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Motivations for sustainable design
Published in Rob Fleming, Saglinda H Roberts, Sustainable Design for the Built Environment, 2019
Rob Fleming, Saglinda H Roberts
His view was that by allowing people to freely pursue their own economic interests, society as a whole would benefit. The merchant would want to produce the best possible product to inspire the consumer to choose their product. The consumer would have a better quality and larger selection. Supply and demand addresses the theory that the amount of available products will increase if there is a demand for them, and decrease if not. This also addressed the dependency of pricing on the demand relative to the supply. Division of Labor addressed breaking each task within production and increasing efficiency. This is the basis of assembly lines and industrial factories during the industrial age. Inherent in Smith’s argument was the presence of the rule of law, moral codes, and holistic benefit to society. The principles outlined in The Wealth of Nations are still used today.
Basic Concepts for Improving Production Systems
Published in Shigeo Shingo, Alan Robinson, Modern Approaches to Manufacturing Improvement: The Shingo System, 2017
For the producer, mass production has several consequences: Depreciation of machinery, dies, and so on, is more profitable.The use of dedicated machines improves productivity.Division of labor simplifies operations and raises productivity. Labor costs can be cut by employing low-wage, unskilled workers for production.Workers increase in number and, in turn, become consumers. The resulting expanded demand opens up further opportunities for mass production.Mass production of this sort that results from producers creating more demand leads to the adoption of large-lot production methods. Such methods make setup time reductions unnecessary or minimize apparent labor costs. Long production cycles are not much of a problem either, and speculative production systems are used as a matter of course.
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Published in Torgeir K. Haavik, New Tools, Old Tasks, 2017
A characteristic feature of modern industries is the division of labour that renders possible a high degree of specialisation and the accomplishment of highly complex work. A challenging implication of this division of labour is the work related to coordinating the different contributions – to put together what has been divided. Two different approaches to describe and explain this type of work may be identified. One describes the cognitive processes involved in the work, emphasising these processes’ distribution over humans and artefacts rather than being merely individual mental processes. Just as the cognitive processes of a sociotechnical system can be described as distributed (Artman and Garbis, 1998; Hutchins, 1995a, b), the way the system may have a common situational understanding is best described as a distributed understanding2 (in contrast to overlapping). This approach will be revisited towards the end of the chapter, when the conclusions are drawn.
Organizing logistics to achieve strategic fit in building contractors: a configurations approach
Published in Construction Management and Economics, 2022
Petter Haglund, Martin Rudberg, Ahmet Anil Sezer
The division of labour signifies the degree of specialization in physical logistics tasks (e.g. transportation, material handling, and goods reception) and administrative logistics tasks (e.g. order processing, delivery planning, and inventory management) (Klaas and Delfmann 2005). In housebuilding, physical logistics tasks are typically unspecialized and handled by construction workers that alternate between production activities and material handling. Outsourcing on-site logistics to a third-party logistics provider, or having dedicated materials handling workers on site, increasing specialization, and construction workers can focus on production activities (Lindén and Josephson 2013). A low degree of specialization in administrative logistics tasks typically means that planning and coordination are carried out by site management. Administrative logistics tasks are specialized when carried out by logistics specialists or outsourced to a third-party logistics provider that manages inventory levels, coordinate co-loading, and plans deliveries to the construction site (Dubois et al. 2019).
Creating Interdependencies: Managing Incidents in Large Organizational Environments
Published in Human–Computer Interaction, 2018
Paul Luff, Christian Heath, Menisha Patel, Dirk Vom Lehn, Andrew Highfield
In this paper, we will consider one such center: a substantial multifunction, transport operations center in Central London. Responsible for traffic management and dealing with major incidents, this center of operations brings together three separate organizations and their respective operation centers – transport control, traffic management, and the police, within one control room. It houses more than a hundred personnel, located within various regions of the room, personnel with different responsibilities, reporting to different organizations, with common access to a complex range of information and communication resources. These personnel have to manage the problems and emergencies that inevitably arise in the day-to-day flow of traffic in a major urban environment. The coordination of problems and emergencies through a highly complex division of labor is a major practical challenge for staff and management. It also raises important questions for our understanding human–computer interaction and the concepts, methods, and ideas that informed more traditional studies of work and collaboration within control rooms.