Ergonomics Contributions to Company Strategies

Managers usually associate ergonomics with occupational health and safety and related legislation, not with business performance. In many companies, these decision makers seem not to be positively motivated to apply ergonomics for reasons of improving health and safety. In order to strengthen the position of ergonomics and ergonomists in the business and management world, we discuss company strategies and business goals to which ergonomics could contribute. Conceptual models are presented and examples are given to illustrate: 1) the present situation in which ergonomics is not part of regular planning and control cycles in organizations to ensure business performance, and 2) the desired situation in which ergonomics is an integrated part of strategy formulation and implementation. In order to realize the desired situation, considerable changes must take place within the ergonomics research, education and practice community by moving from a health ergonomics paradigm to a business ergonomics paradigm, without losing the health and safety goals.corporate strategy;paradigm shift;system performance

Human Factors: Spanning the Gap between OM & HRM

Purpose: This paper examines the claim that the application of human factors (HF) knowledge can improve both human well-being and operations system performance. Methodology: A systematic review was conducted using a general and two specialist databases to identify empirical studies addressing both human effects and operations system effects in examining manufacturing operations system design aspects. Findings: We found 45 empirical studies addressing both the human effects and system effects of operations system (re)design. Of those studies providing clear directional effects, 95% showed a convergence between human effects and system effects (+,+ or -,-), 5% showed a divergence of human and system effects (+,- or -,+). System effects included quality, productivity, implementation performance of new technologies, and also more ‘intangible’ effects in terms of improved communication and co-operation. Human effects included employee health, attitudes, physical workload, and ‘quality of working life’. Research limitations/im

Ergonomics Contributions to Company Strategies

Managers usually associate ergonomics with occupational health and safety and related legislation, not with business performance. In many companies, these decision makers seem not to be positively motivated to apply ergonomics for reasons of improving health and safety. In order to strengthen the position of ergonomics and ergonomists in the business and management world, we discuss company strategies and business goals to which ergonomics could contribute. Conceptual models are presented and examples are given to illustrate: 1) the present situation in which ergonomics is not part of regular planning and control cycles in organizations to ensure business performance, and 2) the desired situation in which ergonomics is an integrated part of strategy formulation and implementation. In order to realize the desired situation, considerable changes must take place within the ergonomics research, education and practice community by moving from a health ergonomics paradigm to a business ergonomics paradigm, without losing the health and safety goals

Degenerations of ideal hyperbolic triangulations

Let M be a cusped 3-manifold, and let T be an ideal triangulation of M. The deformation variety D(T), a subset of which parameterises (incomplete) hyperbolic structures obtained on M using T, is defined and compactified by adding certain projective classes of transversely measured singular codimension-one foliations of M. This leads to a combinatorial and geometric variant of well-known constructions by Culler, Morgan and Shalen concerning the character variety of a 3-manifold.Comment: 31 pages, 11 figures; minor changes; to appear in Mathematische Zeitschrif

Entropy vs. Action in the (2+1)-Dimensional Hartle-Hawking Wave Function

In most attempts to compute the Hartle-Hawking ``wave function of the universe'' in Euclidean quantum gravity, two important approximations are made: the path integral is evaluated in a saddle point approximation, and only the leading (least action) extremum is taken into account. In (2+1)-dimensional gravity with a negative cosmological constant, the second assumption is shown to lead to incorrect results: although the leading extremum gives the most important single contribution to the path integral, topologically inequivalent instantons with larger actions occur in great enough numbers to predominate. One can thus say that in 2+1 dimensions --- and possibly in 3+1 dimensions as well --- entropy dominates action in the gravitational path integral.Comment: 17 page

The low-lying excitations of polydiacetylene

The Pariser-Parr-Pople Hamiltonian is used to calculate and identify the nature of the low-lying vertical transition energies of polydiacetylene. The model is solved using the density matrix renormalisation group method for a fixed acetylenic geometry for chains of up to 102 atoms. The non-linear optical properties of polydiacetylene are considered, which are determined by the third-order susceptibility. The experimental 1Bu data of Giesa and Schultz are used as the geometric model for the calculation. For short chains, the calculated E(1Bu) agrees with the experimental value, within solvation effects (ca. 0.3 eV). The charge gap is used to characterise bound and unbound states. The nBu is above the charge gap and hence a continuum state; the 1Bu, 2Ag and mAg are not and hence are bound excitons. For large chain lengths, the nBu tends towards the charge gap as expected, strongly suggesting that the nBu is the conduction band edge. The conduction band edge for PDA is agreed in the literature to be ca. 3.0 eV. Accounting for the strong polarisation effects of the medium and polaron formation gives our calculated E(nBu) ca. 3.6 eV, with an exciton binding energy of ca. 1.0 eV. The 2Ag state is found to be above the 1Bu, which does not agree with relaxed transition experimental data. However, this could be resolved by including explicit lattice relaxation in the Pariser- Parr-Pople-Peierls model. Particle-hole separation data further suggest that the 1Bu, 2Ag and mAg are bound excitons, and that the nBu is an unbound exciton.Comment: LaTeX, 23 pages, 4 postscript tables and 8 postscript figure

Local Hidden Variables Underpinning of Entanglement and Teleportation

Entangled states whose Wigner functions are non-negative may be viewed as being accounted for by local hidden variables (LHV). Recently, there were studies of Bell's inequality violation (BIQV) for such states in conjunction with the well known theorem of Bell that precludes BIQV for theories that have LHV underpinning. We extend these studies to teleportation which is also based on entanglement. We investigate if, to what extent, and under what conditions may teleportation be accounted for via LHV theory. Our study allows us to expose the role of various quantum requirements. These are, e.g., the uncertainty relation among non-commuting operators, and the no-cloning theorem which forces the complete elimination of the teleported state at its initial port.Comment: 24 pages, 1 figure, accepted Found. Phy

Multidimensional Conservation Laws: Overview, Problems, and Perspective

Some of recent important developments are overviewed, several longstanding open problems are discussed, and a perspective is presented for the mathematical theory of multidimensional conservation laws. Some basic features and phenomena of multidimensional hyperbolic conservation laws are revealed, and some samples of multidimensional systems/models and related important problems are presented and analyzed with emphasis on the prototypes that have been solved or may be expected to be solved rigorously at least for some cases. In particular, multidimensional steady supersonic problems and transonic problems, shock reflection-diffraction problems, and related effective nonlinear approaches are analyzed. A theory of divergence-measure vector fields and related analytical frameworks for the analysis of entropy solutions are discussed.Comment: 43 pages, 3 figure