Industrial Management - May/June 2017

Contributors in this issue

Managing internet abuse in the workplace
By Dan Carrison
Internet abuse costs businesses an estimated $1 billion annually. Beyond that, security breaches often happen when employees surf the web for personal business while in their offices or cubicles. Controversial internet monitoring systems can help, but management must be careful to create conditions where your free-spirited workforce will accept such measures.

SEMS Says
By the Society for Engineering and Management Systems Board
Charlene Yauch surveys workers about the pleasures and pains of cellular manufacturing. Daren Maynard urges engineers to take their management and analytics skills to the political arena.

Why meaningful work matters
By Katie Bailey and Adrian Madden
Meaningful work is important for employees and employers, yet managers seem to do more to destroy meaning than they do to create it. In this article, we identify how employers can create an environment where employees can find meaning and the benefits this can bring.

Lessons from space for the global virtual workplace
By Vicki Flier Hudson
Today's workplace teams are likely to have members from all over the world. Differences in culture, language, accents and technology can be barriers to performance. But a number of tools derived from NASA's space program can bring your global virtual teams together. Adapt mission rules to handle different accents, tie things together with cultural intelligence and pay attention to the specifics of communication.

Partnership-based benchmarking
By William E. Hammer Jr.
Partnership-based benchmarking can be worth allocating the major resources necessary, leading to substantial process improvement that otherwise would not happen. Both organizations can benefit from a second set of process experts who are free from personal attachment to how you do business. Formerly overlooked opportunities can become your enterprise's next breakthrough idea.

10 factors for managing modular product platforms
By Günther Schuh, Stefan Rudolf, Michael Schiffer and Christian Tönnes
The explosion of consumer choice has forced manufacturers to find ways to offer multiple product options. One tool to accomplish this is modular product platforms, where enterprises build variants off a base model of a product. Modular product platforms can cause a host of problems. But research from RWTH Aachen University and the Complexity Management Academy has yielded 10 success factors that can help your enterprise design, control and implement modular product platforms.

How to find change and crisis management leaders
By Terry Gallagher
Many business leaders made their name leading companies to years of stable, steady growth. But in a fast-changing world, that might not be enough. The pace of market change is breathtaking, and your organization needs executives who can handle crisis and change management. Look for leaders who have chased moving targets, consider someone from outside your company or even your sector, ask the right questions and find executives who previously navigated the storms of change.