Incentives in production: a case study

Author

Ho, Yu Chi ; Luh, Peter B. ; Zheng, Ying Ping ; Wu, Jong ming ; Wang, Qing Yu ; Chen, Liang

Author_Institution

Div. of Appl. Sci., Harvard Univ., Cambridge, MA, USA

Volume

33

Issue

3

fYear

1988

fDate

3/1/1988 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

227

Lastpage

237

Abstract

The motivation, rationale, and experiences of implementing an incentive scheme in a large petrochemical plant in the People´s Republic of China for the purpose of conserving the consumption of cooling water is described. Experimental implementation in a section of a plant is described in detail. A few incentive-induced features uncovered after analyzing the experimental data are reported. A mathematical model with several variations is presented. A better predictive property of the incentive scheme in comparison to a more conventional method is proved analytically. The effectiveness of the scheme is shown by the amount of water conserved, and by the management´s decision for plantwide adoption of the scheme. Practical issues encountered in experimental implementation, extensions of the scheme to more general situations, and theoretical problem inspired by the experiment are discussed

Keywords

behavioural sciences; chemical industry; management; behavioural science; incentive scheme; management decision; mathematical model; petrochemical plant; Computer aided software engineering; Cooling; Costs; Ethics; Hazards; Incentive schemes; Petrochemicals; Production systems; Productivity; Water conservation;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Automatic Control, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9286

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/9.400

Filename

400