economics-times

This antiquated textbook is still used at colleges and universities throughout the United States. The first edition of this book was published in 1955 and, after nine more editions, appears largely unchanged in its mentality. Specifically, the textbook is written for a time when corporations had legions of industrial engineers who did nothing but detailed and tedious time and motion studies. Unfortunately, today's dynamic manufacturing environment renders many of the authors' techniques impractical or even financially hazardous. For example, it emphasizes the need to maximize machine utilization (even if the machine is not considered a bottleneck operation). Practices like these lead to excessive inventory and sub-optimization of the collective manufacturing process. In summary, I believe this textbook does a great disservice to those manufacturing firms that have achieved dramatic productivity gains through the application of lean manufacturing techniques.

I am one of the professors Dr. Seifert is talking about in his review. I continue to use this textbook in both graduate and undergraduate classes on job design. Every semester I search for a better alternative, but am unable to find it. I find this book to be helpful and a good reference that incorporates ergonomics, work design, and methods engineering. (I also use old versions of the lab book that contain very well-made forms.) This text contains the best discussion of time standards I have seen. The 11th edition contains a new chapter on cognitive work. This is a topic I have always discussed and am glad to see formal treatment of it in the new edition. As with any textbook, I do not use it as the sole source of information taught in the classroom and would not recommend it as a sole source. I use the topics in the text to launch discussions and research papers on systems theory, lean, cycle time, environmental, process improvement methodologies, ethics, and other issues for manufacturing and non-shopfloor applications. I find the book especially useful in the area of work design and time standards.

Students have found these skills useful in the workplace. Many of our students work in process improvement and lean implementations. They use these skills to reduce cycle time and balance the lines to meet the demands of customers. Good implementation of lean requires knowledge of how to balance a line to meet customer demand, identify constraints, reduce cycle time, eliminate waste, understanding and dealing with change, cost/benefit analysis, and a direct understanding the relationship between the customer demand and production rate. This text touches on or covers in detail these topics.

I find that the book appears to focus on machine and operator efficiency and utilization, has a primarily decompositional view of work, and concentrates mostly on shopfloor operations. Even with these drawbacks, the text gives the reader solid information on improving workplace design and reducing cycle time while improving worker safety and productivity. I use the discussion on machine and worker utilization to compare and contrast with other manufacturing philosophies, and to relate what the text is covering to more 'big picture' aspects. Other topics not included are a good discussion of maintenance operations and quality. I suggest using other sources to incorporate those topics. All in all, the book is not perfect. It is a very good reference book and text book.

This pap reads like a Moonies or Jehova's Witness pitch. I sent it back. Save your money.

an incredible book which helps us in looking for bright opportunities (window of opportunities) with this trend towards eCommerce technologies and diversifying income options.

This book only teaches you a way to classify different people. You ask yourself 4 questions about a person, and based on the answers you can put him/her into one of 16 profiles. The main problem is that once you have classified the person, you haven't really gained much. Each of the 16 profiles are basically amalgamations of the traits deciphered from those original 4 questions which you asked yourself. So, for instance, you would ask the question "is this person generally fearful or not fearful?" Then, you'd combine the answer (let's say he's not fearful) with the answers to the other 3 questions. Then the profile would say something like "may be confident." To me, this is just a synonym of what you originally measured which is that he is not fearful. There is only about 2 pages on each profile - not nearly enough about motivation or persuading each profile. Korem also does not give enough practical techniques on how to answer the basic 4 questions that he says will help you profile people. For instance, there are no examples of how a fearful or a not fearful person would act in a given situation. For example, I know that fearful people sometimes act overconfident in order to mask their fear. Korem does not give us any way to distinguish this. Finally, the book doesn't offer insight into the fact that people act differently in different situations. For instance, an insecure person may act really tough around subordinates, but will become sickenly sweet to his superiors. Another example: how many people do you know who act completely different at home than at work? Here are some better book recommendations: "Reading People" - for a general intro "Words that Change Minds" & "Selling the Way Your Customer Buys" - Both these books tell you how to ask the right questions in order to discover what makes a person 'tick.' "Secrets of Sexual Body Language" - It's aimed at the dating scene, but it has full color glossy pictures and is actually a very good intro book for studying body language.

This is an excellent book for beginners who are interested in the art of profiling. It is good because it gives the reader the understanding of how to evaluate people and how to deal with them. That is very important when one is working in big organizations. This book will help you advance on the job. It will do that by giving you an intuition on how to deal with people. With that being said, this book includes exercises to improve one's intuition on the behavior of people. Moving away from all that, I gave it three stars because the book falls short in that it claims that the methods in the book are enough to classify just about any person. I think that the methods are pretty good. However human behavior is much too complex to allow us to classify people into just a few categories.

When I bought this book I knew Dan Korem worked for the F.B.I. so I thought this maybe would have a lot to do with his cases. It had very little but more on the process. It mainly depends to on what you're looking for in this book. If you want to know the process of profiling this is all you. If you're interested in the jobs that have been done find another one.

Can't get any new ideas or techniques from this book. Very basic
and crude.

The author is too eager to impress you with his knowledge and ability to build confusing and complex sentences. I've found I need to read a chapter several times to get anything out of it. Even after several readings, taking notes, I'm not sure what is going on. The book provides allot of chaff with very few "Deliverables".

Unless you are already an experienced project manager looking for a new angle this one is better left on the shelf.

Too bad there isn't a zero star rating, this book really deserves it...

Real world project management. Useful for business managers needing the experitise and tools to manage both 'click' and 'mortar' projects. Includes MS Project software on CD, which makes the price of the book very economical.

If you can stop and examine your daily practices and how they use your time - then change the way you act, don't buy this book. There weren't very many pointers that I couldn't have come up on my own.

In addition, the layout is awful. What's the point of justifying the text two inches away from the edge of the paper with quotes from the text that you are reading. There is a page summarizing what is coming up in front of every section. All of the distractions don't allow you to read it in a very timely manner. Kind of ironic. Find another time management book.

My tip for time management is to skip this book. Assuming that one reads at about one page per minute, it's difficult to believe that one could recoup the five to six hours invested in reading this long-winded, tired, poorly written, poorly organized book in saved time. The time management pointers are very basic, and have been written about many times [this book is essentially a 'compilation' (to be polite) of past research]; the author (Marshall Cook) seems to 'borrow' liberally from many sources, and particularly from Stephen Covey's far superior '7 Habits of Highly Effective People'. I recommend '7 Habits' or Brian Tracy's 'Eat That Frog' -- a short (113 page), easy-to-read book that gives better information, but can be read in an hour or so.

This book covers the basics of contemporary thought about time management. The author summarizes and explains many tips and tactics that are available elsewhere: however, if you only want to read one or two time management books, this one is better than many in the crowded genre. Some reviewers have complained about the format -- similar in layout to the "Idiot's Guide" and "Dummies" series -- but many readers find that headlines and sample quotes are easier to read and skim than more tightly packed text. I'm a Ph.D. psychologist who coaches academics and mid-career professionals, and for my work I've read dozens of time management books. This is a reasonable, although not stellar, addition to the pack.

This is a bland book with half-baked cliches, and seemed to almost be an excuse to use a lot of quotes from McCormack's sports clients. His other books are better.

Most of the ideas in this book are simply a rehash of information readily found in other books, and often common sense. For example, do not get hooked on soap operas to save time. Also, I felt that the same basic idea was presented more than once in slightly different formats. In other words, I do not believe that the book really gives you 611 separate and distinct ideas.

If you know what to expect from this book, you won't be disappointed. In fact, that holds true for all of the books in th "Things a Man Should Know..." series (there is another on how to dress, for example).

What you should expect first is a small book, both in page count and it's physical deminsions. Second, the advice inside is presented machine-gun style--a rapid-fire series of short quips and quotes. Some of them are fairly funny and some of them are actually very useful, and they all deliver legitimate and correct advice.

While the lessons inside are important for anyone in business, this book might be best suited as a gift for a graduating college student, providing an easy-to-digest primer for that first important business lunch or meeting.

There are certainly scores of books that offer advice that is just as good, if not better, with more detail and more context. And if you have been in the business world for a few years and have had your share of meetings with clients or important interviews, there isn't too much you'll learn from this little book.

However, if you or someone you know wants an inexpensive, hip, and up-to-date collection of advice on how to behave in today's business world, that's pretty much exactly what you'll get here--nothing more, nothing less.

I wish that this author would become enlightened enough to realize that women are not responsible for men's behavior. We have enough women-blaming in our society to deal with. To place blame for a man's infidelity on his wife removes his culpability for his own actions. This book borders on misogyny.

This is an awful book. It was poorly written for one thing (I think she forgot to have it edited). She babbles and repeats herself over and over. She's probably high on the loads of vitamins and minerals she takes! I already thought she was crazy, but the chapter about her being a vegan and telling exactly how much of each vitamin and mineral she takes, what a freak! Why did she think that was relative to the book anyway?
The book simply says that if a wife doesn't pleasure her husband whenever he wants and doesn't keep it exciting he WILL cheat. That's it, that's all the crazy back and fourth babbling says. And wow, the suggestions of roll playing, naughty boy, delivery boy, little kid, schoolgirl and school teacher! I think she's a total perve and I certainly wouldn't allow her around my children.
My darling husband bought this book for me after hearing something on the radio. Kind of scary, but he says he didn't realize know the underlying subject of the book "Be a freak in bed or your husband WILL cheat". I do have to give this book a little credit, however. After reading this I was inspired to read more on the subject. I read "Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus in the Bedroom" by John Gray and Lou Paget's book "How to Be a Great Lover." I did enjoy these books. I thought that John Grays book was very male centered. But to tell the truth ladies, our sex life has improved drastically. We have sex more often and I've found that he's a lot less moody as a result! I was surprised to discover that, for us, sex was a major key to achieving more peace in our relationship.

I picked this book up to peruse when my wife bought it. I ended up reading it cover to cover in a short amount of time. To be quite frank the book offered some insight as to how women may perceive men and where they come from. Some of it, no matter how trite, was correct and actually gave me, as a man, a little insight to myself. One would have to be willing to be a little honest with oneself, though, to really utilize info in this book. It was not until the grande climax of the book that the true dissappointment took hold. A gradual build-up to merely convey that role playing would keep a man from straying. What could have been worthwhile simply faded into a ludicrous farce of self help. If you read it with a trivial mindset you will be fine and be entertained. Anything of value though is lost if you read the last chapter.

This book is nothing more than an expensive pamplet. 90% of the book is information readily available via web sites. It would be more helpful had she included surveys or ratings of the coach training programs. Maybe even evaluations. She simply regurgitates what is available at the web sites. I expected more written text (each of the 90 pages has about 1/2 page of text). I expected examples, suggestions about how to go about training to be a coach while keeping your day job. Basically, the book is a yellow pages for coaching programs with maybe 5 - 1 page overviews of real live coaches. very disappointing....

There's no value added here. The author simply compiled a bunch of web pages for various coaching programs. This is easily done using google. It's worth something if you don't know anything about web searching, don't have access to the internet, or are going away for a week and want to leave your computer behind. However, in all cases she refers the reader to the webpage for further information. The most disappointing thing of all is that she added nothing. The title is misleading because the book offers nothing about how to train at home or the process of training at home or even how long it might take. She did no research.

I was robbed. It is nothing more than a compilation of titles. I was looking for the practical side of coaching. I do not feel I need more training. I feel that the author merely took lists from the Web and stuck it in book form. The book is in the trash. I hold a master,s in education. I have lifelong experience!I was just looking for the nuts and bolts of where to meet and what fees to charge, stuff of that nature. I think I will write the real book of how to become a life coach with practical advice.