In recent years we have seen the predictions of our forebears that leisure time would increase as the years pass utterly confounded. It is a fact of life that in major cities across the world, transport systems are full to bursting with people on their way to and from work. As people have come to accept longer working hours as a way of life, a number of new issues have come into play. These include labour market regulation, contract work and outsourcing, wages and increased attempts at better organisation. The impressive array of expert contributors, including Mark Harvey, Jane Humphries and Frank Wilkinson, have compiled a comprehensive and interesting book.

A systematic approach to improving production and quality systems, total productive maintenance (TPM) involves all employees through a moderate investment in maintenance. Therefore, a successful TPM implementation requires support of all employees from C-level on down. Total Productive Maintenance: Strategies and Implementation Guide highlights the

This book is about the measurement and prediction of the reliability behaviour of systems of physical items. It is not specifically concerned with human factors with safety analysis as such, although some of the techniques discussed are adaptable to these purposes. A machine or an electronic circuit exemplifies a system. Each machine or circuit may also be treated as an item in a larger system. However, this does not reduce it suddenly to basic component status; it remains complex and can only be treated as unitary under definable restrictions. In particular, the effects of maintenance and component renewal must be considered most carefully. Previous books on system reliability have concentrated on one or two only of the six principal techniques available to the analyst. These are: 1. probability theory; 2. distributional statistics; 3. markov methods (matrix algebra); 4. fault and event trees (Boolean logic); 5. theory of renewal processes; 6. directional graph theory (di-graphs). This book relates these methods to one another and to their applications. The authors feel that previous books which concentrated upon one tech nique and the contortions necessary to use it in every possible situation may have misled readers into believing that there were no other methods and that some real problems were intractable or more difficult to solve than need be. For example, several results which are proved in other books for items with exponentially distributed times to/between failures are shown to be independent of distribution.

If one accepts the premise that there is no wealth without production, whether at the individual or national level, one is immediately led to the conclusion that the study of productive systems lies at the forefront of subjects that should be intensively, as well as rationally and extensively, studied to achieve the desired 'sustainable growth' of society, where the latter is defined as growth in the quality of life that does not waste the available resources in the long run. Since the end of World War II there has been a remarkable evolution in thinking about production, abetted to a large measure by the nascent field of informatics: the computer technology and the edifices that have been built around it, such as information gathering and dissemination worldwide through communication networks, software products, peripheral interfaces, etc. Additionally, the very thought processes that guide and motivate studies in production have undergone fundamental changes which verge on being revolutionary, thanks to developments in operations research and cybernetics.

This book represents a significant contribution to the debates surrounding globalization and local systems of innovation. The diverse perspectives on global and local processes combined with original insights on developing countries should be of value to scholars and students of economics, social science, political science and business administration. The book should also be of interest to policymakers in governmental and non-governmental bodies, particularly international development agencies.