This paper reports on the development of a new method for suspended test reliability assessment and modeling. Reliability suspended tests are performed in order to accelerate testing duration and then to obtain information quickly on the life distribution of products. During suspended tests,...

In response to the criticism on the measurement system of self‐assessment against the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) model, this paper reports the development of a more scientific and accurate scoring method. The decision model constructed has focused on the “processes”...

The main research question addressed in this paper is how two independent retail outlets in a franchise chain would react to each other on the quality of services. To better explain the interaction, the franchise as an organizational form and its peculiar characteristics compared to the...

In this paper we incorporate Taguchi's loss function in the economic design of the control chart. This is done by redefining the in‐control and out‐of‐control costs using Taguchi's loss function. The new model brings Taguchi's off‐line concepts to the classical SPC approach and continues...

Most methods of reliability analysis of cold standby systems assume that the precise probability distributions of the component times to failure are available. However, this assumption may be unreasonable in a wide scope of cases (software, human‐machine systems). Therefore, the imprecise...

ISO 9000 standards for quality system management are involving a higher and higher number of enterprises and organizations. This paper presents a detailed analysis of certification diffusion in Italy and in some European countries with similar economic structures. Benchmarking and evolution...

Traditionally, process improvement is considered a defect prevention effort. Current cost models consider the coupled effect of both prevention and appraisal costs on the cost of failure. This paper proposes a new model for the cost of quality, which captures the value of continuous process...

Purpose – Proposes a method to compute reliability and long‐run availability of the main parts of the butter‐oil (melted butter) manufacturing plant. This manufacturing plant consists of eight sub‐systems working in a series. Two sub‐systems, namely pump and chiller, are supported by...

Purpose – To propose an accurate product reliability prediction model in order to enhance product quality and reduce product costs. Design/methodology/approach – This study proposes a method for analysing and forecasting field failure data for repairable systems. The novel method constructs...