The author investigated the application of lean management system in production enterprises and highlighted the main differences between traditional management and lean management systems. Many classical qualitative methods are used for benchmarking both systems. However, classic techniques consider costs accumulation but do not include time…

Occupational expertise has always been constituted and afforded recognition and status in work contexts, however, these contexts are becoming increasingly interconnected and interrelated, underpinned by, 'intangible assets'. To explore this complex process and its implications for vocational education and training (VET), this article uses the…

Jobs in the manufacturing sector have been largely relocated to countries offering a competitive advantage, particularly in terms of labour costs. For this reason, mid-career workers from this sector and from western countries have been largely displaced. These mid-career workers from the manufacturing sector are subsequently forced to compete for…

Instrumentation plays a vital role in almost every area of chemistry. As such, it is imperative that the undergraduate curriculum is designed to allow students to have opportunities to use a variety of instruments to best prepare them for careers in chemistry. Previous work has provided evidence of the types of instruments students use in…

Within the context of 'Industry 4.0', work organisation and work processes will change, along with ongoing automation and real-time oriented control of production. The same is true for work contents and the interaction and communication between humans and technology, which entail many consequences for users and providers throughout the entire…

Manufacturing in advanced open economies has experienced significant disruption. Rapid technological change, outsourcing and off shoring have beset manufacturing resulting in a general and steady decline in manufacturing employment. Despite this turbulence, there remains a strong nostalgia for manufacturing resulting in frequent public policy…

The Factories Act of 2004, the Employee Compensation Act of 2010, the Minerals Oil Safety Regulation of 1999 and the Harmful Waste Act of 2004 are pieces of legislation that included provisions for the safety, health and welfare of Nigerian workers beyond the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999, and the Labour Act of 2004. This…

GPS Education Partners (GPSEd) is a community-based nonprofit organization and work-based learning intermediary offering a statewide manufacturing youth apprenticeship in Wisconsin. During their one to two years in the program, students meet high school graduation requirements, receive industry-specific and job-specific training, technical…

In contrast to the observed convergence in incomes between high- and low-income areas throughout much of the 20th century, recent decades have seen an increased clustering of economic activity that has led to diverging fortunes of different places. This phenomenon has revived interest in place-based policies that seek to revitalize lagging…

India is one of the fastest growing major economies and has a burgeoning young workforce. The average age in India will be 29 years by 2020. Given the limitations of absorbing growing labor force-- especially the unskilled and semi-skilled-- in service sector, focus has to be on spurring manufacturing growth to take advantage of this large pool of…

The authors review past and current funding/support for U.S. K-12 educational technology companies. They review both who provided the funding for product development and the reasons why. They look back to the 1960s and 1970s, when federal government agencies helped produce computer-based materials, then how the schools' access to technology…

Economic development, inclusive growth and high employability are significantly linked to education policy of a country. Beginning with Kothari Commission (1966) with its emphasis on science & technology and research to National Policy on Education (1986), several committees during the last decade have advocated for greater foreign…

Public policy discourses claim that there is a "crisis" in the literacy and numeracy levels of the Australian workforce. In this paper, we propose a methodology for examining this "crisis" from a critical perspective. We draw on findings from an ongoing research project by the authors which investigates production workers'…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the rationale for the lack of growth in the two-wheeler service sector despite an exponential growth in the number of two-wheelers on Indian roads. Design/methodology/approach: The data of a premier manufacturer were gathered to develop a system dynamics model. Policy experimentation was carried out…

The need to build a more robust workforce development pipeline is evident in the hundreds of thousands of job openings in our nation's advanced manufacturing industry. Rapid technological change has created a severe skills gap, compounded by a pending wave of retirements due to the aging of the workforce. These challenges are particularly…