Archive for March 1st, 2009
Introspection: What Design? (#55)
Posted on: March 1, 2009
Designing what? The Human Factors Concept
The bottom line in industrial engineering is to design a system that would optimize production, inventory, distribution, material handling by maximizing profit or minimizing cost or finding a trade-off that would satisfy the marketing department, the shareholders, the after sale, the union, the consumer product, and the health and safety agencies and so forth.
Now we can recognize that optimizing a system involves inter-relationship among various interested groups of people. The inter-relationship with consumers, operators, employees, workers, management, and shareholders requires a good understanding of the research done in psychology, sociology, marketing, econometrics and other social studies. This fact is anathema to mathematical solutions that do not consider constraints on human needs, demands, safety and health regulations and specifications, and variability in capabilities and limitations and ethnic idiosyncrasies.
Can industrial engineering discipline be of any aid to small and family based businesses and industries with limited financial resources and marketing scope? It should be of aid if the boss is an industrial engineer but my opinion is that this discipline is geared toward large industrial complex that hires many employees and workers even if many sections are automated. Designing an optimum system of production without serious awareness of the research done in the consequences of shift work, pay rate, sleep deprivation, and the political infighting among departments, management, syndicates and employees is tantamount to failure. We can understand that there are many strong and interesting interactions among industrial, social, psychological and business administration fields.
Whether we like it or not human factors engineering that studies the capabilities and variability of the human element, his health and safety and risk taking tendencies or avoidance should be an intrinsic part of designing work production. The reality is that companies are wary of hiring generalists such as industrial or human factors engineers for the benefit of specific specialties that are much more in demand because they are better known, even if a global view and comprehension of a system can, in the medium and long terms, deliver much better performance in production, minimizing lost work days, turnover, human aches and pains, emotionally and physically.
Private companies conjecture that they cannot afford human factors engineers whose jobs are designing interfaces for end users to interact efficiently with complex systems; this is partly true because experimenting with human subjects is time consuming and very costly when dealing with the innumerable variables involved in studying the behavior of workers, employees, engineers and consumers.
I like the current tendency to label industrial engineering as engineering management because the scope matches the management requirement and responsibilities and avoid the connotation with mechanical design and fabrication.
Bi-Weekly Report (#13) on the Middle East and Lebanon (March 1, 2009)
The US Administration has usurped President Obama authority and squandered his promises to fight racism and apartheid systems for a just and peaceful world.
First, this US Administration has declined to join the world conference to fight racism and apartheid on the ground that Israel would be very displeased since the conference would discuss the Zionist State genocide activities in the Palestinian Gaza and the West Bank territories. What the US Administration wants the world to comprehend is that any criticism of the Zionist State is invariably anti-Semitic.
Second, the policies of this administration are no different of the Bush Junior administration concerning the Middle East; this administration wants the world to understand that the mistakes of the previous administration were in matter of negotiation procedures and technicality. So far, this administration has refrained of any dialogue with Hamas and the Palestinian resistance factions who won in a democratically election.
Third, this administration is still resuming air strikes against civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan, confirming the Bush Junior orders for accepting “collateral damage” strategy.
Fourth, the heavy funding of under performing private multinational institutions is resuming the same Bush Junior trend.
Israel is trying to accommodate new realities. When the US President Eisenhower checked Israel expansionist policies in the sixties the Zionist State adopted a containment strategy of the Arab States: it allied with Turkey, Iran, and Ethiopia. Now that its former allies are no longer in the mood of alienating the Arab States for the sake of blue eyed Jewish Ashkenazi then Israel has attempted to divide the Arab States between the “Moderate” (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and Tunisia) and the Radical parties such as Syria, Hezbollah, and Palestinian Hamas. Since when was the dark Wahhabi regime in Saudi Arabia been moderate? How can dictatorial regimes in Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia be considered moderate?
Lebanon has always been the political barometer of the feud and animosities among the Arab States. Each major Arab State funds a Lebanese party with the purpose of sending political messages by destabilizing our security and peaceful coexistence. After the Dawha agreement Lebanon enjoyed a period of “entente” among the political leaders and then it is degrading again as Saudi Arabia and Egypt are trying to force the hands of Syria for taming Hezbollah and Hamas.
The allies to the Hariri clan want the Lebanese to believe that the opposition is scare shit of the scarecrow of the International Tribunal that might take 6 years of deliberation if funding is secured and that our bankrupt government is to bare 49% of the expenses, which means never. The majority of the Lebanese have known for many years that the mastermind behind the assassination of Rafic Hariri are the US, France, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. In fact, these States are among the 10 states that refused to cooperate with the investigation in providing information and intelligence data!
For the time being, the Lebanese have no public electricity, no ministry for planning and reforms, no productive economy, and no plans to absorb the thousands of expatriate Lebanese who lost their jobs and businesses abroad in this world recession.
Adonis Diaries 