Aashi Mital

Changing Trends in US Injury Profiles: Revisiting Non-Fatal Occupational Injury Statistics

The purpose of this paper is to review the current trends in non-fatal injury profiles of workers in the United States. It is generally accepted that occupational injury and illness rates are affected by many factors, such as the amount and quality of training, employee turnover rates, work experience, extent of mechanization and automation, job-related parameters, and worker gender. In the last decade, not only have the technologies used in the workplace changed significantly, there has been a greater awareness among employers and employees as to the importance of containing work injuries. Additionally, the extent of outsourcing for labor-intensive jobs has increased dramatically owing to cheaper labor costs in places such as China and Mexico. These changes have affected the manufacturing sector of US industry more than any other sector. How these changes have influenced the injury and illness profiles of the American worker is of considerable interest given the increased attention paid to work-workplace design, injury hazard control, and ergonomics in general. In this paper, we compare the injury and illness profiles of US workers separated by nearly a decade. The trends from early 1990s are compared to those from early 2000s. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics were used to compile the injury statistics. The results of our comparison show that while the absolute numbers of work-related injuries and illnesses have declined over the last 10 years, the basic trends associated with different factors remain almost unchanged. The reasons for this decline are discussed in this paper.

Chapter 7 – Designing for Assembly and Disassembly

Publisher Summary A product more often than not is the assemblage of various individual components. The spatial alignment between functionally important components is what makes the product function. This chapter emphasizes the importance of designing for ease of assembly and disassembly. Assembly of a product is a function of design parameters that are both intensive (material properties) and extensive (physical attributes) in nature. Its design parameters include shape, size, material compatibility, flexibility, and thermal conductivity. When individual components are manufactured with ease of assembly in mind, the result is a significant reduction in assembly lead times and savings in resources (both material and human). It is imperative that each component be designed in such as way as to align efficiently. This entails the design and processing of the component in a specific manner with respect to shape, size, tolerances, and surface finish. On the other hand, disassembly is the organized process of taking apart a systematically assembled product to enable maintenance, enhance serviceability, and/or to affect end of life objectives, such as product reuse, remanufacture, and recycling. It is not necessarily the opposite of assembly. Components need to be designed for disassembly so that the process can be effected without damage to the parts’ intensive and extensive properties. Its importance can be attributed to growing scarcity of natural resources, increased processing costs for virgin materials (such as mining iron ore for steel manufacturing), and environmental legislation to make manufacturers more responsible with regard to waste disposal.

Chapter 10 – Design for Usability

Publisher Summary n an increasingly competitive world, design lead time is on a continuous decline in an ever increasing push to get new products to market quicker. This means that the onus is now on the manufacturer to develop a highly usable product right the first time. The process of designing and manufacturing consumer products is influenced greatly by the needs and demands of the customers. This chapter provides an introduction to the concept of design for usability and suggests measures aimed at product usability. The checklist-based approach provides a heuristic method to tell designers what to expect in a product to adopt the most appropriate design and relate manufacturing processes to user requirements. Case studies and questionnaires are developed and tested for usability dimensions. The practical implication of the overall usability score is that it can be used as a criterion for product selection. The score does not study the influence such measures have on product cost. In this day and age, products need to be made usable by making them environmentally friendly, emphasizing energy efficiency, recyclability, and disposability. Therefore, all life-cycle phases of a product need to be considered simultaneously in determining the usability: design, production, distribution, usage, maintenance, and disposal/recycling.

Designing for Assembly and Disassembly

A product more often than not is the assemblage of various individual components. The spatial alignment between functionally important components is what makes the product function. This chapter emphasizes the importance of designing for ease of assembly and disassembly. Assembly of a product is a function of design parameters that are both intensive (material properties) and extensive (physical attributes) in nature. Its design parameters include shape, size, material compatibility, flexibility, and thermal conductivity. When individual components are manufactured with ease of assembly in mind, the result is a significant reduction in assembly lead times and savings in resources (both material and human). It is imperative that each component be designed in such as way as to align efficiently. This entails the design and processing of the component in a specific manner with respect to shape, size, tolerances, and surface finish. On the other hand, disassembly is the organized process of taking apart a systematically assembled product to enable maintenance, enhance serviceability, and/or to affect end of life objectives, such as product reuse, remanufacture, and recycling. It is not necessarily the opposite of assembly. Components need to be designed for disassembly so that the process can be effected without damage to the parts’ intensive and extensive properties. Its importance can be attributed to growing scarcity of natural resources, increased processing costs for virgin materials (such as mining iron ore for steel manufacturing), and environmental legislation to make manufacturers more responsible with regard to waste disposal.

Concurrent Consideration of Product Usability and Functionality

It can be stated that the methodology presented in this chapter can be successfully applied to ensure the functionality of a complex consumer product with relatively few interface elements. As far as usability is concerned, some users did not concur with some of the proposed design guidelines, while some considered the section incomplete, resulting in a poor correlation between average and overall values. Thus, the usability guidelines could be improved further with a more thorough analysis.

Chapter 11 – Establishing the Product Selling Price

Publisher Summary This chapter summarizes methods and requirements for product cost estimation and pricing. Cost estimation is necessary for determining the economic advantage of the business, which determines the ability of a company to be competitive. It is an established fact and a routine activity critical to be determined for profitability. The second step is the establishment of product selling price which is gained by the addition of profitability factor to the cost. In addition to recovering the cost of business activities, profits must be sufficient to pay taxes (local, state, and national), dividends to stockholders, interest on borrowed capital, research and development funding, reinvestment in upkeep and modernization, and investment in exploring other options. The ramifications of poor or inaccurate selling price after cost estimation can be very serious, ranging from product withdrawal to business bankruptcy. Cost estimation requires a diverse background on the part of the cost estimator; at the very least, the person should have a background in business, economics, finance, and engineering. It is very unlikely that one person would have all the necessary tools for this purpose, and as a result, estimating cost is often done by a team. The techniques used in cost estimation come from different engineering disciplines as well. For instance, time study is the purview of industrial engineers, while estimating machining times from theoretical models may require expertise in manufacturing engineering. Estimating costs from theoretical models or design/cost optimization may fall in the realm of mechanical engineers and operations researchers.

Chapter 13 – Planning the Product Manufacturing Facility

Publisher Summary The facilities design problem deals with either improving an existing facility to manufacture the product or developing a new facility for that purpose. This chapter provides a brief overview of the entire product design, development, and manufacturing spectrum, particularly the new facilities planning procedure. Facility planning can be divided into two distinct components: facility location and facility design. The first component deals with the determination of the physical location of the manufacturing facility; the second component deals with the actual design of the manufacturing facility. The process includes determination of the location of the manufacturing facility in relationship to the customer and the actual design of the manufacturing facility. The actual design of the facility includes the physical layout of the manufacturing equipment and the design of the material handling system (both between and at the equipment). Primarily, there are two kinds of manufacturing facilities. The first kind is a job shop production facility, suitable for a company that produces many kinds of products but in small quantities. Such a facility requires a collection of general-purpose equipment, highly skilled labor, and general tooling and fixtures. Similar machines typically are grouped together within the plant to form a department and products move from department to department as the manufacturing sequence requires. The second kind of manufacturing facility is dedicated to mass (high-volume) production. The entire facility and its equipment are dedicated to the production of a single product. The equipment is specialized and operates at great speed. There are some variations to these two basic kinds of manufacturing facilities, which are discussed.

Chapter 4 – Design Review: Designing to Ensure Quality

Publisher Summary Quality constitutes a crucial component in the product design process, directly affecting consumer loyalty and company profitability. The creativity in product design and process selection is the critical component in ensuring quality in the product and its associated processes. This chapter focuses on the need to integrate quality into product design and the design review process. Historically, manufacturing enterprises relied on the reactive approach of inspecting the quality of a product to ensure it conforms to design specifications. While this approach has its own advantages, its principal limitation lies in the manufacturers’ implicit resignation to the fact that quality needs to be inspected since it cannot be built into the product design at the design stage. There has been a gradual yet definite transition from a reactive to a proactive strategy to managing quality by incorporating design techniques that do away with the largely unproductive inspection process. Several leading manufacturing enterprises have been successful in entirely eliminating the need to inspect by adopting a proactive approach to product design. Some frequently used proactive quality control techniques used to solve problems in industry are analyzed: design for six sigma, mistake proofing (poka-yoke), quality function deployment, design review, etc.

Chapter 2 – Developing Successful Products

Publisher Summary Product development is the overall process of conceptualizing a product and designing, producing, and selling it. Successful companies in the business world constantly operate in a state of innovation in terms of products they manufacture, frequently introducing new products or modifying and improving existing products as needed and desired by the customers. chapter discusses the initial steps and attributes of a successful product development process, the commonality among successful new products, steps necessary to develop a successful portfolio of products, identification of customer and market needs, and development of plans for a new product development. The key in the process is the information that indicates what people want, what features of the product are considered absolutely essential, what price they are willing to pay for it, what features are desirable but can be sacrificed for a lower price, current and potential competitors, and likely changes in the market size. A step-by-step procedure for developing new-to-market products is described. The critical steps in this procedure include developing a consumer and market-friendly business strategy, identifying consumer needs, and recognizing market conditions. The outcome of the process is a concise, preferably a single page, product development plan. This overall process requires the participation of a number of individuals with a multitude of expertise. One individual single-handedly cannot accomplish this task of successful product development.

Chapter 8 – Designing for Maintenance

Publisher Summary Modern complex systems and products involve a major load on maintenance and support resources, in terms of both personnel and cost. Efforts need to be made to reduce maintenance requirements for newly introduced systems and equipments. Maintenance analysis during the design, acquisition, and selection phase ensures that maintenance requirements are minimized in the future. This chapter deals with the ease of maintenance of single products as well as an assemblage of interlinked products (systems). All maintenance concepts and procedures dealing with equipment or systems are equally applicable to single consumer products. The need for product maintenance, variety of commercially available consumer products, and distinction among different methods of product maintenance are examined. Several terms and methods associated with designing for product maintenance provide information regarding the variety of approaches adopted to facilitate product design for ease of maintenance. The practical utility of each methodology is scrutinized to examine its value in dealing with real-world situations when the product, equipment, and systems are operating in the field. Designing equipment for maintenance is practiced more as an art than as a science, to the extent that it has evolved to a greater extent as a result of common sense than by means of scientific investigation. Maintenance is the most expensive of all human-machine system activities. This is because of the increasing need to perform maintenance activities and the high and ever increasing cost of human labor.