An expanded holistic model of healthy workplace practices

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to test whether supportive workspace design, cultivation of high-quality leader–member relationships and vision alignment explain incremental variance in job satisfaction, work engagement and overall life satisfaction beyond antecedents identified in an earlier model of healthy workplace practices. Design/methodology/approach This paper reports the results of a survey study with a diverse sample of 214 employees. Findings In a series of regression analyses, the findings revealed that supportive workspace design, cultivation of high-quality leader–member relationships and vision alignment each explain incremental variance in one or more outcome variables (job satisfaction, work engagement and overall life satisfaction) beyond that of antecedents identified in an earlier model of healthy workplace practices. Research limitations/implications The present study identifies additional important variables to consider when conducting future research on healthy workplace practices. Future research could use longitudinal or experimental designs to further investigate the causal direction of the relationships identified in the present paper. Practical implications Managers can implement the practices identified in this paper to improve employees’ work engagement, job satisfaction and overall life satisfaction. Social implications This paper offers insights about how to improve employees’ lives, and thus, the potential impact is far-reaching and meaningful. Originality/value This paper empirically assesses workplace variables that were not included in tests of the prior healthy workplace practices model.

The practical application of automatic vision alignment to the Internet of Things production line

This paper presents a new system in which automatic Vision Alignment was applied to the Internet of Things (IoT) production line to solve the problem of automatic assembling of screws and iron plates with holes. The position of screw holes are searched for by Machine Vision and transmitted to the robotic arm so that it could insert screws into holes. During this process, a swarm intelligence algorithm – Adaptive Multi-elite Wolf Pack Algorithm (AMWPA) – was used to recognize the holes. The experimental results show that the algorithm succeed in recognizing holes and has better global convergence and computational robustness.

Product Ownership Is a Team Sport

A number of agile brands downplay the need for business analysis and requirements management on agile projects, putting large store in the role of the Product Owner. This paper tackles some of the problems this misconception can result in and shows how effective product ownership almost always requires a team with a variety of skills and backgrounds to be effective. Product Ownership requires clarity of vision, alignment with organizational strategy, understanding of the development process and the ability to communicate with a wide variety of stakeholders across all levels both inside and outside the organization. The complexity of the role is most often more than a single person can (or should) cope with – effective product ownership requires a teamwork approach covering a variety of skills and knowledge.

Informed Governance

How can an organization be successful if it doesn't have clear objectives? If it does not know where to go, how can it plot a route? An organization without well-defined objectives is like a drifting ship, goes along with the winds, wherever it blows to. Defining objectives is of capital importance for good organizational performance and success, vision alignment and goal focusing. Their definition must follow strict requirements that guarantee relevance and accomplishment. Moreover, objectives must be set at all levels of the organization, so that everybody tracks the same route. This research proposes an approach to the way organizations define objectives. Based on principles of Organizational Engineering and the Portuguese Air Force's top-down structure and Mission, a model is proposed that takes into account relevant organizational elements needed to guarantee the objectives' pertinence. It also provides strategies that can be used to align them with the management levels.

Left in the Dust: Employee Constructions of Mission and Vision Ownership

Research on organizational mission and vision primarily has approached the concepts from managerial perspectives. This study employed a communicative constitution of organizations perspective to problematize the concepts of mission/vision alignment and assimilation and to focus on employee mission/vision ownership. The study sought to understand how employees construct ownership, that is, their ability to control, change, or contribute to mission and vision. A thematic analysis of 46 in-depth interviews with employees from 22 organizations revealed factors that impede employee ownership and those that facilitate it. The findings have important implications for understanding an employee’s role in the construction of organizational reality.

A Decade of High Accuracy Die Attach Equipment and Process Developments (Addressing Photonics Device Packaging Challenges)

Fueled by the Internet and nowadays unlimited connectivity expectations, the assembly of optoelectronic packages became a key element to enable the explosive growth in the communication field around the entire globe. The primary challenge in the field of advanced optoelectronics and photonic device packaging (e.g. laser diodes, VCSEL's, optical benches, lenses etc.) is to accurately align the different optical components in reference to each other for optimal optical device performance. This growing need for high precision die attach (<= 0.5um @ 3 sigma) systems and solutions at the shortest possible cycle times has been studied and implemented by AMICRA Microtechnologies. AMICRA's state of the art high accuracy automated assembly system solutions have been successfully used for over a decade in both a laboratory setup and a high volume manufacturing environment. From handling a large variety of substrate materials, thin and fragile chips with odd aspect ratios, lenses and other components, the flexible and dynamic vision alignment concept and the bonding process controls required to achieve high overall component placement accuracies has been AMCIRA's industry focus since the company's inception. While significant progress has been made to provide solutions for all communications and photonics applications there are currently still some challenges out there to be overcome, challenges that can also change on an application by application basis. Besides the technical challenges the cost effectiveness or cost per bond for those applications is a very critical overall success factor as well. This paper will elaborate on manufacturability concerns and equipment automation challenges associated with the key parameters of a Photonics applications high accuracy die attach process which, amongst others, not only require highly sophisticated vision alignment algorithms but also thermal transfer processes either using an eutectic process or a laser soldering technique. Given the ever shrinking packaging form factors, all of AMICRA's research and developments in the Photonics field have also been successfully introduced and applied in more traditional semiconductor applications which have an increasing need for high accuracy die attach.

A Vision Alignment Method Based on Improved Genetic Algorithm for IC Packaging

In order to improve the speed and accuracy of vision alignment for IC packaging, genetic algorithm and Otsu method are applied to vision alignment. According to the features of the image in IC packaging, an improved self-adaptive genetic algorithm combined with Otsu method is proposed in this paper, and the moment invariants method is used to carry out the remaining steps of vision alignment. Finally, experiments are undertaken by using a kind of IC chip, results show that the positioning error is less than 2μm, and the positioning time is less than 60ms.