The design of QTrac: an automated quality and cost management system for projects

Abstract: The value of Total Quality Management is demonstrated by the fact that quality products and service are non-negotiable as market-entry for organizations to compete globally. Quality costing is a measure of the efficiency of Total Quality Management and the metric that companies employ to measure their gain in profitability from investment in quality management programs. Current financial accounting systems, however, are not designed to measure and report quality related data in a format that allows informed decision-making. Two companies, BIE International and PACE Services, combined their expertise in quality management and cost engineering to design a quality and cost management system that measures and reports quality management and cost data and information. The program is called QTrac for Projects and Manufacturing and is designed as a quality decision-making and cost management system for the project and manufacturing sectors. The objectives of this paper are to present the design strategy of QTrac in response to the critique and limitations of existing quality cost and accounting methodologies

Generating Competitive Priority Strategy in Transformer Industry

The transformer market competition in Indonesia is getting more attractive and dynamic. This encourages transformer manufacturers to improve competitiveness, such as quality, cost, timely delivery, and service. Therefore, companies need to understand customer needs and choose the right competition strategy. There are three alternative strategies to compete, cost leadership, differentiation, and focus. This research understands the customer needs and choose the right strategy to face the competition. The design of this study used survey and data collection through questionnaires. Data analysis methods using QFD and AHP combined with Focus Group Discussion (FGD) implementation. QFD analysis results in the form of the house of quality shows two major things: recommendations action for internal improvement and priority contribution value which will be the next input analysis with AHP method. The result of AHP analysis on the priority of contribution value in choosing an alternative strategy shows that the most appropriate strategy is differentiation, with the company focus on its competitive advantage. Practical implications of this research, for the management need to increase production through efficiency and cost reduction. This research develops product development theory by digging priority customer needs as one element to determine the competition strateg

The Impact of Quality Costs as a Mediator in the Relationship Between Management Accounting Systems and Financial Performance: the Case of Jordan

Objective: The current analysis aims to assess the mediating effect of cost quality on the relationship between management accounting systems and the financial performance of industrial enterprises listed on the Amman Stock Exchange.   Theoretical framework: Three questionnaires are used for this purpose, their validity and reliability are checked; the first part deals with the cost of quality and consists of 15 paragraphs. The second part deals with the management accounting system and consists of 30 parts distributed in three dimensions (just in time, value chain, target cost).   Design/methodology/approach: The third section is related to financial performance and consists of 10 paragraphs. It works on a random sample of 311 people.   Results: The results show a statistically significant mediating role of quality cost on the relationship between the management accounting system and its three dimensions (just-in-time manufacturing, value chain, and target cost) and the financial performance of industrial companies listed on the Amman Stock Exchange.   Originality: This study expands the use of data science techniques, big data, and artificial intelligence, as these are necessary and effective tools for improving the quality of financial performance and make a significant contribution to the fundamental objective

PRINCIPLES OF TQM IN AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY

TQM refers to a management process and set of disciplines that are coordinated to ensure thatthe organization consistently meets and exceeds customer requirements. TQM engages all divisions,departments and levels of the organization. TQM companies are focused on the systematic management of data in all processes and practices to eliminate waste and pursue continuous improvement. The goal is to deliver the highest value for the customer at the lowest cost while achieving sustained profit and economic stability for the company. While every organization should implement its own specialized form of quality management, there are some basic core principles that guide every quality effort. The single most important element of quality management is the focus on the customer. During this quality process, we will strive frequently to hear from our customers. From this basic concept, that the customer is the ultimate determiner of quality, come the other principles of Quality management. All types of automotive industries , have reduced costs increased process efficiency and improved the quality of their products and services by working to meet the needs of the people they serve through the application of total quality management (TQM) principles. Learning the principles and practices of TQM will help achieve outstanding results and enlist the support of top management in advancing this concept within the organization enabling area managers or supervisors to create a work environment that gets the best from its workers. The proof will be reflected in the results deliver to the customer. With growing global competition, quality management is becoming increasingly important to the leadership and management of automotive industry. Quality management principles provide understanding of and guidance on the application of quality management. By applying following quality management principles, organizations will produce benefits for customers, owners, employees, suppliers and society as a whole.management, total quality management, automotive industry

An Improved Earned Value Management Method Integrating Quality and Safety

The construction industry invests significant time and money to improve quality and safety while reducing cost and schedule impacts. The industry has a sincere desire to improve construction project management methods to improve efficiency. Historically, quality and safety underperformances result from undermanaged quality control and safety activities. The cost and schedule impacts associated with poor quality work have always had an impact on construction operations. The unprecedented challenges and uncertainties of COVID-19 highlighted the need to improve the Earned Value Management (EVM) method within construction to reflect these quality and safety activities. The central goal of this dissertation is to present an improved EVM method, which is named the Earned Value Construction Management (EVCM) method. EVCM integrates quality and safety as scheduled activities to capture costs as they occur. EVCM incorporates a new index-linked to quality control activities and improves the accuracy of reporting on the project in normal or pandemic construction environments. The methodology used in this dissertation includes detailing engineering and administrative safety protocols during COVID-19, evaluating effective PPE during a pandemic, and statistically analyzing project data to demonstrate EVCM. The project data collected before and during COVID-19 of similar projects were statistically tested for significance using a one-tailed t-test. The p-values of the three tests were all less than 0.05, indicating a significant difference was found in actual cost, the actual cost divided by budget, and total project performance using EVCM compared to EVM. The results show, despite the known increase in cost associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, the application of EVCM resulted in a statistically significant improvement in project performance. The contribution of this dissertation is field-validated information addressing the cost and schedule impacts in industrial construction during a COVID-19 environment. Additionally, EVCM was formulated to predict cost and schedule impacts aligned with quality and safety activities. The knowledge developed in this dissertation ultimately enhances the construction industry’s ability to respond to a pandemic and incorporate quality and safety activities in a schedule to economically track and manage progress

Decision support for optimised irrigation scheduling

The system, developed under the FLOW-AID (an FP6 project), is a farm level water management system of special value in situations where the water availability and quality is limited. This market-ready precision irrigation management system features new models, hardware and software. The hardware platform delivers a maintenance-free low cost dielectric tensiometer and several low-end irrigation or fertigation controllers for serving different situations. The software includes a complete, web based, Decision Support System (DSS) that consists of an expert planner for farm zoning (MOPECO) and a universal irrigation scheduler, based on crop-water stress models (UNIPI) and water and nutrient uptake calculations. The system, designed also to service greenhouse fertigation and hydroponics, is scalable from one to many zones. It consists of 1) a data gathering tool which uploads agronomic data, from monitored crops around the world, to a central web Data Base (DB), and 2) a web based Decision Support System (DSS). The DSS processes intelligently the data of the crop using Crop Response Models, Nutrient Uptake Models and Water Uptake Models. The central system returns over Internet to the low-end controller a command file containing water scheduling and nutrient supply guideline

Profit Maximization with Data Management Systems

Data, a core component of information systems, has long been recognized as a critical resource to firms. Data is the backbone of business processes; it enables efficient operations, supports managerial decision-making, and generates revenues as a commodity. This study identifies a significant gap between the technical and the business perspectives of data management. While functionality and technical efficiency are well addressed, the consideration of economic perspectives, such as value-contribution and profitability, is not evident. This study suggests that introducing economic perspectives can better inform the design and the administration of data management systems by accounting for the interplay between business benefits and implementation costs. To address the identified gap, the paper proposes a quantitative microeconomic framework for data management that links value and cost to the impartial/technological characteristics of data and the related information system. Such a mapping allows cost/benefit assessment and determination of optimal configuration of system and data characteristics to maximize value and profits. The framework is demonstrated through development of a model for tabular datasets, and the optimal design of dataset characteristics (such as time- span, desired quality-level, and the set of attributes to be included). The application of the model is illustrated using numerical examples

The Impact of Property Management on the Value of Residential Product in Saudi Arabia

This paper discusses the impact of property management in maintaining the value of residential product in Saudi Arabia. The paper reviewed a comparison of two property models: the first is managed by the property management system, and the second is managed by the owner only. In addition, the field questionnaire was used and distributed to a sample of the study community consisting of 125 real estate management institutions and real estate office in Riyadh. The results of the analysis indicate that property management contributes to raising the quality of the residential product and maintaining its market value. The residential product which managed by the property management system loses 10% of its value after 5 years. On the other hand, the product that managed by the owner loses more than 50% of its real value after 5 years. The paper proposes to strengthen cooperation between governmental and private institutions to establish a Real Estate Data Center (REDC) for the classification of residential properties subject to the criteria of management, quality and economic cost

RISK MANAGEMENT AND DATA QUALITY SELECTION: AN INFORMATION ECONOMICS APPROACH

Data quality has been shown to be a major determinant of the value of systems that utilize input data feeds and transform them into valuable information under a variety of business contexts. For this study, we have chosen a financial risk management context to investigate the relationship between data quality and value of risk management forecasting systems. Three attributes of data quality, frequency, response time, and accuracy, along with the cost of data are considered. Joint impacts of attributes are also considered. It is shown that an increase in report frequency results in an increase in the utility of a risk management forecasting system, but this increase is limited by the responsiveness of the hedging scheme. Frequency is shown to improve the utility of the forecasting systems in two ways: First, an increase in frequency pushes the predicted states closer to the actual states and second, an increase in frequency causes the reliability of the forecasting model to increase. A delay in response time of reports is predicted to have a greater impact on utility for high frequency reports than for low frequency reports. Finally, data inaccuracies are recommended to be the first concern of a portfolio manager before an attempt is made to increase the reporting frequency.Information Systems Working Papers Serie

ISO 9001 Quality Management Systems: Critical Analysis of Literature Review

Purpose and Methodology/Approach: This paper follows a previous one focused on a bibliographic review of motivations, benefits and difficulties in implementing quality management systems (QMS) based on ISO 9001 standard (Saraiva et al, 2017). Controversial, conflicting and even contradictory, and/or non-consensual findings in same or different countries have suggested other dimensions were lacking. So, a further and critical analysis was deepened in order to identify possible flaws in dimensions of analysis and in methodological issues, which is the scope of this paper. Findings: Many research works were based on perceptions/opinions (eg. motivations, benefits, difficulties) and tangible results were missing, being conclusions built only on qualitative data. Quantitative data were not used to objectivize and validated qualitative findings. Physical or economic indicators rarely were presented. Researchers may not have asked for quantitative data or even ignore these aspects of organizational reality, or the organizations also do not have this type of data. It is hard to corroborate statements (from company’s managers) or findings (from researchers) without other objective evidences (examples are: motivations influence the QMS performance; cost reduction is a benefit; the biggest difficulties in implementation/certification of QMS are the excessive and complex (bureaucratic) documentation, the weak commitment to quality by management and staff, the high cost/scarce resources and the time spent with the additional tasks for the implementation process; organizations operating an ISO 9001 QMS show a better performance). Another matters such as the relative size of the certification phenomenon in each country or region and their economic and social development were generally unknown or were not taken into account. These contextual factors can distort findings. The scientific affiliation of researchers (eg. Industrial engineering, Management, Sociology, Organizational psychology) may also have implications for the research perspective and aspects that are privileged in analysis and conclusions. Research Limitation/implication: Additionally, other methodological issues can also be related to data collection instruments (eg. questionnaires to collect perceptions/opinions) are not the most appropriate for achieving some desired information or data processing does not validate conclusions. Thus, we will take into account in our future research these limitations we have identified in this one and strongly recommend to other researchers our conclusions. Originality/Value of paper:These reflections and findings suggest further and deeper work for research in QMS and other related topics, looking for those dimensions already identified as missing, and/or considering more dimensions, bearing in mind concerns that quality movement is losing popularity, because it does not appear to managers consistently with quantitative data proving contributions of quality to increase productivity and competitiveness. Finally, we raise methodological questions about research on these topics, and other dimensions of analysis are recommended