In development organizations there is a strong interest for technology management. There seems to be a gap of understanding between managers and engineers. The managers often lack strategic leadership with the scope that engineers need for their development decisions, the engineers are often blamed for showing little interest in the business-value of what they are working on. In fact there are two issues involved here: culture and dynamics. Managers and engineers often lack a common language and understanding and they work with different time horizons. Their focus is different too. For the last decade managers have shown a strong interest in shareholders value. This is enhanced by stock-options, the shareholders perspective so coincides with their own interest. For the last decade the most effective way to increase stock-value was to grow through opening new markets. Lifting trade barriers (Eastern Europe, USSR, China) together with a significant reduction in transportation and communication cost, made it easy to do so. If new market knowledge or new technology was needed, the easy way was to buy that through mergers and acquisitions. These effects have reduced management interest in long term research. The focus of engineers is on systems and technology that will certainly have an impact on business yet to come, but not in the next quarter and most likely not even within the next year. The engineer's perception of risk is not that of financial risk, but of technology failing to meet the requirements. Research engineers can even turn a project failure into a research success if the project delivered substantial knowledge on the causes of technological failure. However, no business can be expected from these failures, unless the newly gained understanding offers new opportunities. It is obvious that this mutual misunderstanding between long- and short-term priorities can have disastrous side effects for both parties. Both will lack a mutual understanding of the long- and short-term needs of the business as a whole. Overcoming these cultural problems requires a common language. Although humans have the capacity of understanding without language, it is not very likely that this capacity will help engineers and managers to explain their differences in perspective, unless they are "forced" to meet and share experiences. Joint education and experience programs are often aimed at just that. These occasions serve as neutral territory to create a common culture that supports communications. What remains is the dynamics problem. To overcome the differences in dynamics, a production logistics metaphor is used that will lead to the introduction of decoupling points for development processes. The authors have named this knowledge logistics. In this paper, the concept of knowledge logistics is explained using the TAO-model(c) and is presented against a background of case histories.
{"title":"Strategic management of technology, the logic of knowledge logistics","authors":"B. Meijer","doi":"10.1109/EMS.2000.872486","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/EMS.2000.872486","url":null,"abstract":"In development organizations there is a strong interest for technology management. There seems to be a gap of understanding between managers and engineers. The managers often lack strategic leadership with the scope that engineers need for their development decisions, the engineers are often blamed for showing little interest in the business-value of what they are working on. In fact there are two issues involved here: culture and dynamics. Managers and engineers often lack a common language and understanding and they work with different time horizons. Their focus is different too. For the last decade managers have shown a strong interest in shareholders value. This is enhanced by stock-options, the shareholders perspective so coincides with their own interest. For the last decade the most effective way to increase stock-value was to grow through opening new markets. Lifting trade barriers (Eastern Europe, USSR, China) together with a significant reduction in transportation and communication cost, made it easy to do so. If new market knowledge or new technology was needed, the easy way was to buy that through mergers and acquisitions. These effects have reduced management interest in long term research. The focus of engineers is on systems and technology that will certainly have an impact on business yet to come, but not in the next quarter and most likely not even within the next year. The engineer's perception of risk is not that of financial risk, but of technology failing to meet the requirements. Research engineers can even turn a project failure into a research success if the project delivered substantial knowledge on the causes of technological failure. However, no business can be expected from these failures, unless the newly gained understanding offers new opportunities. It is obvious that this mutual misunderstanding between long- and short-term priorities can have disastrous side effects for both parties. Both will lack a mutual understanding of the long- and short-term needs of the business as a whole. Overcoming these cultural problems requires a common language. Although humans have the capacity of understanding without language, it is not very likely that this capacity will help engineers and managers to explain their differences in perspective, unless they are \"forced\" to meet and share experiences. Joint education and experience programs are often aimed at just that. These occasions serve as neutral territory to create a common culture that supports communications. What remains is the dynamics problem. To overcome the differences in dynamics, a production logistics metaphor is used that will lead to the introduction of decoupling points for development processes. The authors have named this knowledge logistics. In this paper, the concept of knowledge logistics is explained using the TAO-model(c) and is presented against a background of case histories.","PeriodicalId":440516,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 2000 IEEE Engineering Management Society. EMS - 2000 (Cat. No.00CH37139)","volume":"40 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2000-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123158715","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The purpose of the Berkeley project management process maturity model and an associated assessment methodology is to help organizations and people accomplish higher and more sophisticated PM maturity by a systematic and incremental approach. It measures, locates, and compares an organization's current PM maturity level. The primary advantage of using this model and industries, whereas other maturity models have specific audiences like software development or new product development. The maturity model and assessment technique has already been used to benchmark PM practices and processes in 43 companies. With it, they have also identified relationships between levels of organizational effectiveness and actual project performance data. The model is continuously being refined to reflect advances in their PM knowledge. Some of the most recent improvements include evaluating replicability of project success, which is the focus of this paper and presentation.
{"title":"The Berkeley project management process maturity model: measuring the value of project management","authors":"Y. Kwak, C. William","doi":"10.1109/EMS.2000.872466","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/EMS.2000.872466","url":null,"abstract":"The purpose of the Berkeley project management process maturity model and an associated assessment methodology is to help organizations and people accomplish higher and more sophisticated PM maturity by a systematic and incremental approach. It measures, locates, and compares an organization's current PM maturity level. The primary advantage of using this model and industries, whereas other maturity models have specific audiences like software development or new product development. The maturity model and assessment technique has already been used to benchmark PM practices and processes in 43 companies. With it, they have also identified relationships between levels of organizational effectiveness and actual project performance data. The model is continuously being refined to reflect advances in their PM knowledge. Some of the most recent improvements include evaluating replicability of project success, which is the focus of this paper and presentation.","PeriodicalId":440516,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 2000 IEEE Engineering Management Society. EMS - 2000 (Cat. No.00CH37139)","volume":"14 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2000-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128893352","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper focuses on effective pollution prevention, which requires the ability to decrease adverse environmental impacts at every stage of the life cycle of a given product. Since stronger environmental performance will increasingly constitute an asset, even an a priori requirement for selling products in international markets or qualifying as a supplier, firms will have to move faster along the product greening path. Further, firms that take full responsibility for the environmental impacts of their products from cradle to grave experience high levels of organizational learning. Based on empirical results from a survey of 368 environmentally responsible manufacturing firms, the paper investigates the impact of the environmental initiatives taken by those firms on their innovativeness and competitiveness.
{"title":"Environmental initiatives, innovativeness and competitiveness: some empirical evidence","authors":"É. Lefebvre, L. Lefebvre, S. Talbot","doi":"10.1109/EMS.2000.872587","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/EMS.2000.872587","url":null,"abstract":"This paper focuses on effective pollution prevention, which requires the ability to decrease adverse environmental impacts at every stage of the life cycle of a given product. Since stronger environmental performance will increasingly constitute an asset, even an a priori requirement for selling products in international markets or qualifying as a supplier, firms will have to move faster along the product greening path. Further, firms that take full responsibility for the environmental impacts of their products from cradle to grave experience high levels of organizational learning. Based on empirical results from a survey of 368 environmentally responsible manufacturing firms, the paper investigates the impact of the environmental initiatives taken by those firms on their innovativeness and competitiveness.","PeriodicalId":440516,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 2000 IEEE Engineering Management Society. EMS - 2000 (Cat. No.00CH37139)","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2000-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124407685","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Summary form only given. In this study, the authors propose the use of a de-escalation strategy to manage declining/dysfunctional marketing relationship. A de-escalation strategy is defined as any process that limits the growth of a relationship. It may take several forms, depending upon the severity of the relationship dysfunctionality. One end is the simple stagnation of interactions at the current (or a lower) level of activity, either indefinitely or until the errant situation is remedied. At the other end lies the most the most extreme example of de-escalation-a complete termination of the marketing relationship. While investigating this phenomenon, the authors discovered that de-escalation strategy varied with the type of partnership form. Preliminary qualitative interviews suggest that vendors, suppliers and alliance partners are allowed few transgressions before a relationship is terminated. Customers, on the other hand, are given a wider berth, and firms will only terminate their customer relationships if breaches of trust and commitment become patterned, or the violation is so severe that the relationship can never be repaired.
{"title":"Preventing escalation of commitment to dysfunctional marketing relationships: The unique case of customers","authors":"S. Sarin, S. Barlow-Hills","doi":"10.1109/EMS.2000.872543","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/EMS.2000.872543","url":null,"abstract":"Summary form only given. In this study, the authors propose the use of a de-escalation strategy to manage declining/dysfunctional marketing relationship. A de-escalation strategy is defined as any process that limits the growth of a relationship. It may take several forms, depending upon the severity of the relationship dysfunctionality. One end is the simple stagnation of interactions at the current (or a lower) level of activity, either indefinitely or until the errant situation is remedied. At the other end lies the most the most extreme example of de-escalation-a complete termination of the marketing relationship. While investigating this phenomenon, the authors discovered that de-escalation strategy varied with the type of partnership form. Preliminary qualitative interviews suggest that vendors, suppliers and alliance partners are allowed few transgressions before a relationship is terminated. Customers, on the other hand, are given a wider berth, and firms will only terminate their customer relationships if breaches of trust and commitment become patterned, or the violation is so severe that the relationship can never be repaired.","PeriodicalId":440516,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 2000 IEEE Engineering Management Society. EMS - 2000 (Cat. No.00CH37139)","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2000-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114369167","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper explores the relationship between corporate R&D spending and growth in stockholder value. Corporate R&D, at the macroeconomic level, amounts to controllable, discriminate, elective spending with the management intent of creating future revenue and profit opportunities for the firm. It is firmly established that different industries tend to have different levels of R&D investments as a percentage of revenue. Researchers have used R&D expenditures and their various measurable effects as proxies for inventive output in attempts to correlate current R&D efforts to future results of the firms within an industry. Other studies have significantly related announced increases in firm R&D expenditures to positive, short term share price response. However, less research is available that relates R&D spending to the firms' actual future returns to shareholders. In this study, R&D as a percent of revenue at the firm level within the computer industry is correlated to the return to shareholders in later years. The years 1992-1994 are used to set the firms' routine R&D spending levels as a percent of revenues. Stockholder returns by firm are calculated over the years 1993-1997 and are compared to the firms' R&D spending levels in the previous years. The computer industry was chosen for this study because of its fast paced rate of technology change. The results indicate that there is a statistically significant negative relationship between routine R&D spending intensity and the actual stockholder returns experienced in succeeding years.
{"title":"The relationship between R&D spending and shareholder returns in the computer industry","authors":"D. A. Mank, H.E. Nystrom","doi":"10.1109/EMS.2000.872553","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/EMS.2000.872553","url":null,"abstract":"This paper explores the relationship between corporate R&D spending and growth in stockholder value. Corporate R&D, at the macroeconomic level, amounts to controllable, discriminate, elective spending with the management intent of creating future revenue and profit opportunities for the firm. It is firmly established that different industries tend to have different levels of R&D investments as a percentage of revenue. Researchers have used R&D expenditures and their various measurable effects as proxies for inventive output in attempts to correlate current R&D efforts to future results of the firms within an industry. Other studies have significantly related announced increases in firm R&D expenditures to positive, short term share price response. However, less research is available that relates R&D spending to the firms' actual future returns to shareholders. In this study, R&D as a percent of revenue at the firm level within the computer industry is correlated to the return to shareholders in later years. The years 1992-1994 are used to set the firms' routine R&D spending levels as a percent of revenues. Stockholder returns by firm are calculated over the years 1993-1997 and are compared to the firms' R&D spending levels in the previous years. The computer industry was chosen for this study because of its fast paced rate of technology change. The results indicate that there is a statistically significant negative relationship between routine R&D spending intensity and the actual stockholder returns experienced in succeeding years.","PeriodicalId":440516,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 2000 IEEE Engineering Management Society. EMS - 2000 (Cat. No.00CH37139)","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2000-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116993662","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Complexity management is related to problem solving. The managers role is shifting from controlling all means to creating the environment and structure in which the means are employed most effectively. The manager's role changes from a focus on short-term deadlines and results to communicating long term goals and empowerment. This change in perspective is in it self a very powerful means in reducing the observed complexity. Even so, the processes of development and innovation still need speeding up. This can be achieved through implementing organization structures with network capabilities (network organizations). However in the end, problem solving comes down to creative processes that very much depend on thought processes of individuals, under the influence of the group or the environment in which they do their creative work. Knowledge fusion as part of knowledge management is aimed at just that-creating an environment in which knowledge communication can take place that supports individuals to perform their creative task. Apart from providing structure and offering focus and content, managers can have a positive influence on these processes, if they understand the possibilities and limitations of various modalities of human communication. In this paper creativity and teamwork theory is discussed as a tool to provide an inspiring environment for individuals. Furthermore Wittgenstein's theory on knowledge, communication and logic is used to make explicit why knowledge communication sometimes fails.
{"title":"A management attitude towards knowledge fusion and innovation","authors":"B. Meijer","doi":"10.1109/EMS.2000.872581","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/EMS.2000.872581","url":null,"abstract":"Complexity management is related to problem solving. The managers role is shifting from controlling all means to creating the environment and structure in which the means are employed most effectively. The manager's role changes from a focus on short-term deadlines and results to communicating long term goals and empowerment. This change in perspective is in it self a very powerful means in reducing the observed complexity. Even so, the processes of development and innovation still need speeding up. This can be achieved through implementing organization structures with network capabilities (network organizations). However in the end, problem solving comes down to creative processes that very much depend on thought processes of individuals, under the influence of the group or the environment in which they do their creative work. Knowledge fusion as part of knowledge management is aimed at just that-creating an environment in which knowledge communication can take place that supports individuals to perform their creative task. Apart from providing structure and offering focus and content, managers can have a positive influence on these processes, if they understand the possibilities and limitations of various modalities of human communication. In this paper creativity and teamwork theory is discussed as a tool to provide an inspiring environment for individuals. Furthermore Wittgenstein's theory on knowledge, communication and logic is used to make explicit why knowledge communication sometimes fails.","PeriodicalId":440516,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 2000 IEEE Engineering Management Society. EMS - 2000 (Cat. No.00CH37139)","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2000-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129804790","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Technological innovations make it easy to offer services and increase business productivity. In this article a technological innovation that was devised by Istanbul Municipality, a service association, is presented. With this innovation, Istanbul Municipality aims at modernising its public transportation services, wishing to offer high quality service to the people of Istanbul. This innovation increased the value of service that led to organisational effectiveness and productivity. Municipality management provides 8 different public transportation vehicles (private shuttle services are also available) which are; bus, sea-bus, steamboat, tunnel, tram, nostalgic tram, train, and subway. 25 different tickets have been used and current application causes people to waste their time and municipality to work inefficiently and counterfeit tickets are the main cause of financial losses of the municipality. After this experience municipality management decided to issue a unique ticket that would be acceptable in all public transportation vehicles. In 1994 the management issued a new smart ticket called "Akbil" and ran a trial in some transportation vehicles. Akbil is a kind of pre-coded and ciphered electrical ticket coated with steel. It runs on a lithium battery and uses RAM memory called TOM that is made of an electrical circuit. It lets the user recharge it if needed. Common use of this device started in 1995 in sea-bus, followed by the use in trains, tunnel, tram and subway in 1996. In 1999 people started to use it in all community transportation vehicles run by Istanbul municipality.
{"title":"The effect of technologies on the efficiency of services with an application in Turkey","authors":"Y. Fi̇dan","doi":"10.1109/EMS.2000.872506","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/EMS.2000.872506","url":null,"abstract":"Technological innovations make it easy to offer services and increase business productivity. In this article a technological innovation that was devised by Istanbul Municipality, a service association, is presented. With this innovation, Istanbul Municipality aims at modernising its public transportation services, wishing to offer high quality service to the people of Istanbul. This innovation increased the value of service that led to organisational effectiveness and productivity. Municipality management provides 8 different public transportation vehicles (private shuttle services are also available) which are; bus, sea-bus, steamboat, tunnel, tram, nostalgic tram, train, and subway. 25 different tickets have been used and current application causes people to waste their time and municipality to work inefficiently and counterfeit tickets are the main cause of financial losses of the municipality. After this experience municipality management decided to issue a unique ticket that would be acceptable in all public transportation vehicles. In 1994 the management issued a new smart ticket called \"Akbil\" and ran a trial in some transportation vehicles. Akbil is a kind of pre-coded and ciphered electrical ticket coated with steel. It runs on a lithium battery and uses RAM memory called TOM that is made of an electrical circuit. It lets the user recharge it if needed. Common use of this device started in 1995 in sea-bus, followed by the use in trains, tunnel, tram and subway in 1996. In 1999 people started to use it in all community transportation vehicles run by Istanbul municipality.","PeriodicalId":440516,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 2000 IEEE Engineering Management Society. EMS - 2000 (Cat. No.00CH37139)","volume":"13 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2000-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127150856","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Provisioning of avionics for commercial, government, and private aircraft is a critically important task to maintain reliable service levels in an era of increasing reliance on air transportation. In this paper we examine the evolving nature of parts provisioning for complex avionics systems in an environment where the supply chain is influenced by e-business technology that allows reliability data, inventory costs, and manufacturing issues to jointly affect the level of stocked parts. The availability of parts is a vitally important concern to keep expensive fleets of aircraft operational. We describe the basic provisioning problem for both existing and new aircraft and describe a simulation model that we have constructed to help us determine a realistic inventory level for thousands of components for numerous aircraft configurations. We show how simulation overcomes several limitations of traditional provisioning models.
{"title":"Provisioning avionics components in an e-business environment","authors":"W.H. Shaw, Y.E. Li","doi":"10.1109/EMS.2000.872556","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/EMS.2000.872556","url":null,"abstract":"Provisioning of avionics for commercial, government, and private aircraft is a critically important task to maintain reliable service levels in an era of increasing reliance on air transportation. In this paper we examine the evolving nature of parts provisioning for complex avionics systems in an environment where the supply chain is influenced by e-business technology that allows reliability data, inventory costs, and manufacturing issues to jointly affect the level of stocked parts. The availability of parts is a vitally important concern to keep expensive fleets of aircraft operational. We describe the basic provisioning problem for both existing and new aircraft and describe a simulation model that we have constructed to help us determine a realistic inventory level for thousands of components for numerous aircraft configurations. We show how simulation overcomes several limitations of traditional provisioning models.","PeriodicalId":440516,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 2000 IEEE Engineering Management Society. EMS - 2000 (Cat. No.00CH37139)","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2000-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125360789","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The cost of health care in the US has grown to 15 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). As a fraction of GDP, our health care costs are between 1.5 and 2 times that of the rest of the industrialized world. We are annually spending almost four times as much on health care as we spend on national defense and about 1.5 times what we spend on education. The average US expenditure on health care is over $4000 per person. On average, those over 65 years of age were charged $12000 per person for services and those over 85 years of age were charged about $20000 per person. Cost projections suggest that when the baby boomers reach their late 70s and 80s prior to the middle of the 21st century, US health care costs will soar to 25 percent of GDP. Health care spending is slowly eroding national savings, and as the population ages, this problem will continue to escalate. Unless the US Health care cost problem is solved, it can become the albatross that will bring our economy to its knees. ABET has set an objective for the future education of students that engineers should be aware of social problems and should assume a responsibility for their role in solving those problems. We propose here a series of remedies the engineering community should initiate to solve our largest looming crisis: the cost of health care.
{"title":"The engineer's role in averting the pending health care cost crisis","authors":"J. Gover, P. Huray","doi":"10.1109/EMS.2000.872589","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/EMS.2000.872589","url":null,"abstract":"The cost of health care in the US has grown to 15 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). As a fraction of GDP, our health care costs are between 1.5 and 2 times that of the rest of the industrialized world. We are annually spending almost four times as much on health care as we spend on national defense and about 1.5 times what we spend on education. The average US expenditure on health care is over $4000 per person. On average, those over 65 years of age were charged $12000 per person for services and those over 85 years of age were charged about $20000 per person. Cost projections suggest that when the baby boomers reach their late 70s and 80s prior to the middle of the 21st century, US health care costs will soar to 25 percent of GDP. Health care spending is slowly eroding national savings, and as the population ages, this problem will continue to escalate. Unless the US Health care cost problem is solved, it can become the albatross that will bring our economy to its knees. ABET has set an objective for the future education of students that engineers should be aware of social problems and should assume a responsibility for their role in solving those problems. We propose here a series of remedies the engineering community should initiate to solve our largest looming crisis: the cost of health care.","PeriodicalId":440516,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 2000 IEEE Engineering Management Society. EMS - 2000 (Cat. No.00CH37139)","volume":"96 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2000-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126886033","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper is intended to describe the way America Online Technologies Group managed the procurement of technical equipment while growing at a rate heretofore unparalleled by most, if not, all-comparable technology organizations. This paper discusses a paradigm shift in how procurement groups function in a rapidly changing technology environment. The Technology Procurement team was formed in early 1995 to help address the rapid growth of AOL. At that time, the company was just entering the hyper growth stage in which it remains even today. Since then, raised floor server requirements have grown from 16000 square feet to over 300000 square feet. During the same time frame, technology procurement has grown from two people to ten. Technology procurement also expanded its mission from just hardware to software and technical consultants. It was apparent very early that an extreme paradigm shift would be needed. Working with the senior management in technology, we developed a model where line technology managers assumed the primary role of technology procurement. We concluded that typical procurement departments tend to base buying decisions on price via the bid process. Sole source, if needed, was done on a case-by-case basis. We defined six variables that contributed to the procurement decision at America Online: scalability, compatibility, reliability, availability, price, and serviceability (SCRAPS).
{"title":"Technical procurement at Internet speed","authors":"J. Bisschoff, J. Forneris","doi":"10.1109/EMS.2000.872520","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/EMS.2000.872520","url":null,"abstract":"This paper is intended to describe the way America Online Technologies Group managed the procurement of technical equipment while growing at a rate heretofore unparalleled by most, if not, all-comparable technology organizations. This paper discusses a paradigm shift in how procurement groups function in a rapidly changing technology environment. The Technology Procurement team was formed in early 1995 to help address the rapid growth of AOL. At that time, the company was just entering the hyper growth stage in which it remains even today. Since then, raised floor server requirements have grown from 16000 square feet to over 300000 square feet. During the same time frame, technology procurement has grown from two people to ten. Technology procurement also expanded its mission from just hardware to software and technical consultants. It was apparent very early that an extreme paradigm shift would be needed. Working with the senior management in technology, we developed a model where line technology managers assumed the primary role of technology procurement. We concluded that typical procurement departments tend to base buying decisions on price via the bid process. Sole source, if needed, was done on a case-by-case basis. We defined six variables that contributed to the procurement decision at America Online: scalability, compatibility, reliability, availability, price, and serviceability (SCRAPS).","PeriodicalId":440516,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 2000 IEEE Engineering Management Society. EMS - 2000 (Cat. No.00CH37139)","volume":"123 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2000-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115761841","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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