2015, Dissertation The introduction of advanced high strengths steels enabled automotive manufacturers to simultaneously reduce weight and increase safety of vehicles. However issues were reported concerning the weldability of these steels. These issues concerned both the manufacturability as well as the performance of resistance spot welded joints. The manufacturability addresses the ability to produce joints in an industrial set up, especially the welding range and the electrode lifetime. The performance includes the post weld hardness and the failure mode of resistance spot welded joints.
Both aspects are addressed in the dissertation using experimental data and software to model and simulate welding processes.
2021, Article / Letter to editor (Ifip Advances in Information and Communication Technology, vol. 610, (2021), pp. 278-288)This paper studies the effect of Lean QRM Yellow-belt training programs on employee’s continuous improvement (CI) behavior. Training employees is still the most common approach organizations follow to implement Lean production. However, such training programs do not always have the desired effect. To understand why Lean training programs, such as the Lean QRM Yellow-belt training may or may not lead to expected results, this study draws on a process model to conduct a longitudinal analysis. The results indicate that the Lean QRM Yellow-belt training program positively influences the patterning or shared understanding of lean operating routines, but does not (yet) influence the enactment of lean operating or CI routines. The interaction between enacting and patterning lean operating and CI routines however is necessary to implement lean production and thus influences the potential success of its sustainable implementation. These results pose practical implications on the content and didactical form of teaching in Lean QRM Yellow-belt training programs.
2021, Article / Letter to editor (Ifip Advances in Information and Communication Technology, vol. 610, (2021), pp. 213-224)Network Action Learning has emerged as an innovative development of Action Learning and has been described as a lean approach to collaborative strategic improvement with problem-solving at its core, be it either within- or across organizational boundaries. Virtual Action Learning is also presented as an emergent variety of Action Learning, bringing together geographically dispersed individuals within and across organizations in an online, virtual environment. Given the onset of new, innovative digital technologies – particularly in response of the Covid-19 pandemic – Blended Learning has also emerged as an educational platform that represents some combination of face-to-face and online learning using mobile technologies and cloud-based resources. Though Virtual Action Learning has been discussed as neither better than nor second best to face-to-face Action Learning, in this paper, we suggest that a blended approach may be the most effective method. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to construct a Blended approach to Network Action Learning, where intra- and inter-firm Network Action Learning can take place using a hybrid, physical-virtual approach to promoting collaborative strategic improvement and gemba-based problem-solving.