Thesis (Ph. D.)--Texas A&M University, 2005. / "Major Subject: Information and Operation Management" Title from author supplied metadata (automated record created on Feb. 23, 2007.) Vita. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references.

"Major Subject: Information and Operation Management" Title from author supplied metadata (automated record created 2010-03-12 12:08:51). Includes bibliographical references.

"Major Subject: Information and Operation Management" Title from author supplied metadata (automated record created 2010-03-12 12:08:51). Includes bibliographical references.

"Major Subject: Information and Operation Management" Title from author supplied metadata (automated record created 2010-03-12 12:08:51). Includes bibliographical references.

Adjustments for agriculture in Taiwan tend to be made to the entire economic activities in different stages. With the relentless domestic demands for leisure tourism, the development of leisure farms has been gradually gaining ground as an option not only of the revival of agriculture but of the solution to meet the demands. With the transformation in demands, leisure farm operation turns out to be a major focus of the promotion of agricultural tourism by the government. However, the poor command of the management as well as the use of the core resources of the farms by some of the leisure farm operators incurs developmental stagnation. As a result, this study will first explore the logic of leisure farm management and second attempt to provide advice to operators on decision-making over diverse strategies.

Since global economy is getting worse for two years, the banking industry is much worse than any other industry especially. Human capital becomes the strength of companies for surviving. In addition, it is a challenge for companies to train and retain the talents depending upon limited resources and fund. However, it is a critical issue to evaluate whether training programs work and raise the organization performance. Therefore, we are going to discuss if the performance of supervisor is improved after the supervisors took the training programs of management competency. This research method is based on questionnaires. According to the result, trainees satisfied with the settlement of courses. Moreover, direct managers are satisfied with the improvement of performance of those supervisors who took the training courses. Within the dimensions, we found that the performance of communication improved the most. Supervisors play an intermediate role to facilitate the performance of corporations. The improvement of communication can help the performance of supervisors. Additionally, the ability of communication is an important trait for supervisors to get promoted. The research result follows the research hypothesis. The results show that the satisfaction of training course settlement has obvious positive influence on effectiveness of management competency. The Gamma is .33(P<.05). The results show that it is effective for companies raise management abilities of employees by spending time and money in training programs.

Continued growth of the aquaculture industry is needed in the 21st century in response to increasing demand from inflated populations and declining wild fisheries capture. Meeting this demand will require bridging the gap between industrialized countries including the United States, and developing and least developed countries (e.g. Mexico, Uruguay, and Uganda). As the aquaculture industry becomes more globally interconnected, industrialized nations will likely be pressured to develop more sustainable practices which are natural resource conservative while developing countries will be pressured to increase production capacity and develop more intensive operations. Albeit with many inherent challenges, a globalized strategic plan is needed to bridge this gap. This dissertation identifies and discusses several of these inherent challenges. Firstly, potential business models are explored with the concept of how information technology can be utilized to integrate small-scale farms in multi-national agribusiness and also coordinate multi-national supply with global demand. Next, the economic impact of aquaculture development is explored. Economic multiplying models may be utilized to predict where aquaculture development will have the most significant and rapid economic impact on rural communities. Lastly, new systems of aquaculture technology are developed which are resource conservative and also have the potential to be scaled to meet industry needs. Re-circulating integrated agriculture-aquaculture (RIAA) systems combine fish and plant production whereby the nutrient rich aquaculture effluent is utilized to irrigate plants. The advantages and disadvantages of these experiments were discussed. While further research is needed to maximize the benefits of RIAA technology, the results demonstrate that these systems provide both economic and environmental benefits over traditional farming methods. Ultimately, this dissertation explores how novel technology can be implemented in strategic locations to provide a sustainable food supply capable of promoting economic growth through the distribution of seafood products to satisfy domestic and global demand.

Problems in healthcare are difficult to comprehend due to complexity, involvement of multiple stakeholders in decision making and fragmented structure of delivery systems. Major Problem Structuring Methods (PSMs) have been used to aid problem understanding which, in principle, can provide greater clarity to strategic problems and engage diverse decision makers using transparent representation that capture differing perceptions of problems. In reality, PSMs can be difficult in accurately representing problems, limited in highlighting improvement opportunities due to non-intuitive visual representations and requirements for facilitators and stakeholders to be experts in tools used. This research aims to address this gap by developing a framework, taking into account characteristics of healthcare delivery systems, advantages and limitations of PSMs with an aim of providing accurate and holistic representation of delivery workflow, so as to promote problem understanding in a rapid manner. The framework, termed CARE, first establishes nature of problem and a commonly agreed problem statement along with an understanding of stakeholder involvement and operating regulations. It then sets specific guidelines for data collection, representation, verification and validation from stakeholders and provides methodology for data analysis which allows facilitator insight into possible flaws in workflow. A case study approach is used to test effectiveness of CARE across two different healthcare settings, each involving a different nature of problem. Implementation of CARE leads to improved participation and ownership amongst stakeholders, ease of facilitation during individual or multidisciplinary meetings, intuitive and informative representation of workflow, minimized time and effort for implementation and minimized dependencies on learning new tools and terminologies. A post mortem indicates the positive impact of CARE on services rendered to the patients, leading to an increase in patient satisfaction and workflow efficiencies. The research concludes by noting the contributions and lessons learnt from this research for healthcare practitioners and possible future work.

Como consequência da crescente competitividade global, as empresas têm procurado melhorar seu desempenho, o que tem se tornado uma questão de sobrevivência e de diferencial competitivo. Isto tem exigido uma reavaliação constante dos valores para os clientes, provocando obsolescência das formas tradicionais de organização e exigido a organização das operações de forma sistêmica e integrada. Neste panorama, como proposta de direcionamento estratégico, tático e operacional, destaca-se a administração da qualidade e produtividade por macroprocessos organizacionais (MAPO). Esta é estudada sob o prisma dos avanços da Tecnologia da Informação (TI), da disseminação da Filosofia da Qualidade (FQ) e das contribuições da Potencialização e Trabalho em Equipe (PTE), sob um enfoque sistêmico e considerando a cultura das organizações. Neste estudo, procurou-se identificar correntes da MAPO, bem como discutir a forma como as empresas estão absorvendo e praticando seus elementos em suas operações. Discutiu-se o projeto de reestruturação e a administração efetiva desta nova organização. Desenvolveu-se também pesquisa exploratória em casos reais de empresas praticando a MAPO, complementada com a análise de casos documentados pela literatura. O estudo permitiu destacar sobre a MAPO que: os resultados são significativos e alinhados com as estratégias competitivas, desde que haja comprometimento da alta administração; os resultados mais relevantes são os relacionados aos critérios de velocidade e integração interna; a característica mais frequente é a identificação clara dos clientes externos e suas necessidades; característica das mais estabilizadas é o papel da gerência identificando os processos-chave e seus responsáveis. Embora as ações apoiadas pela tecnologia da informação sejam bastante frequentes, a integração com o cliente via informática ainda não é prática amplamente implementada. / As a result of growing global competition, companies have searched new ways of improving their performance. This has become a question of survival or competitive differentiation. This situation has forced a continuous learning about customer values, has made traditional organization look obsolete and has required the planning of operation management in a systemic and integrated way. In these times of turbulence, process management (or MAPO) seems to be the answer to these problems. In this study, process management is approached under different views, like development of Information Technology (IT), dissemination of Total Quality (TQ), and contributions of Empowerment and Cross-functional Teams (ECT), under a systemic approach and taking into account organizational culture. In this study, we have identified different ways of interpreting process management, and discussed how firms are applying MAPO elements in their operations. We have analyzed the business process redesign and the management of this new organization. We searched case examples from some organizations in order to verify how some of these new concepts have actually been used. Additionally, we analyzed the applications reported in the literature. The study of case examples allowed us to reinforce about MAPO that: good results are aligned with competitive strategies only if there is top management commitment; best results are related to speed and internal integration criteria; the most frequent characteristic is the objective identification of external customers and their requirements; and the managerial role of identifying key-processes and their owners is a common practice. Although operations based on Information Technology are the most frequent, customer integration by informatics is not widely implemented yet.

Esta dissertação de Mestrado em Engenharia de Produção trata de um estudo de caso que tem por objetivo descrever e analisar a evolução da organização da produção da função operacional de uma instituição financeira pública: o Banco Regional de Desenvolvimento do Extremo Sul - BRDE. O período coberto, final dos anos 80 a 1994, com ênfase para a fase 1992-1994, tem cada uma das configurações existentes examinadas, basicamente, a partir de nove fatores de análise. Alguns fatos de 1995 são relatados para melhor compreensão da fase examinada. Há uma breve revisão cobrindo os sistemas de gestão da produção, a questão da mudança nas organizações, bem como três dos métodos usados: a Gestão da Qualidade Total (TQC), o Aperfeiçoamento de Processos Empresariais e a Reengenharia. Estes três métodos são comparados entre si e contextualizados dentre os demais métodos gerenciais de aperfeiçoamento empresarial. As funções e o marco legal da operação dos bancos de desenvolvimento no Brasil são descritos sumariamente. Há uma breve caracterização do BRDE, com ênfase na evolução de suas atividades operacionais, da sua política de recursos humanos e das estruturas organizacionais com que operou no período em pauta. São tecidas considerações sobre o tempo de atravessamento operacional. Um amplo e detalhado projeto de melhoria com a participação do autor é analisado, tanto sob o aspecto de suas recomendações técnicas, como da metodologia e das intercorrências durante sua elaboração. Constatou-se que a atividade operacional no banco de desenvolvimento examinado possuiu o caráter de produção artesanal durante todo o período analisado. O processamento operacional passou, inicialmente, de uma lógica funcional taylorista/fordista com produção em linha para uma lógica de produção celular com minifábricas focalizadas. Posteriormente, foi tentada uma lógica onde se buscou transformar cada funcionário numa célula, proposta que não foi possível ser implantada, tal o nível de polivalência exigido. Verificou-se que a uma fase de mudanças suaves, espaçadas e razoavelmente consensuais, realizadas num ambiente externo relativamente estável (anos 80), sucedeu uma série de mudanças impostas, ambiciosas, executadas em curto espaço de tempo, sem que a mudança anterior pudesse se consolidar (período 1992-1994). A superposição do período de aprofundamento da análise com o reinício das atividades operacionais da instituição tornou muito dificil discernir, no crescimento do volume operacional, o que foi causado pelos processos de mudança do que foi devido à ocupação da capacidade instalada. Observou-se pouco uso de indicadores de defeito e deficiências na aferição da eficiência do emprego dos recursos alocados à função operacional. Verificou-se que distintas fontes de origem política são a gênese do poder na instituição - diretores nomeados, dois a dois, por Governador de Estado membro - o que, em geral, implica que haja falta de unidade na Direção, e que a duração média dos mandatos seja inferior à das gestões estaduais. A falta de envolvimento das chefias dos segmentos organizacionais atingidos foi identificada como a principal causa para a truncada implantação do projeto de melhoria do qual o autor participou. Propõe-se uma nova definição para Processo Empresarial. São apresentadas recomendações, tanto para a instituição estudada, como para novas pesquisas. / The aim of this Industrial Engineering's dissertation is to describe and analyze the evolution in production organization of operational function in a public financiai institution. For the purposes of this dissertation the Banco Regional de Desenvolvimento do Extremo Sul - BRDE, has been chosen as a case study. The covered period- end of 80's till 1994, emphasizing the 1992-1994 period - has one of each configuration examined from nine analysis factors. Some 1995 information is presented for the better understanding of the subjects under discussion. A brief review covers production management systems, organizational changes, as well as three of the methods used for it: Total Quality Control (TQC), Business Process lmprovement and Reengineering. These methods are compared and contextualized within the other managerial improvement methods. The functions and the legal limits for development bank's operations in Brazil are briefly described. There is a short BRDE's characterization, emphasizing the evolution of operational activities, human resources politics and the organizational structures the bank had pursued at the considered period. Some comments are made on the operational lead time. A wide and detailed improvement project shared by the author is analyzed covering their technical advice, as well as the methodology and the developing intercurrencies. It was verified that the operational activities of the development bank under examination has pursued an artesanal production character during the whole analyzed period. Operational processing moved, at first, from a Taylor/Ford functional logic with a lined production, to a cellular organization based on focused manufacturing. Lately there were attempts to turn each worker into a production cell, a proposal impossible to implant, as the polyvalent skill required. It was verified that after a period of soft, scattered and reasonably consensual changes, which took place in a basically stable environment in the 80's, succeeded a sequence of imposed, ambitious changes, which took place in a short period of time, without the consolidation of the previous change (1992-94 period). The superposition of the deeping analysis period with the operational recommencement of the institution rendered a lot difficult to discern on the operational data increasing, what was caused by the process of changing and what was related to the natural occupation of the idle capacity. It was observed small usage of defect rates and deficiencies in checking the efficiency of the resources designated to operational function. It was verified that different political origins are the genesis of institution's power - appointed directors, two by two, by Member-State Governar - which, in general, implies lack of unity at the Board and the average length of mandates are inferior of those of the state administrations. The lack of involvement from department's chief, who were affect by the change, was identified as the main cause of the mutilated implementation of the improvement project which the author has participated. A new definition for Business Process is proposed. Advice is presented for the analyzed institution, as well as for further research.