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This paper outlines how Design for Lean Six Sigma methods aided a medical device manufacturing company in developing a new strategic space management and approval process for its manufacturing site.

The project demonstrates the application of the Design for Lean Six Sigma and structured Define, Measure, Analyse, Design, and Verify methodology in designing and implementing a process that enables the case study manufacturing site to improve its space utilisation and free up space.

The project was validated in one manufacturing department, and the Design for Lean Six Sigma methodology resulted in creating 15% new space for that area, with opportunities identified to free up 44.7% of the total manufacturing floor space and realise over €2.2 million cost savings as well as start to manufacture new products launched.

The manuscript highlights for the first time how the Design for Lean Six Sigma methodology can be utilised for space utilisation and can be leveraged by other manufacturers. The current study's limitations are that it is a single-site case study application. Future longitudinal case studies on Design for Lean Six Sigma application in more manufacturing space utilisation projects would be useful. This study has implications for identifying best practices for Design for Lean Six Sigma methodology application in the device industry, thus improving the state of the art for introducing new manufacturing lines.

This is the first published work to utilise Design for Lean Six Sigma methodology for space utilisation in a medical device company. This review will provide medical devices and other manufacturing organisations with recommendations on utilising Design for Lean Six Sigma and design for improved space utilisation to reduce costs.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a design of online-merge-offline (OMO) classroom for open education with design principles related to practical issues of teachers’ teaching, students’ learning and schools’ management.

Three stages were covered: drafted an OMO classroom framework, built a sample classroom and explored end-users’ experience. First, authors searched for and reviewed previous studies and related cases to draft an OMO framework. Second, a classroom, consisted of wireless devices, cloud-based services, Internet of Things terminals, ergonomics furniture, and comprehensive data management and analysis services, was built in Shanghai Open University. Third, invited 11 students’, 18 teachers’ and 9 school managers’ perspectives were collected and analysed by surveys and interviews.

All student participants responded positively in terms of learning experience in the classroom. They not only engaged in classroom activities such, but also accessed needed learning materials and interacted with teachers and peers anytime anywhere via mobile devices. Similarly, most teachers (90 per cent) made positive responses because of flexibility of teaching strategies and learning activities and expressed willingness to use the classroom in the future (94.4 per cent). In addition, more than 78 per cent of managers positively commented on the design of classroom, interaction effects and effective management. Visualised data allowed them to timely monitor status of facilities, comprehensively understand users’ behaviour and issues, make necessary decision with scientific evidence.

The framework and classroom not only provide teachers, students, school managers and researcher with a better understanding of innovative open education, but also indicate the key role of objective-oriented and data-driven issues for further work.

To meet needs of teachers, students, managers and researchers in today’s open education, an OMO classroom was built in Shanghai Open University based on the proposed Objective-Oriented Pedagogy-Space-Technology (OPST) framework. The framework provides readers (especially teachers and administrators of open-education institutes, staff of information centres and ed-tech researchers) with a better understanding of innovative instruction and effective management, and the originally designed classroom can be a practical and illuminating example.

Public authorities are required to organise new facilities to respond to changed user demands in terms of a public-owned school. The number of pupils attending the case study school will increase in the following years, as will the number of children attending a day nursery located on the present campus. In addition, the users of the campus have complained of building-related symptoms. This study aims to understand the municipal decision-making process in organising the school’s facilities, in particular, the factors used for decreasing uncertainty around a project.

This study is a case study undertaken through an action research approach. The researchers participated in the project planning meetings concerning the future activities to take place in the building.

Over a 13-month period, multiple stakeholders participated in the project planning meetings providing a deeper understanding of the space demands posed, current challenges and opportunities offered by the existing building. In addition, the alternative solutions generated were evaluated. The problem identification and information gathering periods lasted over nine months, which was far longer than predicted. Thus, generating alternative solutions and evaluation of the solutions also delayed. As the entire process was delayed substantially, the final decision on organising the facilities was not made during this research.

This research may be of practical value for a property owner and a project team for decision-making concerning changed facility demands.

This paper provides information about how public authorities are making decisions on facility organisation during conditions of uncertainty.

This study was conducted to address the methodical shortcomings and high associated cost of understanding the use of new, poorly understood architectural spaces, such as makerspaces. The proposed quantified method of enhancing current post-occupancy evaluation (POE) practices aims to provide architects, engineers and building professionals with accessible and intuitive data that can be used to conduct comparative studies of spatial changes, understand changes over time (such as those resulting from COVID-19) and verify design intentions after construction through a quantified post-occupancy evaluation.

In this study, we demonstrate the use of ultra-wideband (UWB) technology to gather, analyze and visualize quantified data showing interactions between people, spaces and objects. The experiment was conducted in a makerspace over a four-day hackathon event with a team of four actively tracked participants.

The study shows that by moving beyond simply counting people in a space, a more nuanced pattern of interactions can be discovered, documented and analyzed. The ability to automatically visualize findings intuitively in 3D aids architects and visual thinkers to easily grasp the essence of interactions with minimal effort.

By providing a method for better understanding the spatial and temporal interactions between people, objects and spaces, our approach provides valuable feedback in POE. Specifically, our approach aids practitioners in comparing spaces, verifying design intent and speeding up knowledge building when developing new architectural spaces, such as makerspaces.

This study surveyed users and librarians who have been transforming libraries into a complex cultural space by reflecting the trends of the times, investigated and analyzed various status of complex cultural spaces, including perceptional differences among different groups and made an attempt to present a direction for the diversification of library's role.

This study analyzes the difference between the level of importance and the level of satisfaction for the operational style and use of complex cultural spaces, current status and use of programs and services of libraries as well as the perceptual difference between librarians and users. In order to do so, opinions were collected from librarians who operate complex cultural spaces and users who use the spaces.

First, the study compared to see if there is a difference between the preferred complex cultural space of libraries and the type of complex cultural space actually provided by libraries. Libraries do not only have data spaces but also made education space, performance space, exhibition space, rest space, community space and experience space available for users. Users were found to more frequently use exhibition space, performance space, rest space and education space among other spaces whereas the utilization rate of community space and experience space was identified to be significantly low. Second, this study also compared to see if there is a difference between users' preference for the type of programs operated by library's complex cultural spaces and the actual programs offered. The comparison of perceived differences between librarians who are the operators of the programs and users who participate in the programs is to compare and improve the consistency of supply and demand. As a result, it was found that the supply and demand for educational programs were most consistent, which would lead to higher participation rate and enhanced operational performance and satisfaction with libraries. Lastly, investigations were carried out to see whether there is a difference in the levels of importance and satisfaction for the operation of complex cultural spaces and perceptional difference between libraries and users. Comprehensively analyzing the results, in the first quadrant of “Keep the Good Work,” librarians showed a higher level of perception compared to users. In particular, librarians were found to have a different perception towards programs (contents) compared to users. Based on such results, a systematic program must be considered when planning for library programs in order to increase uses' satisfaction. In addition, in the second quadrant of “Concentrate Here,” with a high importance and low satisfaction, users showed a high level of importance for programs (contents) whereas libraries identified accessibility as a more important factor, indicating a big perceptional difference between users and librarians.

This study examines the differences between the opinions of operators who create complex cultural spaces and operate programs in the spaces and the opinions of users who participate in the spaces and programs, and it was found that no other studies in Korea and overseas have done the same yet. In addition, it carries a significant meaning in that it does not only investigate the perceptions towards importance and satisfaction, but also suggests improvement directions based on the perceptional differences between users and librarians. In other words, librarians who implement policies at actual sites seem to be able to reflect the results of this study and decide the operation direction of the library.

Users also participate in various services and programs that library's complex cultural spaces offer and enjoy their cultural life. It carries a significant meaning in that the study evaluates the importance-satisfaction of factors affecting the use of complex cultural spaces of libraries by examining perceptions of those users who actually have the experience of using library's complex cultural spaces when the number of libraries attempting to transform into a multicultural space increases. The study made an attempt to enrich the knowledge and understanding of users' visit/use of libraries, suggest improvement directions and factors to focus. Continuous efforts and additional studies must be made in order to vitalize library's complex cultural spaces and secure the position of a cultural facility as well as a communication space located at the heart of regional society.

This study aims to explore an emerging collection of smart building technologies, known as smart workplace solutions (SWS), in the context of facilities management (FM).

This study is based on semi-structured interviews with facility managers in Finland, Norway and Sweden who have deployed SWSs in their organizations. SWS features, based on empirical data from a previous study, were also used to further analyse the interviews.

It analyses the benefits that SWSs bring from the facility management point of view. It is clear that the impetus for change and for deploying SWS in the context of FM is primarily driven by cost savings related to reductions in office space.

This research has been conducted with a focus on office buildings only. However, other building types can learn from the benefits that facility managers receive in the area of user-centred smart buildings.

SWSs are often seen as employee experience solutions that are only related to “soft” elements such as collaboration, innovation and learning. Understanding the FM business case can help make a more practical case for their deployment.

SWSs are an emerging area, and this study has collected data from facility managers who use them daily.

Property management in commercial real estate (CRE) is an important operational function that needs to be managed because it brings large cost implications to the organization. As India aspires to become a developed real estate market, analysis of the growing importance of automating property services and technology acceptance by stakeholders are two key concerns that need to be explicitly addressed. This study aims to examine the extent of property technology (PropTech) adoption in India and propose a technology-enabled stakeholder management model in Indian CRE.

The research is qualitative in nature and follows the grounded theory approach. Research data were collected by conducting a series of semi-structured interviews with 18 property management professionals from different prominent Indian companies using PropTech.

The findings suggested the nine most typical automated property management functions in Indian CRE. The result of this research is the automated property services model for stakeholder management in CRE. The model demonstrates the value of implementing technology in property services in India.

The study provides useful insights into how artificial intelligence (AI) in property management can be applied to address property-related challenges, various stakeholder needs and improve property performance in accordance with energy efficiency policies.

This paper attempts to add to the limited body of literature on technology in the property management domain. The model demonstrates how automated property services meet the needs of different stakeholders in CRE and provides remote working procedures within the COVID-19 pandemic context.

This paper aims to consider the relationship between urban events and urban public space, asking whether cities have enough space for events and whether events have enough space in cities.

Policy analysis surrounding events and festivals in the Netherlands is used to understand the dynamics of urban events, supported by content analysis of policy documents. A vignette of event space struggles in Amsterdam illustrates the contradictions of the event/space relationship.

The research identifies a policy shift in the Netherlands towards urban events from expansive, festivalisation strategies to defensive, NIMBYist policies. It exposes contradictions between protecting space as a living resource and the exploitation of space for regenerative purposes. Three future scenarios for urban events are outlined: conflict and competition, growth and harmony and digitalisation and virtualisation.

Develops scenarios for the future relationship between events and urban space.

Provides an analysis of the recursive spatial implications of the growth of the events sector for cities and the growth of cities for events.

Across the world, many universities are dealing with a pressure on resources, caused by both organisational developments and ageing campuses. Space utilization studies have a strategic role, providing information on how space is being used, thereby informing decisions about the type and scale of facilities that are needed.

This study reports on the space use measurements conducted at TU Delft over the past five years, complemented by their use to make decisions about the university's real estate portfolio.

The education spaces of the university are found to perform well in terms of frequency rates and can be improved in terms of occupancy rates. The information helped to support short- and long-term decision-making. The study places of the university have a satisfactory occupancy in some types of study places, while in others there is room for improvement. More research is needed here to understand the relationship between space norms and space use.

The space utilization studies have supported discussions with the student council and decision makers on which interventions are required and which current facilities meet students' needs best.

Not much space utilisation studies are reported in the academic literature, and those that do have several limitations. This study may serve as a best practice for benchmarking by other universities and as evidence in other research for the planned and actual use of university facilities.