacy Scale (SMES). These variables included goal-setting, risk management, safety training, risk communication, and operation/administration capabilities. Hypotheses regarding the interactive effects of each of these critical capabilities were then derived and tested. The results suggest that a high degree of coherency among the key variables does exit. There is a positive and significant association between critical capabilities and goal-setting capability. The positive effects of risk management capability on safety pro-activeness are strong. In regards to how goal-setting capability influences pro-activeness, no conclusion can be drawn. Having taking the pulse, the capability maturity profile of the safety profession is examined. The proposed SCD framework and SMES instrument together provide a point of departure for conducting similar research, including but not limited to human resources development, people capability maturity assessment, training/curriculum development, and performance evaluation. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD

In this work I integrate some of my recent research developments in the theory and practice of Productivity and Efficiency Analysis of Economic Systems. In particular, I present some new theoretical relationships between various measures of efficiency and productivity, propose new solutions to some aggregation problems in efficiency analysis and apply the existing theory and the new findings to empirical analysis in Industrial Organization. / Graduation date: 2003

Thesis (M.S.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Thomas J. Watson School of Engineering and Applied Science, Department of Systems Science and Industrial Engineering, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references.