Leveraging lean in the office: Lean office needs a novel and differentiated approach

Lean Six Sigma tools have been increasingly employed also in the service industry, however with different success as field studies have shown. The reason not only has to be attributed to a poor Change Management, but can also be attributed to the intrinsic characteristics of the Lean techniques, which have been tailored to sustain a stable customer-takted pull-manufacturing principle. An office workplace shows significant differences to a procedural shop floor environment, as it comprises both, procedural and relational processes. The office environment, therefore, cannot be described by a purely transactional shop floor model—it necessitates a separate model, with a differenciated approach, which covers the procedural as well as the relational aspects of office tasks. Also the different characteristics of the transaction object as well as the operation transformation and process governance do not allow an un-adapted application of Toyota’s comprehensive Lean toolset. The approach of Lean for the office environment needs a reinterpretation of the Lean logic and TPS Lean tools for the procedural part as well. Therefore, different and adapted approaches and tools are clearly necessary. The paper shows the objectives and principles of Lean and why Lean manufacturing is also interesting to be applied in the office environment. The differences between office and production jobs are detailed and introduce the problem of lean application in the office. The particular characteristics of the office environment are discussed and enable to enter into the Relational Office Model. Furthermore, we explain the paradigm shift which is necessary to take full benefit of the Lean approach in the office environment, however without presenting the reinterpreted office Lean toolset due to space reasons. This will be the topic of a next paper.ISSN:1940-9893ISSN:1940-990

Tick-borne encephalitis affects sleep-wake behavior and locomotion in infant rats.

BACKGROUND/AIMS Tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) is a disease affecting the central nervous system. Over the last decade, the incidence of TBE has steadily increased in Europe and Asia despite the availably of effective vaccines. Up to 50% of patients after TBE suffer from post-encephalitic syndrome that may develop into long-lasting morbidity. Altered sleep-wake functions have been reported by patients after TBE. The mechanisms causing these disorders in TBE are largely unknown to date. As a first step toward a better understanding of the pathology of TBEV-inducing sleep dysfunctions, we assessed parameters of sleep structure in an established infant rat model of TBE. METHODS 13-day old Wistar rats were infected with 1 × 106 FFU Langat virus (LGTV). On day 4, 9, and 21 post infection, Rotarod (balance and motor coordination) and open field tests (general locomotor activity) were performed and brains from representative animals were collected in each subgroup. On day 28 the animals were implanted with a telemetric EEG/EMG system. Sleep recording was continuously performed for 24 consecutive hours starting at day 38 post infection and visually scored for Wake, NREM, and REM in 4 s epochs. RESULTS As a novelty of this study, infected animals showed a significant larger percentage of time spend awake during the dark phase and less NREM and REM compared to the control animals (p < 0.01 for all comparisons). Furthermore, it was seen, that during the dark phase the wake bout length in infected animals was prolonged (p = 0.043) and the fragmentation index decreased (p = 0.0085) in comparison to the control animals. LGTV-infected animals additionally showed a reduced rotarod performance ability at day 4 (p = 0.0011) and day 9 (p = 0.0055) and day 21 (p = 0.0037). A lower locomotor activity was also seen at day 4 (p = 0.0196) and day 9 (p = 0.0473). CONCLUSION Our data show that experimental TBE in infant rats affects sleep-wake behavior, leads to decreased spontaneous locomotor activity, and impaired moto-coordinative function

NNLO QCD predictions for the H -> WW -> l l nu nu signal at the LHC

We present a first computation of the NNLO QCD cross section at the LHC for the production of four leptons from a Higgs boson decaying into W bosons. We study the cross section for a Higgs boson mass Mh = 165 GeV; around this value a Standard Model Higgs boson decays almost exclusively into W-pairs. We apply all nominal experimental cuts on the final state leptons and the associated jet activity and study the magnitude of higher-order effects up to NNLO on all kinematic variables which are constrained by experimental cuts. We find that the magnitude of the higher-order corrections varies significantly with the signal selection cuts. As a main result we give the value of the cross section at NNLO with all selection cuts envisaged for the search for the Higgs boson.Comment: typos corrected, version accepted in JHE

Going beyond Triviality: The Toyota Production System-Lean Manufacturing beyond Muda and Kaizen

Abstract Personal consulting experience has been showing that even many proven managers responsible for Lean Six Sigma Operational Excellence (OPEX) techniques have not fully understood the profound and comprehensive significance of Lean. Apart from the idealized interpretation of Lean boiled down to the limited concepts of Muda and Kaizen, the classical &quot;temple&quot; representation of the Toyota Production System (TPS) often leads to the interpretation that Lean is a toolbox from which one can select supposedly independent tools. By picking just some tools, however, the full potential of the TPS certainly cannot be exploited and-in the worst case-it may even cause production disruption. This essay criticizes the wide-spread ultra-simplification of concepts and, as a consequence, the distorted interpretation leads to an inappropriate use of the Lean tools. It presents two additional representations of the classical TPS temple model stressing the intrinsic systemic effects as well as the underlying theory concepts of the TPS to allow a flawless Just-inTime (JIT) production. In fact, the original TPS is not a toolbox, but a comprehensive synergic tool system

The HelioMont method for assessing solar irradiance over complex terrain: Validation and improvements

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Combining Monte Carlo generators with next-to-next-to-leading order calculations: event reweighting for Higgs boson production at the LHC

We study a phenomenological ansatz for merging next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) calculations with Monte Carlo event generators. We reweight them to match bin-integrated NNLO differential distributions. To test this procedure, we study the Higgs boson production cross-section at the LHC, for which a fully differential partonic NNLO calculation is available. We normalize PYTHIA and MC@NLO Monte Carlo events for Higgs production in the gluon fusion channel to reproduce the bin integrated NNLO double differential distribution in the transverse momentum and rapidity of the Higgs boson. These events are used to compute differential distributions for the photons in the pp \to H \to \gamma \gamma decay channel, and are compared to predictions from fixed-order perturbation theory at NNLO. We find agreement between the reweighted generators and the NNLO result in kinematic regions where we expect a good description using fixed-order perturbation theory. Kinematic boundaries where resummation is required are also modeled correctly using this procedure. We then use these events to compute distributions in the pp \to H \to W^+W^- \to l^+l^- \nu\bar{\nu} channel, for which an accurate description is needed for measurements at the LHC. We find that the final state lepton distributions obtained from PYTHIA are not significantly changed by the reweighting procedure.Comment: 18 pages, 14 fig

Perturbative QCD effects and the search for a H->WW->l nu l nu signal at the Tevatron

The Tevatron experiments have recently excluded a Standard Model Higgs boson in the mass range 160 - 170 GeV at the 95% confidence level. This result is based on sophisticated analyses designed to maximize the ratio of signal and background cross-sections. In this paper we study the production of a Higgs boson of mass 160 GeV in the gg -> H -> WW -> l nu l nu channel. We choose a set of cuts like those adopted in the experimental analysis and compare kinematical distributions of the final state leptons computed in NNLO QCD to lower-order calculations and to those obtained with the event generators PYTHIA, HERWIG and MC@NLO. We also show that the distribution of the output from an Artificial Neural Network obtained with the different tools does not show significant differences. However, the final acceptance computed with PYTHIA is smaller than those obtained at NNLO and with HERWIG and MC@NLO. We also investigate the impact of the underlying event and hadronization on our results.Comment: Extra discussion and references adde

Mitochondrial oxidative stress causes insulin resistance without disrupting oxidative phosphorylation.

Mitochondrial oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction, or both have been implicated in insulin resistance. However, disentangling the individual roles of these processes in insulin resistance has been difficult because they often occur in tandem, and tools that selectively increase oxidant production without impairing mitochondrial respiration have been lacking. Using the dimer/monomer status of peroxiredoxin isoforms as an indicator of compartmental hydrogen peroxide burden, we provide evidence that oxidative stress is localized to mitochondria in insulin-resistant 3T3-L1 adipocytes and adipose tissue from mice. To dissociate oxidative stress from impaired oxidative phosphorylation and study whether mitochondrial oxidative stress per se can cause insulin resistance, we used mitochondria-targeted paraquat (MitoPQ) to generate superoxide within mitochondria without directly disrupting the respiratory chain. At ≤10 μm, MitoPQ specifically increased mitochondrial superoxide and hydrogen peroxide without altering mitochondrial respiration in intact cells. Under these conditions, MitoPQ impaired insulin-stimulated glucose uptake and glucose transporter 4 (GLUT4) translocation to the plasma membrane in both adipocytes and myotubes. MitoPQ recapitulated many features of insulin resistance found in other experimental models, including increased oxidants in mitochondria but not cytosol; a more profound effect on glucose transport than on other insulin-regulated processes, such as protein synthesis and lipolysis; an absence of overt defects in insulin signaling; and defective insulin- but not AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK)-regulated GLUT4 translocation. We conclude that elevated mitochondrial oxidants rapidly impair insulin-regulated GLUT4 translocation and significantly contribute to insulin resistance and that MitoPQ is an ideal tool for studying the link between mitochondrial oxidative stress and regulated GLUT4 trafficking

Proteomic Analysis of GLUT4 Storage Vesicles Reveals Tumor Suppressor Candidate 5 (TUSC5) as a Novel Regulator of Insulin Action in Adipocytes.

Insulin signaling augments glucose transport by regulating glucose transporter 4 (GLUT4) trafficking from specialized intracellular compartments, termed GLUT4 storage vesicles (GSVs), to the plasma membrane. Proteomic analysis of GSVs by mass spectrometry revealed enrichment of 59 proteins in these vesicles. We measured reduced abundance of 23 of these proteins following insulin stimulation and assigned these as high confidence GSV proteins. These included established GSV proteins such as GLUT4 and insulin-responsive aminopeptidase, as well as six proteins not previously reported to be localized to GSVs. Tumor suppressor candidate 5 (TUSC5) was shown to be a novel GSV protein that underwent a 3.7-fold increase in abundance at the plasma membrane in response to insulin. siRNA-mediated knockdown of TUSC5 decreased insulin-stimulated glucose uptake, although overexpression of TUSC5 had the opposite effect, implicating TUSC5 as a positive regulator of insulin-stimulated glucose transport in adipocytes. Incubation of adipocytes with TNFα caused insulin resistance and a concomitant reduction in TUSC5. Consistent with previous studies, peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR) γ agonism reversed TNFα-induced insulin resistance. TUSC5 expression was necessary but insufficient for PPARγ-mediated reversal of insulin resistance. These findings functionally link TUSC5 to GLUT4 trafficking, insulin action, insulin resistance, and PPARγ action in the adipocyte. Further studies are required to establish the exact role of TUSC5 in adipocytes

Radiation hardness qualification of PbWO4 scintillation crystals for the CMS Electromagnetic Calorimeter

This is the Pre-print version of the Article. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2010 IOPEnsuring the radiation hardness of PbWO4 crystals was one of the main priorities during the construction of the electromagnetic calorimeter of the CMS experiment at CERN. The production on an industrial scale of radiation hard crystals and their certification over a period of several years represented a difficult challenge both for CMS and for the crystal suppliers. The present article reviews the related scientific and technological problems encountered