Diagnosing Macroergonomic Problems: A Case Study in the Use of Concept Mapping for TQM Initiatives

1993 ◽  
Vol 37 (12) ◽  
pp. 873-876 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian S. Zaff ◽  
Edward R. Hughes ◽  
Michael D. McNeese ◽  
Clifford E. Brown ◽  
Maryalice Citera
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Acquisition ◽  
Concept Mapping ◽  
Graphical Representation ◽  
Team Building ◽  
Mapping Technique ◽  
Total Quality ◽  
Group Setting ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Domain Experts

This paper presents the results from a case study involving the use of concept mapping in a Total Quality Management (TQM) program. Concept mapping is a knowledge acquisition technique that has proven successful in a variety of instances when it was necessary to elicit information directly from domain experts and communicate that information to other individuals needing the information. The concept mapping technique produces, during the course of an interview, a graphical representation that becomes a communications medium through which ideas can be easily shared in a group setting. In TQM programs it may be necessary to elicit detailed information from employees about the nature of their work domain and about the various problems they may be encountering. The success of TQM programs often depends on establishing open lines of communications through which employees can articulate their concerns and upon the ability of TQM team members to uncover hard-to-detect problems. Concept mapping proved successful in the TQM setting. The concept mapping technique facilitated the uncovering of insights that were not obvious to the TQM team during their initial brainstorming sessions or from the use of a survey. In addition it appears that the concept mapping technique has other significant TQM advantages over and above its utility as a knowledge elicitation technique. Concept mapping, not only facilitates user-centered knowledge acquisition, but also appears useful as a means of facilitating team-building.

The Role of a Group-Centered Approach in the Development of Computer-Supported Collaborative Design Technologies

1992 ◽  
Vol 36 (11) ◽  
pp. 867-871 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael D. McNeese ◽  
Brian S. Zaff ◽  
Clifford E. Brown ◽  
Maryalice Citera ◽  
A. Rodney Wellens
Keyword(s):  
Concept Mapping ◽  
Collaborative Design ◽  
Collaborative Work ◽  
Mapping Technique ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Collaborative Groups ◽  
Computer Supported Collaborative Work ◽  
Advanced Knowledge ◽  
Collaboration Process

Collaborative groups, by their very nature, involve the interactions of many participants which can vary in time, place, culture, knowledge, and ability. The design of collaborative technology for work groups must occur in conjunction with the users while avoiding the dangers of technology-centered product development. This paper focuses on applying a group-centered approach to the development of Computer-Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) products. This approach emphasizes the importance of team members” participation in the design process such that the resulting technology is centered around the users” needs and capabilities. By allowing collaborative groups to elaborate on real issues related to their actual work context, and to suggest specific ways to improve their work, a group-centered approach to the design of CSCW systems can be realized. The utilization of the Advanced Knowledge And Design Acquisition Methodology (AKADAM), consisting of concept mapping and design storyboarding techniques, was suggested as a basis for achieving this level of team participation. The concept mapping technique elicited insights into the collaboration process, identified problem areas, and generated suggestions for improving group work. With the aid of the design storyboarding technique, these suggestions for improvement can be directly translated into CSCW tools.

CoStorm: a term map system to aid in a collaborative ideation process

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (03) ◽  
pp. 247-258
Author(s):  
Chengwei Zhang ◽  
Marcelo López-Parra ◽  
Junyu Chen ◽  
Ling Tian
Keyword(s):  
Graphical Representation ◽  
Idea Generation ◽  
Significant Information ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Software Application ◽  
Crucial Component ◽  
Huge Impact ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Term Map

AbstractThe decisions made during the early stages of a design process have a huge impact on a product. Owing to the explosion of preliminary ideas, however, designers easily lose track of important ideas and significant information and end up being buried in a pile of plain words. Failing to locate an idea in the context of idea generation makes it difficult to generate new ideas or take optimized decisions. In this study, the authors propose the term map approach to provide a complete bird's eye view of all ideas, which is a higher-dimension graphical representation that helps in inspiring ideas and making decisions among design team members. A software application named CoStorm is developed. Through the case study of the cash-flattener module, which is a crucial component of an automated teller machine, this method is found to contribute in facilitating the ideation and decision-making progress.

scholarly journals Relationship Building in Virtual Teams: An Academic Case Study

10.28945/3046 ◽  
2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathy Egea
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Teams ◽  
Time Pressure ◽  
Team Building ◽  
Relationship Building ◽  
Social Mechanisms ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Design Concepts ◽  
Team Functioning ◽  
Team Trust

Information Technology (IT) provides the infrastructure for communication and collaboration tools for virtual teams, but Henttonen and Blomqvist (2005) suggest that it is the relational communication and factors of trust, commitment and communication that attention. This case study presents a team building strategy for such interaction. Off-campus students in an undergraduate course apply technological design concepts for social mechanisms in communication and collaboration to virtual teamwork. Students utilise the themes of conversation, awareness and coordination and document their reflection on their use over the team lifecycle. All functioning teams indicated that these social mechanisms helped to build team trust and commitment. Seventy-two percent of students indicated positive team experience, despite constraints of workload, time pressure, technology tools, distance and uncooperative team members. This study argues that use of guided and iterative reflections on social mechanisms support virtual team functioning and strengthen relationships.

A knowledge-based model for managing the ontology evolution: case study of maintenance in SONATRACH

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 529-553
Author(s):  
Nawal Sad-Houari ◽  
Noria Taghezout ◽  
Aissa Nador
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Knowledge Acquisition ◽  
Web Ontology Language ◽  
Conceptual Level ◽  
Business Rules ◽  
Domain Experts ◽  
Knowledge Based ◽  
Ontology Language ◽  
The Impact

The challenges of the development of a suitable ontology scheme in decision-making environment should be taken in conjunction with the exploitation of more recent technologies. It is expected that the use of ontologies will lead to the construction of more intelligent applications, allowing them to work more specifically at a human conceptual level. We propose in this article an approach that analyses the impact of changes in the ontology on business rules in order to detect inconsistencies that may be generated. In addition, the developed tool provides solutions to repair inconsistencies with the help of domain experts. In our work, business rules are edited from the concepts and properties that are stored in an OWL (Web Ontology Language) ontology named OntoloG. This latter is implemented throughout the use of Protégé 4.0.2.with the OWL sub-language. OntoloG has been developed by the knowledge acquisition from documents, collection and capitalisation of business rules process with experts in SONATRACH AVAL.

scholarly journals Investigating Impacts of Team-Building and Organisational Leadership on Corporate Productivity: Case Study of Selected Employees in Osun State Nigeria

2020 ◽  
pp. 21-29
Author(s):  
Ulabor E. A. ◽  
Akande S. O. ◽  
Abiodun O. B.
Keyword(s):  
Pearson Correlation ◽  
Team Building ◽  
Large Population ◽  
Sampling Technique ◽  
Educational Background ◽  
Team Leader ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Common Goals ◽  
The Impact

The study investigates the impact of team building on organisational productivity. The objective of this study is to evaluate the impact of team building among the members of the selected case study and to assess the effect of training and retraining of team members on organisational productivity. The study also x-rayed the absence of team building in a workplace which led to low levels of turnover and productivity. the total population of the study was 750 while researcher employed Yaro Yamane sampling technique to select sample size of 261 because of the large population and hypothesis were tested using Pearson correlation. The finding revealed that if members of the team can work in synergy without considering the differences in the likes of level of educational background and others, the expected productivity will be very high. It was also observed that capabilities of team leader in carrying out the assigned task determined its output especially if the team leader understands the technical knowhow of job and he is friendly with co-team members with a lot of motivation, that this would definitely enhance employees’ efficiencies and productivities. The study recommends that team members should trust, support and respect one another individual differences in order to accomplish group common goals and tasks.

Knowledge-Based System for Major-Pieces Lifting Project Using MRM

2012 ◽  
Vol 170-173 ◽  
pp. 3260-3265
Author(s):  
Zhan Min Lv ◽  
Wei Yan ◽  
Jun Liang He ◽  
Dao Fang Chang
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Knowledge Acquisition ◽  
Matrix Representation ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Major Obstacle ◽  
Practical Application ◽  
Domain Experts ◽  
Knowledge Based System ◽  
Knowledge Based

Knowledge-based system (KBS) for major-pieces lifting projects can be useful for improving the level of decision-making. And it is important to use the knowledge acquired from domain experts to finish all kinds of projects for lifting major-pieces. Knowledge acquisition plays a critical role in constructing a KBS for major-pieces lifting project, also it is commonly regarded as a major obstacle and bottleneck in the process of designing and implementing a KBS. This paper presents a KBS model based on matrix representation and mapping (MRM) approach to facilitate the effectiveness of knowledge acquisition in constructing a KBS. A case study on practical application is employed to illustrate how the KBS works.

Maximizing Expertise and Collaboration to Support Students With Brain Injury: A Case Study in Speech-Language Pathology

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (6) ◽  
pp. 1267-1282
Author(s):  
Jessica Salley ◽  
Sarah Krusen ◽  
Margaret Lockovich ◽  
Bethany Wilson ◽  
Brenda Eagan-Johnson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Brain Injury ◽  
Medical Setting ◽  
Speech Language Pathology ◽  
Speech Language Pathologists ◽  
Team Members ◽  
School Activities ◽  
School Based ◽  
Language Pathology ◽  
Specialized Education

Purpose Through a hypothetical case study, this article aimed to describe an evidence-based approach for speech-language pathologists in managing students with moderate-to-severe traumatic brain injury (TBI), particularly within a formal statewide-supported school-based brain injury team model, such as the BrainSTEPS Brain Injury School Consulting Program operating in Pennsylvania and Colorado. Conclusion Upon transitioning from the medical setting back to school, children with TBI present with unique educational needs. Children with moderate-to-severe TBIs can demonstrate a range of strengths and deficits in speech, language, cognition, and feeding and swallowing, impacting their participation in various school activities. The specialized education, training, and insight of speech-language pathologists, in collaboration with multidisciplinary medical and educational team members, can enable the success of students with TBI when transitioning back to school postinjury ( DePompei & Blosser, 2019 ; DePompei & Tyler, 2018 ). This transition should focus on educational planning, implementation of strategies and supports, and postsecondary planning for vocations or higher education.

Soft Skills among Students: A Case Study of UiTM Cawangan Kelantan

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Muhammad Faizal Samat ◽  
Norazlan Annual ◽  
Raznee Atisya Md Rashidi
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
Unemployment Rate ◽  
Significant Influence ◽  
Education System ◽  
Communication Skill ◽  
Soft Skills ◽  
Team Building ◽  
Leadership Skill ◽  
Quality In Education

This article contributes to ongoing debates about soft skills among students. In 2017, the unemployment rate in Malaysia was at 3.42 percent as compared to 2.85 percent in 2014. Education system must aim towards employability and ensure quality in education to reduce the percentage of unemployment. Thus, this study aims to investigate the development of soft skills among students through co-curriculum activities in UiTM Cawangan Kelantan. The sample were 113 students from UiTM Cawangan Kelantan. Questionnaires adapted from previous research to measure the communication skill, problem solving skill, team building skill, leadership skill and soft development of soft skills among students through co-curriculum activities. SEM-PLS 3.0 were employed in this study. The findings revealed only team building skill has significant influence on developments of soft skills among students through co-curriculum activities. However, the study indicates that communication skill, problem solving skill and leadership skill are not significant towards development of soft skills among students through cocurriculum activities.

Corporate acceleration process: a systems psychodynamics perspective

2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (6) ◽  
pp. 1163-1180
Author(s):  
Piotr Wójcik ◽  
Krzysztof Obłój ◽  
Aleksandra Wąsowska ◽  
Szymon Wierciński
Keyword(s):  
Open Innovation ◽  
Negative Emotions ◽  
Acceleration Process ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Third Phase ◽  
Multiple Case ◽  
Social Defenses ◽  
Practical Implications

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the emotional dynamics of the corporate acceleration process, using the systems psychodynamics perspective.Design/methodology/approachThe study applies inductive multiple case study of embedded 10 cases of corporate acceleration, covering both incumbent and startup perspectives, occurring in the context of a corporate accelerator.FindingsWe find that (1) the process of corporate acceleration involves three phases, each of them is dominated by a different emotional state (hope, anxiety and acceptance), triggering different behavioral responses; (2) as a means to deal with negative emotions, entrepreneurs and corporate acceleration program's team members develop different mechanisms of dealing with contradictories in subsequent acceleration phases (defense and copying mechanisms), which are reflected in their behaviors. Coping mechanisms with goal reformulation (i.e. refocus from the officially declared “open innovation” goals toward mainly symbolic ones) is an effective strategy to manage negative emotions in third phase of the acceleration.Research limitations/implicationsOur sample is limited to two relatively similar accelerators established by telecom companies, and therefore, our theoretical and practical conclusions cannot be generalized.Practical implicationsWe supplement the studies of corporate accelerators that imply how to design them better and improve decision-making rules with recommendation that in order to improve their effectiveness in terms of learning and innovations, their managers need not only to learn how to manage structural and procedural differences but also how to overcome social defenses triggered by corporate–startups cooperation.Originality/valueBy documenting a multidimensional impact of acceleration process, and especially shedding light on psychodynamic aspects behind such liaisons, this paper contributes to richer understanding of corporate–startup relationships, typically examined through a rationalistic lens of strategy literature. The study contributes to interorganizational research and open innovation literature, by showing that corporate acceleration process is marked by phases based on the type of emotions intertwined with the nature and dynamism of its life cycle. It indicates how these emotions are managed depending on their type.

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