International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management articles from April 1997

International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management archives from April 1997

A cultural study of ISO 9000 certification.
April 1, 1997... Introduction Quality improvement programmes have taken a variety of forms (such as total quality management (TQM), just-in-time (JIT), and ISO 9000) as organizations seek to enhance their competitive positions. An organization's culture is...

A situational maintenance model.
April 1, 1997... Introduction Wireman[1] refers to maintenance planning as "the last frontier" for manufacturing facilities. In the move to world-class manufacturing (WCM), many firms are realizing a critical need for effective maintenance of production...

The optimization of multi-response problems in the Taguchi method.
April 1, 1997... Introduction Off-line quality control is considered to be an effective approach in producing high-quality products quickly at a relatively low cost. Off-line quality control includes those quality control activities at the product planning,...

Machinery selection - process capability and product reliability dependence.
April 1, 1997... Introduction The inherent or design reliability strength of a product is associated with the type of manufacturing process, process capability of machines, quality control, environment or external load, cost of production, etc. For a given...

Identifying potential barriers to total quality management using principal component analysis and correspondence analysis.
April 1, 1997... Introduction Most quality management researchers make inadequate use of statistical techniques, especially multivariate statistical methods, compared with researchers in other fields such as marketing research and social science research....

A non-homogeneous software reliability model based on Zipf's law.
April 1, 1997... Introduction Software reliability has been playing an important metric in the evaluation of software quality. Over the past two decades, many models have been developed to predict a software system's failure rate and were used as management...

Strategic quality management and financial performance indicators.
April 1, 1997... Introduction This paper seeks to explore particular aspects of a study initially discussed in an earlier paper[1], which examined the integration of strategy and continuous improvement in Australian firms. In particular, the paper combines...

A non-parametric method for experimental analysis with censored data.
April 1, 1997... 1. Introduction Engineers usually determine feasible factor/level settings by performing experiments to enhance the product quality. Occasionally, however, only part of an experiment can be completed owing to some uncontrollable causes such...

Some observations on the issues of quality cost in construction.
April 1, 1997... Introduction Quality management is a critical component to the successful management of construction projects. Within the UK construction industry, efforts have been made to introduce Quality Assurance programmes and schemes, especially...

Total quality management in the US Air Force: a study of application and attitudes.
April 1, 1997... Introduction In a recent article, which identified ten areas for future research in total quality management (TQM), one suggestion was a focus on applying TQM to all industries[1]. As the US armed forces are experiencing mandated downsizing...

Cost benefit analysis of a one server two dissimilar unit system subject to different repair strategies.
April 1, 1997... Introduction The two unit standby redundant system has been studied extensively in the past[1-6]. Most of the authors[7,8] working in the field of reliability theory have studied two unit redundant system by assuming that the repair of a...

Prediction of time-varying dynamic processes.
April 1, 1997... An optimal identification algorithm for prediction of time-varying processes is developed. It is based on the linear combination theory of recursive least-squares equations. The algorithm is illustrated by a mathematical model from desalting...

Benchmarking field services using a zero defects approach.
April 1, 1997... Introduction The current business environment is unquestionably becoming technologically more complex. Efforts at business process re-engineering increase this significantly due to the emphasis on reengineering work through the use of...

TQM in higher education - a review.
April 1, 1997... Introduction There is a prevailing belief that higher education has entered a new environment in which quality plays an increasingly important role. Feigenbaum[1] believes that "quality of education" is the key factor in "invisible"...