Purpose: A growing number of open source software emerges in many segments of the software market. In addition, software products usually exhibit network externalities. The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of open source software on the quality strategies of proprietary software...

Purpose: The aim of this research is to develop a two stages optimization model on make or buy analysis and quality improvement considering learning and forgetting curve. The first stage model is developed to determine the optimal selection of process/suppliers and the component allocation to...

Purpose: We deal with the problem of the joint determination of optimal economic production quantity (EPQ) and optimal preventive maintenance (PM) for a system that can produce multiple products alternately. The objective is to find the optimal number of production cycles and the PM policy...

Purpose: To reduce the subjective prejudice and uncertainty in evaluating product quality. Design/methodology/approach: AHP method is used to analyze the structure of product quality evaluation problem and determine weights for evaluation criteria. After structure judge matrix, sequencing...

The purpose of this paper is to study the links between quality and consumers' emotions and eventually with their satisfaction. There is mounting evidence that, while quality evaluation may be strictly cognitive, satisfaction gauges customers' emotions towards the product/service provider's...

Root-cause identification for quality and productivity related problems are key issues for manufacturing processes. It has been a very challenging engineering problem particularly in a multistage manufacturing, where maximum number of processes and activities are performed. However, it may also...

Purpose: Process improvement in service industries, like the registration process in a hospital, can be achieved with the application of lean principles. In this specific case, lean principles were essential to analyze and improve patient satisfaction in a hospital in Montana. The clinics...

Purpose: This study aimed at implementing lean six sigma to evaluate the productivity and manufacturing waste in the production line of a paper company Methodology/Approach: The study is a case study in nature. The method illustrates how lean six sigma (LSS) is used to evaluate the existing...

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the Critical Success Factors (CSFs) for successful implementation of Operational Excellence (OE) by the organisations in the Sudanese aviation industry, as well as to determine the resulted impacts in the improved organisational performance...

Purpose: In this paper, a practical framework is presented for the successful integration of buyers and contract organizations based on the Critical Incident Technique (CIT). Methodology: The initial pool of situations was developed inductively according to qualitative data provided by ten...