Learning curves are now recognized throughout the business community as valuable aids to improving productivity in the workplace. This volume is a clear and concise handbook intended to provide both the technical and the non-technical reader with a basic understanding of the underlying theory of learning curves, as well as ready access to commonly used learning curve models, formulas, and tables. Since the book itself is meant to be a handy reference guide, it is organized to make needed information easily available. After a review of basic learning curve theory and a comparison of the most frequently used models, an extensive list of equations is accompanied by everyday examples that illustrate the correct application of learning curve theory as well as solutions to problems that may arise. Tables, graphs, and charts, easily located in the appendixes, can facilitate computations, and a bibliography lists articles, pamphlets, and books that describe learning curve theory and its various uses over the past fifty years. Learning curve analysis, simplified and presented here in a convenient manual, will enable accounting, financial, and purchasing specialists to improve not only employee proficiency forecasting, but also the efficiency of their own productivity.

Learning curves are now recognized throughout the business community as valuable aids to improving productivity in the workplace. This volume is a clear and concise handbook intended to provide both the technical and the non-technical reader with a basic understanding of the underlying theory of learning curves, as well as ready access to commonly used learning curve models, formulas, and tables. Since the book itself is meant to be a handy reference guide, it is organized to make needed information easily available. After a review of basic learning curve theory and a comparison of the most frequently used models, an extensive list of equations is accompanied by everyday examples that illustrate the correct application of learning curve theory as well as solutions to problems that may arise. Tables, graphs, and charts, easily located in the appendixes, can facilitate computations, and a bibliography lists articles, pamphlets, and books that describe learning curve theory and its various uses over the past fifty years. Learning curve analysis, simplified and presented here in a convenient manual, will enable accounting, financial, and purchasing specialists to improve not only employee proficiency forecasting, but also the efficiency of their own productivity.

Written by international contributors, Learning Curves: Theory, Models, and Applications first draws a learning map that shows where learning is involved within organizations, then examines how it can be sustained, perfected, and accelerated. The book reviews empirical findings in the literature in terms of different sources for learning and partia

Cracking Health Costs reveals the best ways for companies and small businesses to fight back, right now, against rising health care costs. This book proposes multiple, practical steps that you can take to control costs and increase the effectiveness of the health benefit. The book is all about rolling back health care costs to save companies and employees money. Working hand-in-hand with their employees, businesses need to ensure that, whenever feasible, employees with the most expensive diagnoses get optimal treatment at hospitals not practicing “volume-driven” medicine for higher profits. Less than 10% of employees incur 80% of costs. About 20% of patients have been completely misdiagnosed, while many others are simply the victims of surgeons who are either practicing bad medicine or overtreating for profit. For example, some companies, such as Walmart and Lowe’s, are turning to the “Centers of Excellence” approach author Tom Emerick helped to pioneer while running benefits for Walmart. By determining which hospitals are adopting the highest standards of care, benefits managers can reduce the number of unnecessary high-cost surgeries and improve employees’ overall health. The solution-based approach offered by the book is unique, because it can be implemented by businesses today.

It is 1755, and the threat of war with France looms over colonial York, Virginia. Chocolatier Esmée Shaw is fighting her own battle of the heart. Having reached her twenty-eighth birthday, she is reconciled to life alone after a decade-old failed love affair from which she's never quite recovered. But she longs to find something worthwhile to do with her life. Captain Henri Lennox has returned to port after a lengthy absence, intent on completing the lighthouse in the dangerous Chesapeake Bay, a dream he once shared with Esmée. But when the colonial government asks him to lead a secret naval expedition against the French, his future is plunged into uncertainty. Will a war and a cache of regrets keep them apart, or can their shared vision and dedication to the colonial cause heal the wounds of the past? Bestselling and award-winning author Laura Frantz whisks you away to a time fraught with peril--on the sea and in the heart--in this redemptive, romantic story.