This study aims to investigate the relationship between ergonomic comfort and the provision of accessibility features for mobility-impaired persons in the use of public transportation systems in Korea. To deal with mobility issues in a public transportation environment, we chose the low-floor bus as our research subject because it is the representative of a barrier-free design solution. We collected data via video observation, which can overcome the limitations of traditional accessibility-focused studies and laboratory studies by providing data on real usage patterns. We developed a framework to analyze the gathered data which includes user, space, tools, activities, and context. As a result, we observed existing difficulties of mobility-impaired persons in terms of moving and supporting their bodies on the bus, despite the application of accessibility features. Furthermore, the design only for accessibility of mobility-disabled persons can cause unexpected predicaments for the passengers who do not have physical handicaps. Drawing on these findings, we concluded that the concept of universal design in public transportation environments must be introduced in Korea. This study suggests video observation as a useful methodology for collecting data in dynamic environments. Additionally, our study is expected to contribute to how the concept of universal design can be implemented, and stimulate issues for ergonomic research based on our behavior pattern analysis.

Most of the research on the concept of “ageing-in-place” has focused on surveys of the needs of senior citizens and/or the quality of the services delivered to them. Service innovation for ageing-in-place has received little research attention, however. The present study addresses this issue by proposing a service innovation model for ageing-in-place. In this model, a TRIZ methodology is used to develop the parameter correspondence table, which integrates TRIZ contradiction parameters and ageing-in-place service-quality determinants, to deal with service contradiction. A TRIZ contradiction matrix is then applied to generate inventive solutions for the innovation of the ageing-in-place service system. A case study is also conducted to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed model.

This study analyses the behavioral, physiological, and psychological effects of digital manuals presented by a retinal imaging display (RID) on workers in the manufacturing industry. An RID consists of wearable glasses that enable users to view a digital image overlaying the real world. We conducted an experiment in which subjects assembled an object by referring to different types of manuals. The experimental results suggest that an RID enables users to conveniently examine real objects against information in the manual, reduces the information-processing load while performing tasks, and supports effortless performance of tasks. However, using a monochrome picture manual with an RID increases the information-processing load. On the other hand, a full-color RID movie manual generates additional responses in users, such as psychological satisfaction.

The main condition for the survival and development of contemporary enterprises is a focus on changes in the business environment. Business Process Management is a concept that enables efficient adaptation to changing business environment conditions. Currently, companies tend to focus on the process approach, using the knowledge that is available within the company. This paper presents research results related to knowledge management in Poland and to both Polish and worldwide practices of Business Process Management. This presentation is followed with a discussion that provides inspiration for in-depth empirical research in this field. Currently, there is an urgent need for research that addresses the challenging issues related to the integration of available knowledge management technologies, concepts, and methods into organizational business processes.

Video-based posture analysis employing a biomechanical model is gaining a growing popularity for ergonomic assessments. A human posture simulation method of estimating multiple body postural angles and spinal loads from a video record was developed to expedite ergonomic assessments. The method was evaluated by a repeated measures study design with three trunk flexion levels, two lift asymmetry levels, three viewing angles, and three trial repetitions as experimental factors. The study comprised two phases evaluating the accuracy of simulating self- and other people's lifting posture via a proxy of a computer-generated humanoid. The mean values of the accuracy of simulating self- and humanoid postures were 12° and 15°, respectively. The repeatability of the method for the same lifting condition was excellent (∼2°). The least simulation error was associated with side viewing angle. The estimated back compressive force and moment, calculated by a three-dimensional biomechanical model, exhibited a range of 5% underestimation. The posture simulation method enables researchers to quantify simultaneously body posture angles and spinal loading variables with accuracy and precision comparable to on-screen posture-matching methods.

The purpose of this study is to examine the degree and type of information the company holds on training, and to what extent the lack-of-information firms suffer in two senses, information on managerial resources and information on training supply, tends to condition their behavior vis-à-vis management training. Data from more than 300 Spanish companies with 50 or more workers are used to examine the connection between information asymmetries and company behavior in relation to continuous management training. The empirical study revealed that company readiness to engage in continuous management training appears to be significantly conditioned by all variables related to the existence of information on managers and training supply. Based on these results, underinvestment in managerial training would be associated with those cases in which information is unavailable or not distributed uniformly and transparently. This study contributes to the existing training literature by providing a novel link between information asymmetries (firm managers; firm training offerings) and their ability to influence training investment rates. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Employee suggestion systems are often used as a way to improve participation from members of the organization to help solve problems that cannot be solved through traditional organizational practices. In the government sector, employee involvement programs are the most difficult to implement mainly because management regularly changes with new administration and these changes bring about many short-term management practices and systems. Toyota's approach to employee suggestion programs has been widely benchmarked and studied, yet there is little research to show that these practices can be applied or are successful in the public sector. This work uses a statistical data-mining technique to compare which types of human resource management practices are prevalent in employee suggestion programs at Toyota and a target government organization. This work shows that Toyota emphasizes organization-centered factors to stimulate employee participation in solving small problems that relate to an employee's job. On the contrary, government organizations tend to emphasize employee factors that make conditions right for employees to make larger improvements in their jobs that lead to improvements outside their work areas. Findings suggest that Toyota's approach to employee suggestion programs is not a way to weaken management's obligation to perform problem solving, but instead is another medium to highlight problems that do not require management's intervention. These new insights and others provide an increased understanding of employee suggestion programs in the public sector that are unique to manufacturing. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

At sites with multiple employers, efficient safety management is essential to ensure safety for both customers and providers. However, implementing effective safety management is challenging, particularly for companies that provide services. Provider companies encounter difficulties managing the safety of service projects for many reasons, including the variety of customers and changes in work environment. Proper preparation and integration of safety into the different project life cycle stages improves safety, but the topic has not received much attention to date. This article discusses the integration of safety considerations into service projects. Material was collected from Finnish manufacturing companies via interviews and a questionnaire. The results show that systematic methods for developing and producing services have not been adopted in the provider companies, but these are often implemented as a result of practical experience. On the other hand, providers and customers both believed that safety is taken into account during different stages of a given service project—safety issues were to some extent taken into account during the tendering and contract stages of a project, and preventive safety measures were commonly implemented during the delivery of services. However, safety performance often was not evaluated after completion of work. For this reason, companies may not have an accurate estimation of each other's safety performance in these types of multi-employer situations. The results of this study can be used in provider organizations to help systematize safety considerations during service projects and to focus efforts on the most essential points of service project safety management. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

In recent decades, pharmaceutical companies have been facing increasing difficulties in sustaining sales growth due to tight market competition (off-patents, pricing erosion, and generics substitution). Pharmaceutical companies are desperately seeking ways to sustain and optimize their sales coverage and sales volume in the middle and long term. In such unpromising circumstances, one of the few options that comes to mind is customer relationship management (CRM). This study specifically looks at the “utilization-individual impact” link. In particular, this study aims to identify the personality type of sales representative most closely linked with individual usage of sales forces automation systems in the pharmaceutical industry in Taiwan. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The business model of coffee shop chains is to copy the successful environment of the first store. This study summarizes the elements and related impact factors of service quality strategies for coffee shop chains to provide a reference for future entrepreneurship. The fuzzy analytic hierarchy process method, which combines analytic hierarchy process and fuzzy set theory, allows for more accurate descriptions of the service quality evaluation process. Next, decision makers were invited to take part in the measurement of service quality for coffee shop chains. A questionnaire was used to collect quantitative data from 37 managers of coffee shop chains in Taiwan. Such findings underscore the importance of recognizing customers' varying preferences. This study tries to fill the gap by assessing the relative impact of service quality by considering various individual differences. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Recently, the Crossover B-Car interior has become very popular and provides some appealing characteristics. We probe users' needs for the interior of a vehicle and propose a draft resolution for interior design, space utilization, and variations in functionality for Crossover B-Car developers. This study explores the appeal of Crossover B-Car interiors from the perspectives of usability and functionality. We interviewed 14 experts, using the evaluation grid method (EGM) for expert evaluation to determine the semantic structure of appeal for Crossover B-Car interiors. Hence, a hierarchical diagram of Crossover B-Car interior preferences was created to determine the critical factors. We then surveyed 1100 users through a questionnaire. According to the following statistical analysis, appeal factors were affected in varying degrees by particular reasons and characteristics. The results are useful for the designers and researchers of Crossover B-Car interiors and also contribute to studies in the field of human factors and ergonomics. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

This article proposes the concept of social-affective product design to address the effects of product features on personal interactions. Using eyeglass frames as the target product, this study included a factorial experiment to evaluate design features concerning personality traits signified by facial shapes. The experiment involved extracting three representative types of facial shapes by sorting 60 photographs and constructing three-dimensional models to rate attractiveness. The study then analyzed participant responses according to three social-affective measures: approachability, assertiveness, and masculinity, evoked by faces wearing factorized eyeglass frames. Results show that increasing the levels of certain design features strengthens the impression of specific personality traits. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

It is extremely important for service personnel to have high ethical standards, be committed to the business, and be willing to serve customers well, as this can help their employer to gain a competitive advantage. This study adopted the Kano model and proposed a service ethics scale to explore service personnel's cognitive implications toward hotel service attributes and ethics. Based on a literature review and expert interviews, this study summarized 40 service ethics variables. A total of 438 responses from hotel service personnel were collected. Through factor analysis, seven dimensions (factors) of service ethic measurement were confirmed. The analytical results showed that hotel attributes within the “service attitude” and “room facilities” factors are evaluated as attractive and one-dimensional qualities by the service personnel with high ethical standards. Such attributes should thus be a focus of hotels to increase the level of customer satisfaction. Finally, the limitations and managerial implications of this work, as well as directions for future research, are also provided. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The purpose was to conduct an ergonomics improvement in the order selection process in a refrigerated dairy factory. The workers' task was to pick dairy products to fulfill orders. Plant walkthroughs, unstructured interviews, and direct observation methods were used to study the existing process and problems. Ergonomics intervention was made by introducing a wireless handheld scanning system. A field experiment was carried out to compare the conventional paper pick list with the new system. Results indicated that workers faced difficulty in the paper pick list system, that is, to grasp a clipboard, turn pages, and place marks while wearing thick gloves. The new system eliminated this problem, and because of its ergonomics visual and audio feedback properties and more efficient process, it increased productivity (by 8.4%) and workers' satisfaction, simplified tasks, improved work quality, and reduced delay in invoicing. Replicating the intervention, other process-based manufacturing companies may reap similar benefits. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The increasing proportion of the older population and changes in the Chinese family structure make older Chinese people more vulnerable to social isolation than they previously were. This article illustrates the development of a mobile social application for older people in urban areas in China. The application facilitates the organization of leisure-time activities between older people with similar interests living in adjacent areas. Preliminary social requirements of older people were collected through user interviews, and the major functions and features for the application were determined from the results of the interviews. Usability considerations for user interface design for older people were collected from literature and were integrated in the prototype of the mobile application. Older people's acceptance of the application was assessed by demonstrating the prototype to and interviewing 100 older people living in Beijing. The results highlight the critical impact of perceived benefits or relevancy on older people's adoption of new technology. Implications for the mobile social application for older Chinese people are discussed. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

In parallel to the social trend of green consumerism and well-being, the demand for naturally colored organic cotton (NaCOC) continually increases in the textile and clothing industry. The present study examined the effects of NaCOC color, scouring method, and age on the visual sensibility of NaCOC. Two age groups (20s and 30s; 40s and 50s) of women rated three color sets of NaCOC specimens (ivory, green, and coyote brown) treated by two chemical scouring methods (Na₂CO₃ and NaOH) and two bioscouring methods (enzyme and boiling water) using 7-point scales of nine visual sensibilities (bright-dark; clear-murky; heavy-light; vivid-subdued; warm-cool; fresh-stale; strong-weak; showy-plain; and luxurious-cheap). Preferred scouring methods by NaCOC color and/or age group were recommended for each visual sensibility (e.g., preferred scouring methods for fresh sensibility are Na₂CO₃ for ivory NaCOC, Na₂CO₃ and NaOH for green NaCOC, and boiling water for coyote brown NaCOC). In addition, the representative visual sensibilities of each NaCOC color (e.g., those of coyote brown NaCOC are dark, murky, heavy, vivid, warm, stale, strong, plain, and luxurious sensibilities) were identified for the women participants. Last, it was demonstrated that a bioscouring method can replace the traditional chemical methods for selected visual sensibilities (e.g., boiling water for luxurious sensibility). © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

In this article, we propose a grid rotation method for glove sizing to accommodate a greater fraction of the population with a given number of sizes. The method is based on the optimization of two geometric variables, the rotation degree and the number of grid points. Instead of applying a traditional tabulation method to the original samples, we apply the tabulation after rotating the sample points by a certain degree to improve coverage. We further optimize the grid points for the same purpose. Our results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. For the glove sizing system developed by the proposed grid rotation method, the coverage rate is increased by 2.3% compared to previous work for the same number of glove sizes. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The aim of this article is to study the learning processes that take place in an interactive research project, which involved university researchers as well as ergonomic practitioners. The project simultaneously developed and tested a new framework—designated Workspace Design—for intervention in workplace design processes in companies. The basic idea in Workspace Design was that ergonomists should take a new role and apply new participatory methods when involved as consultants. The course of the project was evaluated by the application of social learning theory. The goal was to find out if and why the ergonomic practitioners had learned to practice the new concept by themselves. The results confirm that learning to some extent took place with help from two different mechanisms: learning by interacting and learning by practicing. Three factors are of crucial importance to the successful transfer of a new framework to ergonomic practitioners: 1) the practitioners must take part in developing and testing the framework and the subsequent interpretation of results, 2) they must have the opportunity to practice the framework in the daily consultancy setting and then reflect on their experiences, and 3) their consultancy organization must be committed to adopt the new framework. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Seating comfort has always been a primary issue in the design of padded furniture pieces. This paper proposes a computational model-based methodology to assist the designer willing to take comfort into account as a primary requirement for padded furniture design. The methodology is based on a virtual mannequin, which can be tailored to reproduce the average target user, and the complete assembly of the main elements composing a typical armchair. Since contact pressure distribution is recognized to be strictly related to seating comfort perception, the contact occurring between these components, during the seating act, was simulated by means of a finite element solver and the resulting contact pressure distribution was computed. Several simulations were carried out with reference to a set of different armchair layout and materials; the obtained results showed a reasonable agreement with the experimental data recorded by means of a capacitive mat. Finally, by using an exemplificative criterion based on comfort-related pressure distribution parameters, the authors demonstrate the possibility of selecting the best-performing configurations prior to building a physical prototype. The proposed approach, tested on a complex seat and a wide range of possible materials, can be considered of general applicability since 1) the virtual mannequin, as opposed to what is reported in a number of scientific works, is not requested to closely resemble a single test subject, and 2) the selected seat structure and seat components encompass the most commonly used ones for this kind of product so that a few generally applicable considerations can be drawn. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Health care information technology (IT) systems manage administrative and clinical processes more accurately and efficiently. However, their effects on clinical work flow are still not fully understood. In this article, we investigate the bar-coded medication administration (BCMA) system for its effect on nurses working in inpatient departments. Evaluation is applied by examining work deficiencies before and after the IT system implementation based on a proposed nursing work model. A list of nurse-perceived risks of work deficiencies related to the current BCMA system has been identified. Results show five main deficiencies that are mainly related to aspects of the IT environment and work schedule/process, including increased workload, IT systems downtime, unclear orders/task schedules, reduced time for patient-care tasks, and redundant documentation. This study emphasizes the importance of understanding the reciprocal relationship between IT implementation and health care work system. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

With the growing usage of the Internet, the demand for online health care information and advice as well as the number of health-related Web sites are increasing. In case of online health information and advice, the user interface replaces face-to-face communication. To ensure that the users' needs are met, it is critical to balance functionality and usability in the design of the Web site. The present study seeks to identify the complex interrelationships among the various factors of usability and functionality concerning e-health Web sites. Two Turkish e-health Web sites were assessed for evaluation in this study. The findings show that the users of the health information Web sites give a higher priority to functionality and its factors, whereby the highest relative importance is on “services/facilities” and “personalization/categorization of information.” The most important usability factors related to the e-health Web sites are “memorability” and “interaction.” © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Many researchers consider absenteeism to be a significant problem for employers. Absenteeism lowers the overall level of worker expertise, which may affect product quality and trigger an increase in customer complaints. This research was carried out in a prominent automobile manufacturing company, with an assembly line–driven rigid production process. This article gathered customer quality complaints registered during the 17 months after cars were delivered to customers, from one year of car production, to analyze how employee absenteeism affects customer quality complaints. The empirical evidence presented by this research in the automotive industry confirms that absenteeism does not lead, necessarily, to a decrease in quality. This evidence must make organization redefine the value of their expert workers. Moreover, these results could have an impact on assembly-line design and the use of worker job-rotation programs for technologically sophisticated assembly lines. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Advances in the implementation of the European Higher Education Area have had a great impact on university environment and the process of design, evaluation, and implementation of new curricula. Identifying competence levels among students can help course organizers to improve both academic content and teaching/learning processes. The present study addresses this issue by examining the implementation of an Internet-based competency assessment tool. We analyze the status and evolution of soft skills among students on the Official Masters program Creating and Managing Innovative Technology-Based Companies at the University of Barcelona, using a tool known as Tricuspoid, specifically designed for evaluating entrepreneurial competences. The results show that the tool, first, enables students to identify their strong and weak points and to develop personal strategies for improvement; second, provides teachers with additional information about the effects of their input on student competences; and third, supplies useful information for quality management of the Master's programs, because it can detect trends in the training needs of new students and help to enhance content accordingly, and therefore match the design of the academic program to the requirements of labor market. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Pace rating has always been recognized and treated as difficult, subjective, and even controversial. Recently, a new idea of pace rating using video technology by showing work motions on a reference video and an actual (real-life) video simultaneously on a screen has been proposed. By adjusting the speed (and thus the pace) of the reference video, industrial engineers or workers without extensive background in time study can synchronize the motion patterns in both videos, thus quantifying the actual pace of the method under study using their visual sense. However, the impact of motion pattern compatibility between the two stimuli (work motions on the reference video and the actual video) has not been investigated in detail. In this study, we elaborate that motion pattern compatibility between the reference video and the actual video has a significant effect on correct determination of the response (the rated pace) in terms of both the accuracy and the precision. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Despite the popularity of web-based dietary interventions, there are few evidence-based, practical guidelines that help human–computer interaction (HCI) practitioners design new dietary intervention systems. We suspect that a lack of such guidelines is partly due to a chasm between two major research domains, healthcare and HCI. We believe that technologies developed in HCI are not used and evaluated by healthcare researchers, so we fail to accumulate experiences to develop guidelines. To assess the gap, we carefully selected 86 papers that employed and evaluated various web-based dietary interventions in both fields and analyzed general characteristics, behavior change strategies, intervention media, and research outcomes used in each paper. Through this review, we reaffirmed our belief about the discrepancies between healthcare and HCI, and additional findings helped us offer some suggestions to close the gap. We also identified several interesting patterns among behavior change strategies, intervention media, and outcomes that provide potential topics for future research. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

This study evaluated the postures that workers used to perform 18 different tasks at an electric iron assembly plant by classifying the common simultaneous and individual postures of eight upper body segments and the fingers. The postures of the head, upper arms, lower arms, hand, and trunk were assigned to the categories of “Neutral,” “Bend,” “Twist,” and “Invisible.” The finger postures were also assigned to 14 categories. Overall, most workers bent the head, lower arms, and hands and used power grips to wrap all fingers around parts and tools. The upper arms and trunk were in neutral positions because the workers stood at a conveyor belt. Among 18 tasks, the task of “setting temperature” seemed the lightest work because most body segments were in neutral positions for more than 54.6% of a cycle time, while the task of “palletizing” seemed the most stressful work because all body segments were bent more than 54.4% of a cycle time. These posture differences among the tasks result from the different task characteristics of workplace design, task difficulty, and work duration. It would be useful in designing workplace and evaluating physical workload. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Over the past few years, more and more Internet visitors are reaching websites through search engines rather than through direct links from another web page. Search engines have come to occupy a prominent position in the online world and are being used to find all kinds of information including things, events, people, and places. The search engine is also coming to play a greater role as a critical link between firms that use the Internet to build their image and find their target customers. How to achieve a high ranking in such search results given certain search words or phrases has become an issue of much interest in Internet marketing. The purpose of the current study is to develop a search engine optimization (SEO) mechanism that can be used by an enterprise to improve the ranking of its website in the search engine results. Social networking sites are included in our exploration of Internet marketing strategy. The proposed mechanism is then applied in the operations of an online ebook store. The website rankings obtained from two well-known online search engines (Google and Yahoo) are evaluated in efforts to explore a better strategy to ensure higher rankings. The results reveal that a well-designed SEO strategy, with the incorporation of social networking, can effectively enhance the website's visibility and exposure. Such a strategy will eventually contribute to overall site traffic and improve interaction with customers. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Evaluation methods of today often focus on cognitive ergonomics (such as mental workload or usability) or physical ergonomics (such as physical workload or body posture). This article describes an analytical methodology of a joint systematic search for potential deficiencies in the human–machine interaction; such as high physical and mental workload, use errors, usability problems, and physical ergonomic errors. The purpose with the joint search is to achieve a more holistic evaluation approach and make the evaluation cost more effective than when using separate evaluation methods for cognitive and physical ergonomic aspects. The methodology is task-based, which makes it possible to use both with focus on the device design, as in development projects; as well as with focus on the procedure, in the operative organization. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Most of the literature on innovation management highlights the fundamental role played by people in the innovation process and the need to fully develop the creative and innovative potential of organizations' members. This article offers the result of extensive research carried out among some of the most innovative companies in the Basque Country, a highly innovative region located in the north of Spain. It draws interesting conclusions about how these innovative companies combine strong leadership, human resource practices, and an organizational culture that enhances innovation capabilities among the company's employees. More specifically, it answers questions such as the following: Are human resources policies, leadership, and innovation culture implemented equally in Basque innovative companies? Do companies make the same effort in deploying these elements or routines and practices related to them? Can we see a pattern in the use of these elements among innovative firms? © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The objectives of this study were 1) to determine various hand dimensions and biomechanics measurements for Turkish dentistry students, 2) to evaluate the differences between males and females and between the right and left hand, and 3) to compare these data with similar data for other populations (Thai, Indian, Malaysian, British, Jordanian, Nigerian, Mexican, Bangladesh, and Vietnamese). The present study was undertaken to generate hand anthropometric and biomechanics data of 92 male and 73 female students studying at dentistry faculty. Sixty-seven anthropometric and 26 biomechanics measurements were taken in both hands. The means, standard deviations, and percentile values were tabulated and compared with other populations. The results suggest that the Turkish female fingers are thinner than those of other females except Indians, and that the Turkish male fingers are wider than those of the other males. Furthermore, the results also suggest that the Turkish female strength in handgripping is greater than that of other females except British females, and the Turkish male handgrip strength is greater than that of other males except Americans. This study provides insights about Turkish hand dimensions and biomechanics; it can be a basis for future studies and the design of dental tools meant for the Turkish market. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Fall prevention is critical for aged adults as falling down has been cited as the number one cause of accidental death in aged adults. Static balance training is an effective method of increasing the balancing capacity in aged adults and reducing their fall risk. This article discusses a method that combines virtual reality (VR) technology with motion-capture devices for aged adults to practice static balance training in a fun and accurate environment. The aged adults wore motion-capture devices to interactively manipulate a three-dimensional (3D) human model (HM) in a virtual environment to follow a 3D posture model (PM). The proposed method was implemented using commercial, off-the-shelf 3D tools. A preliminary usability study was conducted, and the results show that the parameters of PM design will affect the aged adult's posture control performance. Our method has several advantages over the currently existing approaches. First, by adjusting the PM parameters, different posture control programs could be designed to support customized static balance training. Second, collision detections between the HM and PM could be used to accurately monitor the posture control process and to interactively provide feedback to the trainee. Third, posture control quality could be quantitatively evaluated by analyzing the collision data between the HM and PM. The proposed method could be used to develop a fun, accurate, and customized static balancing capacity training environment for aged adults. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Operating rooms (OR) are where medical teams work to improve the health of a patient. However, because of the complexity of the procedures, errors and unsafe situations are likely to occur. These complications can lead to harm to the patient or medical professionals. Human factors and ergonomic professionals have been working to improve these unsafe conditions in the OR for over a century. However, with advances in technology, increased surgical complexity, as well as an increase in medical team members in the OR, there are still numerous improvements yet to be accomplished. Minimally invasive surgeries require an even more advanced approach to prevent errors due to technology, fatigue, and miscommunication. Human factors and ergonomic techniques provide the ability to greatly improve conditions for patients and surgeons alike. It is imperative that human factors and ergonomics continue to grow and facilitate technological advancements in healthcare. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

This article analyzes the adoption of ISO 9000 practices in manufacturing organizations from the perspective of the shop-floor workers. For that purpose, extensive exploratory fieldwork based on both in-depth interviews of employees, as well as on participant observation, was carried out in four Basque manufacturing organizations that have adopted the standard. The results show that the employees have a complex, critical, and heterogeneous perspective on the adoption of ISO 9000. In a set of organizations, most of the employees give an account of interesting evidence of how the ceremonial adoption of ISO 9000 occurs, whereas in other organizations the majority describe how ISO 9000 is adopted substantively. The results and the conclusions of the article have implications for academic theory, managers, and public policy. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The newly developed marketing channel of electronic commerce (EC) is different from traditional channels and has been promoted by the government for a period of time. In EC, integrated information is not only provided to the enterprises involved but the procedures needed for trade are fewer, promoting environmentally friendly practices. It has, however, caused great variation in the business environment. The e-invoice plays a vital role in keeping track of cash and business information, and its implementation will help to convert the whole supply chain to electronic form and lower overall operational costs. At present, e-invoices are only used in certain situations such as for online shopping, for electronic purchases by suppliers, in value-added networks, and so on. They are not applied in daily life or used by the public. However, a mobile e-invoice system can be designed to connect the e-invoice to the Web for the ordinary user. In this era of the mobile interactive Internet use, where individual computers interact with one another, this will help in the application of many kinds of network and real-life services. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The purpose of this article is to examine halo effect and organizational commitment in relation to employees' job satisfaction and organizational supportive culture at universities in Taiwan. The study used a questionnaire to collect data from 210 female faculty members of Taiwanese universities. The conceptual model was tested mediating the effect of structural equation modeling with maximum likelihood estimation. This study not only found the mediating role of halo effect and organizational commitment between supportive culture and job satisfaction, but also proved that a supportive culture in universities is directly and positively related to job satisfaction and that emotional and identification-oriented organizational commitment may affect job satisfaction in a positive way among female faculty members. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The purpose of this study was first to extract the anthropometric data of typical Korean male adults, based on the three-dimensional anthropometric data measured through the Size Korea project. The data were then analyzed to identify the differences in the anthropometric characteristics between typical Koreans and 3D Korean mannequinmannequins generated by digital human models. Revision equations were then suggested to improve the inaccuracy of digital human models. Typical Korean adults subject to the 3D body scan data were selected by factor analysis with respect to the 5th, 50th, and 95th percentiles. Comparisons of anthropometric differences included the differences of the height and length variables in the vertical direction and the breadth, depth, and circumference variables in the horizontal direction. These comparisons demonstrated the differences in the anthropometric characteristics between typical Koreans and Korean mannequins based on differences in body shape and proportions between Korean and Western populations. Typical Koreans have shorter legs and longer torso than those of such mannequins generated from their own modeling algorithms, and the body shape of Koreans is more of an inverted triangular shape compared to the models. Although 3D digital human models are required to be modified to appropriately reflect the Asian body shape, modification of the modeling algoritms is not available to the public. The revision equations that convert the Korean modeling data of RAMSIS and Human in CATIA into typical Korean anthropometric data were instead suggested by regression analysis. It is expected that the proposed revision equations will help the designer evaluate design alternatives and improve the suitability of ergonomic evaluation for Korean customers. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Within the software development industry, human resources have been recognized as one of the most decisive and scarce resources. Today, the retention of skilled IT (information technology) personnel is a major issue for employers and recruiters as well, since IT career abandonment is a common practice and means not only the loss of personnel, knowledge, and skills, but also the loss of business opportunities. This article seeks to discover the main motivations young practitioners abandon the software career. To achieve this objective, two studies were conducted. The first study was qualitative (performed through semistructured interviews) and intended to discover the main variables affecting software career abandonment. The second study was quantitative, consisting of a Web-based survey developed from the output of the first study and administered to a sample of 148 IT practitioners. Results show that work-related, psychological, and emotional variable are the most relevant group of variables explaining IT career abandonment. More specifically, the three most important variables that motivate employees to abandon the career are effort–reward imbalance, perceived workload, and emotional exhaustion. In contrast, variables such as politics and infighting, uncool work, and insufficient resources influence to a lesser extent the decision to leave the career. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

A cognitive control unit (CCU) for automated assembly systems aims to simulate human information processing at a rule-based level of cognitive control. Focusing on the subtask of monitoring, a cognitive engineering approach for the design of the procedural knowledge base of the CCU is presented and a human-centered simulation model of assembly processes on the basis of the cognitive architecture SOAR is introduced. The overall objective is to design and develop the system to conform to operators' expectations. To identify human assembly strategies to be included in the CCU, an empirical study with n = 16 participants was conducted and validated by an independent investigation with n = 25 persons. Furthermore, simulation models incorporating certain subsets of production rules were developed and evaluated regarding their goodness of prediction of human assembly behavior. The results show that the rule sets have a significant effect on the predictive power. The highest prediction accuracy was obtained with all identified assembly rules integrated. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The user-oriented design is the most important competition issue in today's market. In recent years, user-oriented design (i.e., usability) has become expected, particularly in electronic devices. Usability considers high user satisfaction in conjunction with user performance. Usability of electronic products is essential for high customer satisfaction as well as product life cycles in companies. Therefore, MP3 players were selected among the electronic products. Designing usable MP3 players is extremely important for users who have close interaction with them. In this study, MP3 players of different types and sizes were selected and their usability evaluated. The usability criteria used in the MP3 players' evaluation were divided into two major categories: performance and emotional expectations. The alternatives were ranked with fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making methods, namely, Fuzzy TOPSIS (FTOPSIS), Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP), and Fuzzy Axiomatic Design Theory (FADT), and the results were compared. Although the same decision matrices and data obtained from semantic differential experiment were used for all fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making methods, it is shown that different rankings were obtained. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The main objective of this study was to examine the sensitivity of the Lane Change Test (LCT) as proposed by International Organization of Standardization by evaluating LCT performance between primary and dual-task conditions in simulated driving conditions. The study involved four different secondary tasks that involved tracking, visual search, memory, and data entry, each under two different difficulty levels. The primary task involved a series of lane changes on a three-lane straight roadway where the actual lane change trajectory was compared with a normative model of the trajectory. Thus, the lane change performance was measured by the mean deviation of the actual driving trajectory from the normative trajectory. Twenty-four participants within three age groups (25–34, 35–45, and >55 years) and equally distributed between male and female took part in the study. Thus, the study also investigated the effect of age and gender on driving performance. The results showed that secondary tasks that require visual attention and psychomotor coordination deteriorated driving performance the most, whereas tasks that required memory scanning and utilization of the auditory modality least affected driving performance. The study also found differences in LCT performances with respect to three different age categories and gender. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The thin film technology liquid-crystal displays (TFT-LCD) industry has become one of the main industries in Taiwan. In this research, we take Taiwanese TFT-LCD industrial companies as the research objects and try to identify the interrelationships among internal marketing, job satisfaction, relationship marketing, customer orientation, and organizational performance. Although these companies are classified as part of the manufacturing industry, it is suggested that their service components could be the focus of greater attention to enhance the success of their business operations. Analytical results indicate that internal marketing, job satisfaction, and customer orientation have significant influences on relationship marketing as well as the organizational performance of TFT-LCD manufacturing companies. Therefore, Taiwan TFT-LCD manufacturing companies need to implement relationship marketing continuously, increase employee job satisfaction, and inspire employees to become more customer oriented in order to increase productivity. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Disorientation has many costs. It may lead to physical fatigue, stress, and frustration and can also jeopardize people's safety. Designing wayfinding aids to fit people's needs can facilitate their environmental knowledge acquisition and, therefore, improve their wayfinding performance. The scope of this article is human wayfinding in unfamiliar buildings, considering only individual pedestrian movement in an immersive virtual environment. The purpose is to investigate the use of external information at a higher level of awareness (e.g., signage) as a wayfinding aid, as well as the use of immersive virtual reality (VR) to study indoor wayfinding. Fifty-four volunteers accomplished a wayfinding task (i.e., finding a room from the building's entrance) within a virtual building, employing two types of signage systems (i.e., vertical and horizontal conditions). A neutral condition (no signage) was also considered as a control condition to be used as a baseline. Aside from the success of the wayfinding task (getting to the destination), other performance metrics (distance traveled, time spent, number of pauses, and average speed) were analyzed and compared. Although the differences found are not statistically significant, findings suggest that participants assigned to the horizontal condition traveled smaller distances, spent less time, made fewer pauses, and moved at higher average speed than those assigned to vertical and neutral conditions. Gender-related differences were found statistically significant only in the average speed variable (females were faster than males). © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

This study aims to investigate the influence of double-layer clothing in a semiconductor manufacturing clean-room environment. Twenty subjects including ten males and ten females participated in this study. Each subject completed four treatment combinations with four different inner pieces of clothing (i.e., 100% cotton, 70% cotton + 30% polyester, 65% polyester + 35% cotton, 100% polyester). The dependent measures included moisture absorption, skin temperature, and subjective responses in three body regions. The results indicate that wearing 100% polyester inner clothing caused a significant increase in inner microclimate relative humidity (RH; p < .01). Wearing 100% cotton inner clothing caused a significant increase in both inner microclimate RH (p < .01) and the inner clothing's moisture absorption. This was due to cotton fiber tends to trap more water molecules and allow less water vapor to pass through as compared to other types of fiber. Furthermore, wearing the blended fiber inner clothing caused lower RH in the inner and outer clothing microclimate (p < .05). Moreover, wearing 65% polyester + 35% cotton inner clothing had higher subjective comfort than did wearing 70% cotton + 30% polyester. In summary, the moisture absorption and water vapor transport characteristics of the inner clothing are the major factors affecting the comfort of wearing double-layer clothing. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

We present a new approach for assessing the business performance of a mobile user interface (UI) project at its predevelopment stage. Traditionally, the performance measurement of a mobile UI is made from the perspective of usability. Yet, as the number of mobile phone users is rapidly increasing, and, given that stakeholders are beginning to realize the importance of the UI, there is a growing demand to measure its business performance quantitatively as well as qualitatively. This article presents a model that can facilitate Return on Investment (ROI) estimations pertaining to the development of a mobile UI before the service with the new UI is launched. We base our method on stated preference data for the purpose of applying a conjoint analysis. Subsequently, we evaluate the viability of the proposed model quantitatively by comparing the estimated ROI at the predevelopment stage with the actual sales revenue achieved after the launch of the service. The proposed model was successfully applied to real-world mobile UI design projects at Korea Telecom. Its benefits are demonstrated here through a case study. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

There is currently a significant amount of discussion regarding new ways to insert ergonomics into the business community through adding financial benefits; however, analysis must be performed to justify this type of investment. Occupational problems that could be reduced by ergonomics solutions can be expressed as financial losses. Although the impact and importance of these losses are high, the difficulties in their quantification prevent adequate cost-benefit analysis. This article aims to document evidence of the difficulties encountered when quantifying the financial losses that are caused by problems that could be reduced by ergonomic solutions. In this study, we performed a literature review concerning the financial costs related to occupational problems from the perspective of ergonomics. The results indicate that losses that occur mainly concern the productivity of the working process or the workers. The chief barriers documented in the scientific literature are the information cost, the multifactorial nature of the problem, the absence of information, and the methods of measurement. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The customer relationship focus for banks is in development of main competencies and strategies of building strong profitable customer relationships through considering and managing the customer impression, influence on the culture of the bank, satisfactory treatment, and assessment of valued relationship building. Artificial neural networks (ANNs) are used after data segmentation and classification, where the designed model register records into two class sets, that is, the training and testing sets. ANN predicts new customer behavior from previously observed customer behavior after executing the process of learning from existing data. This article proposes an ANN model, which is developed using a six-step procedure. The back-propagation algorithm is used to train the ANN by adjusting its weights to minimize the difference between the current ANN output and the desired output. An evaluation process is conducted to determine whether the ANN has learned how to perform. The training process is halted periodically, and its performance is tested until an acceptable result is obtained. The principles underlying detection software are grounded in classical statistical decision theory. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Synthetic vision systems (SVS) render terrain features for pilots through cockpit displays using a GPS database and three-dimensional graphical models. Enhanced vision systems (EVS) present infrared imagery of terrain using a forward-looking sensor in the nose of an aircraft. The ultimate goal of SVS and EVS technologies is to support pilots in achieving safety under low-visibility and night conditions comparable to clear, day conditions. This study assessed pilot performance and situation awareness (SA) effects of SVS and EVS imagery in an advanced head-up display (HUD) during a simulated landing approach under instrument meteorological conditions. Videos of the landing with various HUD configurations were presented to eight pilots with a superimposed tracking task. The independent variables included four HUD feature configurations (baseline [no terrain imagery], SVS, EVS, and a combination of SVS and EVS), two visibility conditions, and four legs of the flight. Results indicated that SVS increased overall SA but degraded flight path control performance because of visual confusion with other display features. EVS increased flight path control accuracy but decreased system (aircraft) awareness because of visual distractions. The combination of SVS and EVS generated offsetting effects. Display configurations did not affect pilot spatial awareness. Flight performance was not different among phases of the approach, but levels and types of pilot SA did vary from leg to leg. These results are applicable to development of adaptive HUD features to support pilot performance. They support the use of multidimensional measures of SA for insight on pilot information processing with advanced aviation displays. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Increases in the number of household appliances and devices with RFID tags have created a need for efficient organization of smart-home interfaces in consideration of residents. Previous studies of information-grouping and cultural-differences in cognitive style on performance have yielded mixed results. Gender has not typically been considered, nor have subjective preferences been measured. We tested four participant groups (American and Korean males and females) and two interface groupings (functional and spatial). Participants performed tasks that required locating controls for specific devices/functions, after which they rated the interfaces on several scales. American males preferred the functional organization, but Koreans and American females tended to prefer the spatial organization. The results are consistent with Koreans' preference for thematic-structure and the view that men's and women's cognitive styles differ in masculine/individualistic cultures (U.S.) but not in feminine/collectivistic cultures (Korea). Potential applications include physical (e.g., power and wall-mounted switches) and virtual interactions (e.g., remote controls, GUI/Web/Phone). © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The introduction of Computerized Numeric Control (CNC) technology in manufacturing industries revolutionized the production process a few decades back. There are some health and safety problems associated with these machine operations, however. The main objectives of the present work is to study the health and safety issues associated with the CNC machines with respect to control and display, specifically to determine the frequency, intensity of discomfort, and its interference in operating different CNC machines as reported by the workers operating them. The postural discomfort associated with CNC machines was studied, and the frequency, intensity of discomfort, and interference of the level of discomfort with the participants' ability to work were recorded and analyzed. The study revealed that 20.5% of the operators reported discomfort 1 or 2 times, 25.4% experienced discomfort 3 to 4 times in a week, 37.7% had discomfort daily, and 16.4% reported discomfort several times a day. Discomfort was reported in all the body parts involved (lower back, neck, upper back, shoulder, and leg), but the highest discomfort scores were associated with the shoulder and arm region. Workers reporting discomfort several times a day also reported high mean discomfort scores. The study established that the frequency and intensity of the discomfort in all body parts is related to the position of the control panel and display. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Modern civilization moves ahead with strong economical growth. Using a large number of new technologies and new machines in working procedures brings a proportional growth of noise and vibration. Noise and vibration have become an essential part of active safety measures because they are endangering the health of the employee as well as the public. Preventive solutions are ensured in new legislation and standards too. They facilitate high levels of unification of safety requirements for machines as well as the working environment from the acoustics point of view. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

In recent years, the implementation of quality management systems based on ISO 9001 has clearly gone beyond the traditional industrial and service subsectors. It has started to have a growing influence on some peripheral subsectors to the standard home market, such as those of health and social services. In this article, the influence of the main global management meta-standard is analyzed from a macroergonomic perspective in one of the aforementioned sectors. Based on an empirical exploratory study carried out in two Spanish organizations belonging to the subsector of residential care homes for elderly persons, the influence of the adoption of the standard is analyzed, focusing on the quality of working life of the direct attention employees. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The objective of this study was to quantify and assess whether push/pull tasks in the workplace are risk factors for lower back pain etiology. A case-control study was conducted of 231 industrial workers 18–55 years old who were insured by the Mexican Social Security Institute (MSSI) in the Guadalajara Metropolitan Area of Jalisco, Mexico. Exposure was evaluated via a questionnaire. Multivariate analysis using conditional logistic regression showed risks for push/pull tasks (odds ratio = 5.7, 95% confidence interval, 1.4–23.1) adjusted for lifting, carrying, and driving work. The fraction attributable to push/pull tasks was 0.58, suggesting that the risk of developing lumbar spondyloarthrosis might be reduced by 58% with ergonomic redesign for pushing and pulling tasks at workstations. Additional research is needed to confirm this relationship and will ideally incorporate a greater number of subjects to assure detailed analyses of exposure categories and facilitate new comparisons with the results of the present study. © 2012Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The objective of this study was to investigate the influences of cultural diversity and group composition on computer-mediated group decision making for mixed American–Chinese groups. Seventy-five Chinese and fifty Americans participated in a laboratory experiment. Twenty-five five-person groups were formed. Each group performed four preference decision-making tasks with different levels of impact and complexity. Group-level measurements of group outcomes and individual-level measurements of group processes were collected. The results indicated that cultural diversity had both positive and negative effects on group decision making. Culturally heterogeneous groups made better decisions than did culturally homogeneous groups, but took longer to make decisions. Moreover, in terms of improvement of the quality of decisions, groups with a balanced representation from each culture outperformed unbalanced groups. Meanwhile, participants in the balanced groups had greater sensitivity to leader emergence and perceived less conflict. The results of this study also revealed the effects of self-construal and self-efficacy in communication on group performance. Implications for intercultural management were provided. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

To solve the backward status of the textile enterprise, which included the inefficiency of management work, the complexity of business process, and the isolation of business data, first, through using multiagent technology, a production manufacturing and management system structure model based on multiagents was proposed, the rationality of the model was introduced, and the existed production planning was optimized. Then, a flexible collaboration management platform was formed, which was for production manufacturing and management. Meanwhile, the correlation degree among production data was analyzed, and the influencing factors affecting the accuracy of production data was introduced via brittleness theory and fuzz C means clustering algorithm (FCM). Third, a coupling relationship model for analyzing influencing factor, and a dynamic quality performance model based on brittleness theory was designed, respectively. As proved in practice, the multiagent system has strengthened the interactivity of both the user and the system, met the requirements of production manufacturing and management, ensured the correctness of business data, achieved the heterogeneous integration of production data, and promoted the information development of the textile industry. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

A national study in Malaysia was conducted with the main objective being to determine the prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) and the association between risk factors and MSDs among Malaysian bus drivers. Cross-sectional data were collected from 1,181 male commercial bus drivers in Malaysia using questionnaires to determine demographic, working characteristics and a translated Nordic questionnaire to determine MSD complaints. A Human Vibration Meter was used to measure whole body vibration (WBV) exposure, and postural analysis was used to evaluate awkward working posture. To assess psychological factors, the validated Profile of Mood States (POMS) was used. The overall prevalence of MSD was 81.8% and, by body parts, low back pain was reported to be the highest complaint of lifetime MSD (58.5%) compared to other body parts. The levels of WBV acceleration magnitude A(8) exceed the European Union Directive (0.54 m/s² root-mean-square [r.m.s.] acceleration), and only 1.2% of the bus drivers adopt more than 40% of awkward postures while driving. Logistic regression analysis, controlling for age, income, education level, and work activities, revealed that factors such as lack of seat adjustability, uncomfortable seat, seat's material, seat contour and design, WBV exposure, smoking, frequency of daily trips, duration of daily driving, prolonged sitting, working part time, and psychological factors (namely, feeling stress, feeling worried, feeling fatigued) were important risk factors of MSDs among Malaysian bus drivers. As a conclusion, bus drivers are exposed to a combination of risk factors that may lead to an increased risk of developing MSDs. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Some products may involve hazards in their use. Manufacturers are obligated to evaluate such hazards and to abate them according to a hierarchy of hazard control approaches, namely, 1) to design them out, 2) to shield users from their effects, or 3) to adequately warn users of their danger(s). Warnings are last in this hierarchy because they provide a lesser guarantee of success. Additionally, warnings developed for this purpose may be inadequate because of a variety of factors, including the warning's clarity/understandability, its high cost of compliance, the need for responses beyond the users' capabilities, the need for unavailable or difficult-to-use protective equipment, or asking users to perform actions contrary to previously learned or innately reactive behaviors. This article describes problems with three types of vehicles that contained known hazards—where the manufacturer relied solely on product warnings to mitigate that hazard, and, in turn, provided warnings that were inadequate for one or more of these reasons. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Within the Cluster of Excellence “Integrative Production Technology for High-Wage Countries,” a research project has been initiated to study self-optimizing assembly cells and to design innovative ergonomic human–machine interfaces of the cell's numerical control. An experimental assembly cell was designed in which two robots carry out a certain repertoire of coordinated pick-and-place operations with small workpieces. To support the human operator while monitoring the operations and intervening in the case of assembly errors, an Augmented Vision System (AVS) has been designed and developed. The study described in this article deals with the ergonomic presentation of assembly information by the AVS to support the human operator in detecting assembly errors in small workpieces. Two laboratory experiments were carried out to compare two visual display types and to investigate different variations of presenting assembly information. Forty-eight subjects participated in the experiments. The statistical analysis shows that the use of a head-mounted display instead of a common table-mounted display for the AVS increases the accuracy of assembly error detection significantly (α = 0.05). In contrast, a trend toward a longer detection time was found. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

When endoscopes are reprocessed correctly, endoscopy is a safe procedure. Recent incidents of insufficient reprocessing, however, have resulted in public concern. Results of a usability test of the reprocessing procedure identified that none of 24 users, naïve to the procedure, could reprocess endoscopes correctly, nor could they correctly complete any of the component tasks in the procedure. Five of the 76 subtasks were identified as particularly critical. These were 1) brushing the instrument channel, 2) attaching the channel plug and injection tube, 3) identifying leaks, 4) blowing water out of the endoscope's internal channels during high-level disinfection, and 5) aspirating solution through the endoscope to remove debris loosened by brushing. Additionally, three themes were identified as causes of the majority of problems: 1) lack of visibility, 2) high memory demands, and 3) insufficient user feedback. Design recommendations for these problems are discussed. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Because of the aging trend in Taiwan, long-term care plays an important role in the medical system. Finding ways to ensure medical and service quality in long-term care facilities requires immediate attention. This study discusses service quality in nursing homes and the factors that affect service quality in Taiwan in a way that benefits the management of these organizations. Using a refined Kano model analysis, 12 high value-added qualities, 4 low value-added qualities, 1 critical quality, 6 required qualities, 1 potential quality, and 2 care-free qualities were found. Furthermore, using a combination of quality function deployment and Grey relational analysis (GRA), it was found that medical service standards of the nursing homes require improvement. Items such as “educational training,'' “professional capability,” “degree of understanding patients,” “communication skills,” and “crisis management ability” were provided by an equal-weight GRA. The improvement sequence was “educational training,” “professional capability,” “communication skills,” “understanding of patients,” and “crisis management ability” in an equal-weight quantified GRA. The research results can provide nursing homes with an improvement sequence for service design and operational management. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Link analysis (LA) is a popular ergonomic tool for studying and improving the layout of workspaces. It uses a data (event) recording method to input interactions of human behavior with their environment. The traditional “pen and paper'' method of LA is cumbersome, time consuming, and gives limited outputs. To address these limitations, the computerized link analysis (CLA) system was developed and tested in laboratory and real-world environments. CLA offers an integrated task analysis tool, including traditional LA functions (layout, event recording) with more detail for operator activities, time-motion functions, and multioperator data recording. As well as the conventional LA results (link diagrams and link tables), there are additional outputs for time-event lists (start/end time, duration, chronology, additional notes, importance, and operator ID), and processed link diagrams with the link direction and frequency. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Ensuring customer satisfaction and maintaining long-term relationships with customers have become essential for survival among competitive service industries. The present study addresses this need by proposing a conceptually integrated four-phase model that incorporates elements of customer relationship management (CRM) and customer satisfaction (represented by the extended American Customer Satisfaction Index model). Then, this study formulates structural equation modeling to test various research hypotheses related to the effect of the CRM initiative. An empirical study of 143 leading Taiwanese service firms distributed among seven service industries was conducted. The implementation levels of various constructs, input (customer knowledge), service provision (customer interactions), output quality, perceived quality, perceived value, perception of customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, purchasing intention, and profits of CRM are assessed in a range of service industries by means of a questionnaire survey and in-depth interviews. The results of the empirical study reveal statistically significant influences among various constructs of the CRM integrated model. These results also represent a useful reference for managers of service organizations that could be used to improve the profitability and implementation level of CRM. The present study represents an important investigation in the development of an integrated CRM implementation system for service industries. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The Toyota production system (TPS), or lean production, has been associated with many benefits for manufacturing firms that implement the system. However, to implement the TPS successfully, it is necessary to integrate the so-called “hard side” of the system (that is, the technical aspects of material handling) with the “soft side” of the program (that is, the aspects associated with human factors). The present study makes a contribution to such a holistic view of the TPS by proposing an integrated model that consists of the technical aspects of the TPS, together with elements associated with total quality management (TQM), human resources management (HRM), and certain identified “people factors.” The study then uses structural equation modeling (SEM) to test this holistic model using data obtained from a questionnaire survey of 153 Taiwanese manufacturing firms. The empirical study confirms the appropriateness of the causal model, which is evaluated by several goodness-of-fit methods. The study confirms the proposition that the inclusion of the “people factors” together with TQM and HRM significantly improves the realization of benefits associated with the TPS practices of “just-in-time” (JIT) and “autonomation.” The conclusion is that such an integrated model provides a much more effective “lean system” and has the potential to produce significantly enhanced benefits for firms that implement it. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Advertising has become the most efficient way for companies to transmit product information to consumers. Words and images are often used to display the product and thus attract the attention of consumers. Of all types of endorsement, celebrity endorsement is the marketing method most frequently used by entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs use celebrity endorsement to increase consumer purchasing motivation. Not only can celebrity endorsements attract consumers to purchase products, but the appeal of statements by celebrities can also affect consumer product image. Different appeal methods result in different advertising effects. This study used the case of advertising spokespersons for cell phones with general consumers as subjects. A total of 202 valid samples obtained through the questionnaire survey and used partial least squares regression analysis. The results showed that celebrity endorsements, advertising appeal, and advertising effect significantly and positively affect consumer purchase intentions. Moreover, advertising appeal and advertising effect exert a partial mediating effect on the relationship between celebrity endorsement and purchase intention. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

This study presented a resource scheduling model of the Flight Training Department at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University's Daytona Beach Campus built using Discrete Event Simulation, to assess the effect of changes in the resources available to students in Flight Training Device (FTD) course modules on Flight Training effectiveness. Historical data from the Flight Training Department was used to build and validate the model. Results showed that, on average, students who had more resources available to them during FTD modules completed the training program 1 day earlier than those in the current system. As well, Cessna 172 and PA44 Aircraft average daily utilization increased whereas Cessna 172 S and PA44 FTD average daily utilization decreased. These results are discussed and conclusions are given at the end of this paper. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

This study aims to gain greater insight into scheduling expertise by comparing the work of experts and novices when designing a university timetable. We assumed that the scheduling activity would take place within two dual spaces: the constraints space (CS) and the objects space (OS). Constraints are defined in the strictest sense as relations between variables that cannot be represented in the solution (timetable), whereas objects are constraint satisfactions that can be thus represented. The study shows that experts were more likely than novices to use external representations as activity support. They satisfied many constraints with partially defined objects. On the contrary, novices devoted a long time to managing constraints in their heads before defining only fully specified objects (concrete objects). The objects space could be a suitable activity support for experts. Novices, on the other hand, could benefit from support in managing constraints and translating constraints into objects. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Scanning electron microscope (SEM) station is one of the major quality control tasks in wafer manufacturing process. During the process of examining defects on a screen for a certain period of time, SEM inspectors frequently complain about visual fatigue problems. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the effect of wafer-coating condition (noncoating treatment and gold-coating treatment) and liquid crystal display (LCD) monitor size (14-inch and 19-inch monitor) from the aspects of objective visual fatigue measures (NPA and CFF), subjective eye fatigue rating, and inspection performance. Twelve SEM inspectors participated in this experiment. The results indicated that the treatment of gold-coating wafer showed significant difference on reducing objective visual fatigue in NPA and CFF change. Using a 19-inch LCD monitor also demonstrated the effect on reducing eye fatigue as well as improving inspection performance. The improvement of using a gold-coating treatment wafer and a 19-inch LCD monitor to reduce SEM inspectors' visual fatigue and to increase inspection performance is thus recommended. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Lean is a contested concept. It has been praised for empowering employees, and it has been criticized for intensifying work and impairing the health and well-being of employees. This article is reviewing the literature on the relations between lean and employees, and suggests ways for the development of an employee-supportive lean practice. There is good evidence of lean's adverse consequences for low-skilled employees in the auto industry and other assembly type manufacturing work, but there are also examples of more positive outcomes. It is important to emphasize that, not only lean thinking, but also the context and implementation of lean have consequences for employee outcomes. Research is still needed to demonstrate it in real life, but this analysis of lean thinking, context, and implementation suggests possibilities for developing a lean practice that is genuinely employee-supportive. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Quality of software is one of the most critical concerns in software system development, and many products fail to meet the quality objectives when constructed initially. Software quality is highly affected by the development process's actual dynamics. This article proposes the use of the Markov decision process (MDP) for the assessment of software quality because MDP is a useful technique to abstract the model of dynamics of the development process and to test its impact on quality. Additionally, the MDP modeling of the dynamics leads to early prediction of the quality, from the design phases all the way through the different stages of development. The proposed approach is based on the stochastic nature of the software development process, including project architecture, construction strategy of Software Quality Assurance system, its qualification actions, and team assignment strategy. It accepts these factors as inputs, generating a relative quality degree as an output. The proposed approach has been demonstrated for the design phase with a case study taken from the literature. The results prove its robustness and capability to identify appropriate policies in terms of quality, cost, and time. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

This article discusses the influence of organizational and behavioral variables on coordination between planners during plan adaptation. Fast communication and mutual alignment are necessary to maintain schedule feasibility in a situation with several schedulers. Therefore, coordination modes are required that facilitate communication and joint problem solving. Moreover, building on interdependence theory, we hypothesize that the schedulers' perceptions of task interdependence influence rescheduling performance. Experimental results indicate that a group decision-making coordination mode enforcing cooperation outperforms a distributed decision-making coordination mode involving emergent alignment. The level of perceived task interdependence explains this better performance. Therefore, perceptions of task interdependence are put forward as an important behavioral factor influencing rescheduling performance, with several important implications for theory and practice. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

This study investigated the influence of elderly vision degradation on subjective rating of floor slipperiness and the correlation between the subjective ratings and objective measures. Slips and falls are common causes of injures and fatalities in the elderly population. Many slips and falls may be attributed to environmental risks and misjudgment of floor slipperiness by vision degradation. Environmental risks are generally caused by a slippery floor. The coefficient of friction (COF) is one of the most commonly used indices to assess floor slipperiness. The measurements conducted in this study acquired the COF on four floors under three surface conditions (dry, sand-covered, and wet). The results showed that the dry condition has the highest COF and the wet condition has the lowest. Thirty elderly persons and thirty younger persons were recruited for vision screening. The vision degradation in elders was significant, with most elders having eye diseases. The subjective ratings of floor slipperiness were recorded for these subjects. Although both age groups had a similar rating trend with the COF measures, the correlation between rating and COF for younger persons was significantly stronger than that for elders. The results also showed that the smooth floor and the sand-covered condition both cause lower correlation coefficients between rating and COF for elders. The results could be used to reduce slip and fall accidents by elderly persons. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The purpose of this study is to find out the effects of light-emitting diode (LED) lighting on elderly people's color discrimination and preference, to improve the lighting environment for elderly people. In this study, experiments were conducted under LED lighting with two different spectra (with color-correlated temperature [CCT] of 2800K and 6000K), and three different illuminance levels (30lx; 100lx; 1000lx). Six elderly observers (aged 55–65 years) participated in the experiments and were exposed to each lighting condition to finish one trial of a color discrimination test (Farnsworth–Munsell 100-Hue Test) and a 7-scale, 6-item preference evaluation test. We conclude that elderly people perform better in color discrimination with higher CCT of LED light sources, which compensate for their decreased lens transmission at short wavelength. Their performance also increases with higher illuminance (30lx-1000lx) of LED lighting. Meanwhile, they prefer higher illuminance, which makes them find the lighting environment more comfortable, brighter, and better for reading; but for CCT, although they feel a higher CCT is better for reading, they still have different tastes regarding CCT of light sources. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Using the Job Demands-Control (JD-C) model as the theoretical framework, this study investigated the relationships among burnout, job demands, and autonomy. With a sample of 802 employees from a Portuguese bank, we demonstrated the importance of taking into account emotional job demands when studying the burnout of service providers. Thereby, the unique explanatory power of each emotional demand on burnout was tested with regression analysis, after controlling for the original demands and autonomy variables from the JD-C model along with demographic variables. The results confirmed the relevance of the study model in explaining burnout and indicated that emotional dissonance was associated with employee burnout, beyond quantitative demands and autonomy. As expected, hierarchical regression analysis provided evidence for the main effects of quantitative demands, emotional dissonance, and autonomy on burnout. These findings have several implications for designing jobs involving interactions with clients. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Meetings are at the heart of the software development process (SDP) and can be of different types. The present article first proposes an abstract cognitive model for meetings, which represents how different types of meetings are affected by cognitive activities at different stages within the SDP. Second, and based on the analysis of meetings at different stages of SDP, it proposes the removal of such meetings from some of the stages within the program by using a cognitive evaluation model for meetings and their replacement, instead, with information and communication technology tools and techniques by means of a cognitive evaluation model. The abstract cognitive model and the evaluation model are validated empirically through experimentation, carried out through a detailed analysis of a target group composed of information technology professionals. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

This article considers design science issues raised by research on a participative approach to strategy communication (PASC) in small- and medium-sized enterprises in the metal industry to create new visions for the future. It discusses the views of applying participative narrative methods in prescriptively driven research for supporting participation and communication. The article concludes by offering an outline of a framework for an innovative approach to method-assisted research for a PASC. The target year for the focus group (FG) review was arranged to be 2010 because that particular year was set to be the most opportune and interesting after seven years of the first study. A case study showed that narrative scenarios and storytelling are suitable in a PASC to make a strategy illustrative and plausible as well as to construct a mental model of it. The FG review showed, however, that the anticipated development has not occurred in all matters. A new concept, a “mental model of the future company,'' is tentatively proposed as a tool for a PASC. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

There is very little (or no) information about the riding discomfort of motorcyclists in Malaysia. Therefore, this study was done with the intention of highlighting the relationship of the discomfort on the motorcyclist's body parts during the riding process concerning factors such as body mass index (BMI), riding experience, riding hours, and preferred riding posture. This study (questionnaire survey) was done by using 957 respondents (481 males and 476 females) with an age range from 18 years to 24 years, which was collected from a previous study. The results indicate that the majority of motorcyclists who participated in this study are in the normal BMI category. However, the majority of these motorcyclists suffer discomfort in their body parts during the riding process. It is noticeable that the majority of female motorcyclists started with higher discomfort symptoms concerning the corresponding factors (BMI, riding hours, and riding experience) compared with male motorcyclists. Most male discomfort symptoms were focused on the buttock and upper body parts, whereas the female motorcyclists experienced discomfort in all of their body parts (lower, buttocks, and upper body parts). Furthermore, the results also highlight that the motorcyclists' discomfort was correlated with riding posture. Therefore, this study clearly identified that motorcyclists experience discomfort in their body parts during the riding process. The findings also highlight that the current interaction of humans (motorcyclists) and machine (motorcycle) is not an ideal ergonomic philosophy. However, further detailed study (laboratory and field study) needs to be done to uncover fully the parameters or factors that constrain the ergonomic comfortability in the motorcycle riding process. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

In the present study, the effect of lifting task parameters on the heart rate and oxygen uptake of workers during manual lifting tasks in different ambient conditions was evaluated. The experiments conducted in two different temperature conditions showed a significantly higher oxygen uptake and heart rate in colder conditions as compared to warmer conditions. Three other factors, namely, load, lifting frequency, and vertical distance were found to significant affect the responses. Various combinations of significant factors were used to calculate oxygen uptake and heart rate. These were then compared with the safe limits as per the maximum aerobic capacity of workers. Based on these comparisons, the safe combinations were identified that can be used to design lifting tasks in varied ambient conditions. The study further concluded that lifting tasks performed in winter should have different relaxation or fatigue allowances built into the cycle time of the task to compensate for higher exertion. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Scheduling with learning effects has gained increasing attention in recent years. A well-known learning model is called “sum-of-processing-times-based learning” in which the actual processing time of a job is a nonincreasing function of the jobs already processed. However, the actual processing time of a given job drops to zero precipitously when the normal job processing times are large. Moreover, the concept of learning process is relatively unexplored in a flowshop environment. Motivated by these observations, this article addresses a two-machine flowshop problem with a truncated learning effect. The objective is to find an optimal schedule to minimize the total completion time. First, a branch-and-bound algorithm incorporating with a dominance property and four lower bounds is developed to derive the optimal solution. Then three simulated annealing algorithms are also proposed for near-optimal solution. The experimental results indicated that the branch-and-bound algorithm can solve instances up to 18 jobs, and the proposed simulated annealing algorithm performs well in item of CPU time and error percentage. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

This study compared the mounting time and strain on the head-neck while using an old model (forehead and cheek supported) and a new model (head harness supported) of head-mounted night vision goggle systems in the postures of standing, sitting, and lying prone. The results showed that effectively reducing the mounting time was attributed to the ease and less time required for length adjustments of the head harness in the new model. The novel device received higher positive subjective ratings for convenience and comfort while wearing than did the old model. Although the weight of the new model was decreased to 0.794 kg and the length was reduced to 0.155 m, the loads on the head-neck complex remained high. These findings suggest that a rifle should be fitted with the night vision goggle or handheld model to decrease neck-shoulder workload if the prone position is the most frequent and important posture for soldiers. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The term user experience (UX) encompasses the concepts of usability and affective engineering. However, UX has not been defined clearly. In this study, a literature survey, user interview and indirect observation were conducted to develop definitions of UX and its elements. A literature survey investigated 127 articles that were considered to be helpful to define the concept of UX. An in-depth interview targeted 14 hands-on workers in the Korean mobile phone industry. An indirect observation captured daily experiences of eight end-users with mobile phones. This study collected various views on UX from academia, industry, and end-users using these three approaches. As a result, this article proposes definitions of UX and its elements: usability, affect, and user value. These results are expected to help design products or services with greater levels of UX. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Creating strategic alliances by engaging in co-branding has become increasingly widespread in many industries. This form of cooperation allows businesses to share resources and knowledge and to set common goals – but also forces the two companies to work together. This article looks at co-branding from the perspective of strategic management and focuses on the problems that can arise in team management and organization. The purpose of the article is to present recent research advances that may encourage rethinking co-branding strategies at the level of projectization which described the level of commitment in the co-branding project. Characteristics of successful team-building for co-branding ventures are also discussed. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The goal of aging in place is to allow seniors to remain in the environment of their choice with supportive services as needed, living independently in old age. TigerPlace, a retirement community of residents assisting aging in place, has been equipped with different types of sensors with the potential of monitoring, identifying, and predicting deteriorating health conditions. Currently, the seniors' medical records and telemedicine data are stored in separate systems. Date- and time-stamped sensor data are stored in SQL databases and are not linked with the senior's personal health records. The systems related to health care data and daily activities are separately stored and do not communicate with each other. Using a human-centered design and evaluation framework, we conducted user, task, function, and representation analyses, which provide an in-depth description of user characteristics, preferences, systems functionality, basic tasks, and effective representations in such an information-distributed setting. In this article, we report our investigation of such an aging in place setting and present our preliminary results of analyses on design requirements and a couple of human-centered prototypes aiming at an integrated health data display. The project was proposed to design a holistic and comprehensive view of senior residents' health data that are currently available in disparate systems. The integrated health data display must be human-centered and should inform senior residents and health care providers in a timely manner to support decision making. This design demonstrates our effort to prototype a human-centered user interface for enhancing aging in place. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

With the prevalent use of visual interfaces and the increasing demand to display more information, information complexity in human–computer interfaces becomes a major concern for designers. Complex interfaces may adversely affect the effectiveness, efficiency, and even the operational safety of a system. Previously, two questionnaires were developed by researchers at the Federal Aviation Administration to evaluate information complexity of air traffic control displays. This study adapted the questionnaires for commercial visual interfaces and validated them with two types of tasks on three travel websites. The questionnaire measures the information complexity of a visual display based on perceptual, cognitive, and action complexity in terms of three complexity factors: quantity, variety, and relation. The result demonstrates that the questionnaire that uses multiple items for measuring complexity construct has good reliability, validity, and sensitivity. Information complexity is also found to be negatively correlated with usability and positively correlated with mental workload. The contribution of the study includes validating the theoretical framework for the information complexity concept through the use of questionnaires and providing a practical tool for designers to measure information complexity of the visual display for iterative improvement. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Insufficient knowledge of how the working environment (WE) impacts company performance leads to a poor basis for managerial decision making. The objective of this study was to survey and evaluate available tools relating WE to business results. Nine tools were identified and qualitatively evaluated using 11 criteria. The tools were clustered into three categories, ranging from analysis of WE risks as well as calculation of their economic impact to solely investment analysis. Shortcomings in the tools include insufficient attention to quality and productivity issues and insufficient guidance for users. Although further methodological development is indicated, researchers should also attend to the factors affecting tool uptake and application as well as the potential to integrate such analysis into companies' regular accounting systems. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The article presents a new concept of combining the three dimensions (3D) of a person's manipulation space. The data concern information about the reach of the arms and biomechanical data about limiting the load of a disabled person sitting in a wheelchair. Measurement data were acquired empirically, on original measuring station. The data included, respectively, arms’ reach (static and dynamic) or, alternatively, measurements of limiting forces. The obtained data were processed into virtual 3D surfaces of arms’ reach and forces. These surfaces provide the required graphic model of anthropotechnical and biomechanical data. Developed model was utilized to perform a virtual analysis of the accessibility of a disabled person to technical means: in a market sale space and in the ergonomic analysis into the space of a personal car. The presented method of 3D graphic modeling of anthropometrical and biomechanical data can be universally applied in ergonomic designing of work stations not only for disabled persons. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The demand for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UASs) capabilities is rapidly increasing in the civilian sector. UAS operations, however, will not be carried out in the National Airspace System until safety concerns are alleviated. Among these concerns is determining the appropriate level of automation in conjunction with a suitable pilot who exhibits the necessary knowledge, skills, and abilities to safely operate these systems. This research examined two levels of automation: management by consent (MBC) and management by exception (MBE), in conjunction with pilot experiences while operating an unmanned aircraft simulator. The user experiences encompass three individual groups: pilots, air traffic controllers (ATC), and non-pilot/non-ATCs. Performance, workload, and situational awareness data were examined. Results show no significant differences among pilot experiences groups, automation strategies, or the interaction between these two. Limitations and design implications are discussed to help pave the way for future research. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

This article seeks to present methods for preventing work-related musculoskeletal disorders of Spanish fishermen and for redesigning the workplace aboard small fishing vessels. To achieve its objective, the research project was designed in four steps. First, the equipment and procedures for catching, handling, and storing fish were studied. Second, the work postures of all the fishermen were simulated and assessed by using an ergonomic digital human modeling system (ManneQuin Pro). Third, the work environment design aboard vessels was modified on the basis of acceptable simulated work postures to prevent repetitive movements, awkward working postures, and lower back biomechanical stresses. In the fourth step, ergonomic design parameters were provided to vessel designers. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Professional order-picking in deep cold-storage depots (i.e., storing, picking, and dispatching of frozen groceries) requires employees to remain working at temperatures of approximately −24°C for a whole workday. Actually, a well-regulated organization of working times and breaks has not been established, and no competent knowledge exists as to whether an additional age-differentiated organization is necessary. To assess the physiological effects while working in deep cold, 30 male subjects (Ss) were classified into two age groups (20- to 35-year-olds and 40- to 65-year-olds). In whole workday tests, possible age-dependent effects on the strain were measured to guarantee the preservation of the subjects' ability to work in the long run. For the objectification of the physiological strain, heart rate and skin surface temperature were registered continuously, and blood pressure and body core temperature were measured and recorded discretely during cold exposures of 80, 100, and 120 min, separated by 20-min warming-up breaks. Systematic differences of blood pressure could not be found. The heart rate values indicated a high physiological strain for both younger and older Ss, with work-related increases above the resting level of 30 bpm and more. Due to increases over time, endurance level sometimes was exceeded. Age-related differences in skin temperature could not be recorded, but the ability to generate heat deteriorated with advancing age, which is shown by more substantial decreases of body core temperature in the group of 40- to 65-year-olds taken at the tympanum. Regarding physiological strain brought about by maximum heart rate decreasing with age and declined heat generation, correspondingly adapted workday break regimes have to be provided for older employees to ensure their ability to work in the long run. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

In this article, we have undertaken an exploratory analysis of the extrinsic and intrinsic factors affecting an employer's safety motivation in the construction industry, and their correlation with firm size, management level, and perceived risk. We have employed a model based on previous research by Michael Wright for the Health and Safety Executive (UK). Methods: A sample of managers from 198 construction firms in Catalonia (Spain) were interviewed collecting relevant data. The exploratory factor analysis of this data detected two factors: extrinsic (prosecution, inspection, external pressure) and intrinsic (legal, responsibility, internal involvement). Confirmatory factor analysis did not rule out the presence of extrinsic and intrinsic factors (Wright), and the analysis with covariates (MIMIC model) showed significant positive relationships between extrinsic factors, management level, and perceived risk. It also showed a significant positive relationship between intrinsic factors and firm size. Conclusion: The aim of this study was to make a preliminary diagnostic of an employer's safety motivation. Our findings indicate that it is possible to develop external motivators (advice from inspection bodies, union activities, publicity of prosecution records, etc.) that are addressed to top managers and to firms more exposed to risk. We have also found that it is possible to develop internal motivators by introducing experience modification ratings, social accounting, advertising in the mass media, and promotion campaigns, particularly among bigger firms. Our findings will be useful to government agencies, company managers, and consultants and may be adapted for use in motivating midlevel staff to adopt participatory intervention programs.© 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

An academia–industry collaborative research project regarding design for elderly persons was initiated to investigate their living needs and potential design opportunities for new technologies and products. In the first year, a qualitative design approach for exploring their use of medication and health care devices was proposed. First, a user study was conducted using self-reporting, observation, and interview methods. Four personas representing different lifestyle patterns of elderly persons were then derived from the user study data. Finally, four designers were invited to present and synthesize their design ideas for those personas. Results showed that the user study could reveal considerable information and that the persona method was effective for designers to communicate their ideas and concentrate on user requirements. The study findings suggested that, for design for elderly persons, social and affective factors can be considered with decline in age-related abilities. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

With the global population growth of elderly persons, there has been a tendency toward higher quality of life, along with continually increasing expectations and needs for enhanced health care for elderly persons. The purposes of this research were to develop the E-textile–based Smart Healthcare Glove System (SHGS) with Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulator (TENS) as a health care device for the elderly hypertensive, and to evaluate the effectiveness of SHGS for hypertensive treatment. The SHGS consists of an inner glove with sensor-embedded conductive textiles; an outer glove; a TENS for electrical stimulation; and an arm band for a ubiquitous health care wearable device. The SHGS with TENS is used for hypertension treatment and care by electrically stimulating meridian points on the palm. The health care performance test was carried out with a dozen elderly female patients (six Senior-old-ageing and six Old-ageing groups) suffering from hypertension, and was conducted to measure blood pressure and pulse rate before and after wearing the SHGS with TENS for 15 min. Significantly, this study found that the mean blood pressure of all 12 patients after wearing SHGS decreased from 142.58 ± 9.90/82.46 ± 4.45 mmHg to 119.83 ± 9.23/75.79 ± 4.90 mmHg in systolic blood pressure (p < .001) as well as diastolic blood pressure (p < .01) by paired t test. Also, the mean blood pressure of chronic hypertensive patients decreased significantly from 149.25 ± 9.45/82.75 ± 2.70 mmHg to 125.33 ± 9.78/76.67 ± 3.31 mmHg in systolic blood pressure (p < .001). In addition, there was a significant difference in blood pressure before and after wearing the SHGS by Wilcoxon signed rank test (p value: 0.0313, 0.0005). These results suggest that SHGS decreases blood pressure, improves irregular blood circulation, and can be an effective high-tech health care device for elderly hypertensive patients. Although this study used only elderly participants, the results of the study may be generalized to hypertensive patients at any age. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The ability to control movement of the center of mass (COM) plays a vital role in control of posture. Traditionally, visual, vestibular, and somatosensory systems are considered sources of information provided to the central nervous system to control posture. Recently, other environmental stimuli that can indirectly affect postural control have been taken into consideration. One in particular is excessive environmental noise that may exist in some working conditions (e.g., construction sites, assembly lines, food-processing plants). We examined postural performance of 16 healthy young adults (21 to 26 years old) while being exposed to a computer-generated 80-dB intermittent white noise. Participants were tested for their ability to keep their COM static in three conditions of eyes open-static platform (SEO), eyes closed-static platform (SEC), and eyes open-dynamic platform (DYN). Their limits of stability (LOS) also were tested to identify their ability to shift their COM to the borders of an area representing 50% of their base of support. Our results indicated that white noise at the level of 80 dB does not influence either the ability to hold the COM static or the precision to shift COM toward the borders of the base of support. We concluded that environmental noise at the level of 80 dB does not have a short-term effect on postural control in a normal standing posture. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Musculoskeletal disorders and symptoms are common among workers in the semiconductor and related industries. Ergonomic-related checklists are used to identify musculoskeletal disorder risk factors in the workplace. This study explores the suitability of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) checklist for use in the semiconductor manufacturing industry. Six companies were enrolled in the current study, and 122 subjects, ranging in age from 21 to 54 years old, were evaluated through a questionnaire survey and field observation using the OSHA MSDs checklist. The observers were administered an ergonomics-based checklist training course with a duration of 36 hours. Experimental results demonstrated that nearly 50% of subjects reported physical discomfort, with shoulder symptoms (38.5%) being the most common complaint. In addition, the aggregated sensitivity, specificity, and positive predictive values for the MSDs checklist in the six companies were 47.3%, 62.4%, and 30.0%, respectively. This study concluded that the OSHA MSDs checklist appeared to contain better estimates for capturing musculoskeletal discomfort and found that the OSHA MSDs checklist provided an easily administered, proactive surveillance instrument to assist in early identification of musculoskeletal discomfort. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Different people have different models of mental perception, which form the bases of human reactions. The design of human-computer interfaces should consider these differences in the cognitive models of users to achieve maximum benefits. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is an accepted tool for measuring four dimensions of an individual's cognitive model. This research investigated the effects of two interface designs based on the characteristics of the Sensing/iNtuitive (S/N) and Thinking/Feeling (T/F) categories. These interfaces were designed for the visual information displays of computer-based procedures at a nuclear power plant. Because of the nature of this industry, quicker reaction times are required and fewer mistakes are tolerated. A group of subjects were selected, and the subjects were assigned to either the ST or NT group before the experiment. The results, when compared with earlier statistics for a single design for all users, indicate that reaction times were reduced in some critical situations and the number of mistakes was reduced. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Sales force automation (SFA) came to cognition and officially gained momentum in the 1990s (Taylor, 1993). SFA provides salespeople with speedy information access, diminishing the time needed to prepare for calls and cutting down on the number of follow-ups, particularly for urgent need of further information support (Taylor, 1993). This study attempts to look specifically at the “utilization–individual impact” link. In particular, the close link of the personality type of the sales representative to the individual performance usage of the sales forces automation systems in the pharmaceutical industry in Taiwan. This study provides insight into how the personality traits of the individual medical representatives of pharmaceutical companies in Taiwan could influence the adoption of innovative technology, the sales force automation system. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.