Lesson seventeen

LESSON SEVENTEEN

A. PHONETICS

Daunting / dónting /

Known / noun /

Complex / kómplèks /

Sales department / séilz dipártmənt /

Seem / siim /

Effect / ifékt /

Stand / stænding /

Instead / instéd /

Tantamount / tántəmòunt /

B. VOCABULARY

1. Describe a daunting situation

2. Which animal is known to like bananas a lot?

3. Do you find industrial engineering complex?

4. Is the sales department important for a company?

5. How does your teacher seem today?

6. What effects would the Free Trade Treaty (TLC) have on Colombian’s economy?

7. What is the person’s standing next to you name?

8. Do you like to read instead of listening to music?

9. Is studying English in the university tantamount to studying in the meyer?

C. GRAMMAR

WORDS TAKING PREPOSITIONS

TEACHER STUDENTS

tired of They are tired of walking

listen to Some students never listen to the teacher

rely on The engineer is relying on the plan he designed

pleased with The CEO is not pleased with results

Adapted by Yair Herrera Fernández

LESSON SEVENTEEN

D. READING

In business, of course, our task is even more daunting. Not only do we have to deal with our own set of independent variables, we have to deal with many more independent variables. In comparison with most of the technical systems that engineers might try to optimize, most business systems present us with a relative infinity of independent variables. Business systems, also known as organizations, are highly complex systems. Yet, despite all the complexity, we face a very similar optimization problem. We need to determine optimum settings for the many independent organizational variables.

What are these independent organizational variables? Here are just a few: the capacity of the purchasing department, the capacity of the sales department, the capacity of the mechanical engineering group, the capacity of the electrical engineering group, the capacity of the manufacturing engineering group, the capacity of the software engineering group, the capacity of our manufacturing lines, the capacity of our distribution system, the capacity of our financial department, the capacity of our shipping department, the capacity of our receiving department, the capacity of our internal computer network, the capacity of.... In other words, our independent variables include (but are not limited to) all the functions that some among us call "cost drivers."

The task that we seem to face consists of having to find the optimum setting for each of these, i.e., the set of settings that results in the optimum performance of our organizational system, as measured by the combination of response functions, T, I, and OE. Clearly, our business optimizations are significantly more difficult than the optimization of any technical system. How, then, can we possibly make any measurable progress toward this lofty goal? Let's see how our manufacturing engineer goes about it. We may find our conclusions somewhat surprising.

Since our hypothetical engineer understands DOE, he/she is likely to try to identify the few variables that have a significant main effect on the response functions. What is a main effect? It's easy, really. The main effect of an independent variable, on a response function, equals the average change in the function, as the variable changes from its low setting to its high setting. Let's illustrate this with an analogy.

Imagine that you are standing on a hillside. You can walk

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