Purpose The degradation of a town’s traditional architectural settings is a prominent issue in the historic towns that possess a rich heritage and legacies of architectural character in its urban fabric that have developed over the course of its evolution. Resident participation in...

This two‐part article focuses on the need to ignore the many acronym‐based initiatives and programmes that tend to drive business performance. The author recommends that people must play a critical role in any performance improvement initiative. People should work in an effective team...

Quality cost is usually considered as a means to measure the quality level in a quality system. Since the interrelationship among quality cost components is complex, a general quantitative model for describing their relationship is not easy to construct for improving the quality. In the...

Recent surveys on the use of quality‐related costs in manufacturing industries indicated that, while quality cost data are valuable for deciding on prevention activities, most companies do not understand the fundamental economics of quality. In addition, the published literature fails to...

The determination of quality costs on a production line is discussed. An approach to quality costs analysis is developed and illustrated employing a particular production line. This line which is devoted to the assembly and testing of an advanced computer system is fully described. A...

The conventional wisdom of managers in the US dictates that improving product quality will increase the cost of making the product which will either increase the price or reduce the profits. Shows that improving the quality of a product or service will not necessarily increase its manufacturing...

Proposes a cost model for parameter design in quality engineering. In this model the total cost is minimized to obtain the best design. The total cost includes quality loss, cost for input characteristic, and cost for objective characteristic adjustment. Presents the best mean level of an input...

This COQ project was originated with the objective of investigating measures of the cost of quality in engineering departments. The goal was to identify existing measures of the cost of quality in engineering operations and to recommend measures for possible use for the engineering unit of the...

Reports the results of a case study which undertook to examine the relationship between conformance and quality‐related costs. The controversial Lundvall‐Juran economic quality level (EQL) model has been criticized by various authors due to its acceptance of imperfect quality. While...

The purpose of this paper is to present an integrated cost of quality ‐ activity‐based costing (COQ‐ABC) framework for measuring quality costs under ABC. The main deficiencies of most COQ systems are: (1) no consensus method to allocate overhead costs to COQ elements, (2) the failure to...