Working Prototype of Warranty Management System (WMS) for Computer Sales and Services Shops in Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM)

Currently, there are rapid developments and improvements of technologies that we can see with our own eyes that change the way of people works and thinking. One of the fastest technology improvement and development can be categorized into computer technology including the hardware and software system. Therefore, the need of warranty for customer satisfaction and protection is increasing everyday. Serious action and concern need to be taken into account to ensure the effectiveness and value of the computer technology. Warranty Management System (WMS) belongs to a class of a system intended to assist customer to claim computer peripherals or products warranty in a more easiest and comfortable way. This research describes the working prototype of Warranty Management System (WMS) for the computer sales and services shops in University Utara Malaysia(UUM). The Warranty Management System (WMS) is a web based application system.The process of warranty record is available online and the record will be stored in secure database. Customer does not have to bring the receipt or warranty card to claim for computer peripherals or products warranty. More, customer can also check their computer products or peripherals through the system. The Warranty Management System (WMS)will keep all the customer records with unique ID assign for each customer. Only authorized person or staff can access to the system. These new methods must attain unprecedented levels of security, speed, privacy, decentralization, and internationalization

Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Systematic Innovation - ICSI 2016

It is our pleasure to welcome you at the 7th International Conference on Systematic Innovation. It is our objective to provide a forum for the discussion and dissemination of recent advances in the field of TRIZ Methodology, Knowledge-Based and Systematic Innovation. The goal is to enable practitioners, researchers and scientists to exchange ideas on the these topics and to provide an international forum for exchanging new ideas and recent achievements by the TRIZ community and enabling further advances and collaboration with the industrial community. We wish to express our sincere gratitude to the members of the organizing, scientific and technical committees. The reviewers of the papers had a very important job, contributing significantly to the success of the conference. We also wish to express our thanks to our invited speakers. Very special thanks to our students, sponsors and to all who helped us with logistics, conference website, and publications. Welcome to Portugal and Lisbon. We hope you all have a very happy and rewarding meeting.publishersversionpublishe

Selecting quality management and improvement initiatives: case studies of industries in Thailand

Many organisations invest a considerable amount of capital and resources, implementing new techniques to improve their operating performance. Many approaches and techniques are available. New fashionable methods tend to displace older approaches, which may still have value. An effective strategy for selecting and implementing improvement initiatives is an important issue to ensure stakeholder satisfaction. This research aims to investigate quality management and continuous improvement practices, study and analyse several approaches leading to continuous improvement (CI), then construct a framework to assist senior management teams, by providing a decision aid for selecting improvement initiatives. Six key improvement approaches including Total Quality Management (TQM), Six Sigma, ISO9001, Business Process Reengineer (BPR), Lean production (Lean), Business Excellence framework (BE) were selected as the focus in this study. The research was carried out in three phases. Phase One established a conceptual background for the adoption of CI initiatives based on qualitative and quantitative studies of the literature. It described the two decision criteria of fashion setting and pay-offs. Phase Two provided empirical studies of the Quality Management (QM) approaches adopted in three case companies in Thailand. Different decision criteria for the selection of CI approaches were identified from these case studies, together with suggestions from fourteen quality experts and two additional case companies. In-depth analyses of each case study plus interviews with quality experts provided a context and guidance in development of the decision-aid framework for selecting CI approaches. Then in Phase Three the decision-aid framework was proposed, verified, and refined in testing with a multinational case company of four different plants in the Asia Pacific region and two groups of Small and Medium Size Enterprises (SMEs) using action research and assessment questionnaires. The primary outcome of this research is a decision-aid for selecting CI approaches, which demonstrated high utility in practice. The main contributions of this research are a decision-aid for selecting CI initiatives, which was developed and tested, and a number of advancements to the theory of QM and CI, the theory of management fashion, and the application of operations strategy in the QM context

Selecting quality management and improvement initiatives: case studies of industries in Thailand

Many organisations invest a considerable amount of capital and resources, implementing new techniques to improve their operating performance. Many approaches and techniques are available. New fashionable methods tend to displace older approaches, which may still have value. An effective strategy for selecting and implementing improvement initiatives is an important issue to ensure stakeholder satisfaction. This research aims to investigate quality management and continuous improvement practices, study and analyse several approaches leading to continuous improvement (CI), then construct a framework to assist senior management teams, by providing a decision aid for selecting improvement initiatives. Six key improvement approaches including Total Quality Management (TQM), Six Sigma, ISO9001, Business Process Reengineer (BPR), Lean production (Lean), Business Excellence framework (BE) were selected as the focus in this study. The research was carried out in three phases. Phase One established a conceptual background for the adoption of CI initiatives based on qualitative and quantitative studies of the literature. It described the two decision criteria of fashion setting and pay-offs. Phase Two provided empirical studies of the Quality Management (QM) approaches adopted in three case companies in Thailand. Different decision criteria for the selection of CI approaches were identified from these case studies, together with suggestions from fourteen quality experts and two additional case companies. In-depth analyses of each case study plus interviews with quality experts provided a context and guidance in development of the decision-aid framework for selecting CI approaches. Then in Phase Three the decision-aid framework was proposed, verified, and refined in testing with a multinational case company of four different plants in the Asia Pacific region and two groups of Small and Medium Size Enterprises (SMEs) using action research and assessment questionnaires. The primary outcome of this research is a decision-aid for selecting CI approaches, which demonstrated high utility in practice. The main contributions of this research are a decision-aid for selecting CI initiatives, which was developed and tested, and a number of advancements to the theory of QM and CI, the theory of management fashion, and the application of operations strategy in the QM context

Sustainable development and mining in Sierra Leone

PhDThe conflicts between pursuing mining activities to foster economic development and protecting the environment in which such activities take place is a recurring dilemma for mineral reliant countries like Sierra Leone. The concept of sustainable development was designed on the international platform to ameliorate such dilemmas. The concept functions as an arbiter to reconcile biases between developmental goals and environmental objectives, by advocating an integration of one in the other. This study presents sustainable development as valuable recipe, by which mining ventures could be pursued as an economic imperative (to meet the needs of present and future generations), while protecting the environment and its components in the pursuit of such developments. The thesis begins with an introduction into mining in Sierra Leone. It illustrates the international breeding of sustainable development in environmental protection (as oppose to economic development), and emphasise the importance of sustainability principles for sound legal and policy guidance at the national level. It also establishes the applicability of the concept to mineral resourced evelopmentsg enerally. Mineral-specificla ws and other legal controls in Sierra Leone are then examined as a case study; their sustainability content is ascertained and their capacity as a legal regime to direct or achieve sustainable mining in that country is explored. Finally, aspects of implementation of sustainable development in Sierra Leone's mining and its domestic implications are examined. This study shows that despite the definitional questions, sustainable development has direct and primary relevance for environmental protection in the economic exploitation of natural resources. It identifies a legal character in the concept beyond legislative processes, and a flexibility in its principles that allows for their interpretation within legal rules to enhance environmental protection at the national level. It also illustrates the link between effective implementation and ensuring sustainable mining

Being heard: promoting children and young people’s involvement in participatory research on sexual violence: findings from an international scoping review

This report shares findings from an international scoping review conducted on the engagement of children and young people in participatory research on sexual violence. The report discusses a range of ethical and practical challenges of involving vulnerable children and young people in participatory research on sensitive issues and draws out key considerations for research practice

Web-based database management system for research and development laboratories: Technical service support system

With the use of the Internet and the emerging of e-commerce, new and improved technologies and modeling techniques have been used to design and implement web-based database management systems

Moderating role of Islamic corporate governance between pressure, opportunity, rationalization, capability and banking fraud in Kano State Nigeria

Past studies revealed that there were complicating result dominated between the headlines of mainstream news between banking factors and bank fraud. Hence, the purpose of this study is to investigate the relationships between pressure, opportunity, rationalization, capability, and bank fraud. Filling the theoretical gap in the literature this study introduce the moderating role of Islamic corporate governance in mitigating bank fraud in selected Islamic banks in Kano, Nigeria. Cross-sectional survey design was adopted on the banks, where bank senior managers were selected as the respondents. The study employed systematic random sampling technique for data collection, with a sample size of 351 senior managers. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the data collected. To test the relationship, both multiple regressions and hierarchical regression techniques were used. The findings revealed that pressure and capability have significant, direct and positive relationships with bank fraud, while opportunity and rationalization are not found to be significant predictors of bank fraud in Kano Nigeria. The result of hierarchical regression, establishes that some Islamic corporate governance principles, such as Adl and transparency, moderate the relationship between the independent variables in mitigating bank fraud. The findings of this study provide important Islamic background information and fraud logistics to owner/managers of banks, policy makers, and researchers to further understand the effects of opportunity, rationalization, and capability on bank fraud. The result suggests important theoretical, practical and policy implications such as fraud diamond theory, syariah compliance and managerial support in which the inclusion of Islamic corporate governance principles could enhance the resilience of the Islamic banking system in Kano, Nigeri

Assessing Facilitating Factors and Barriers to Body Mass Index Screening among School Nurses

Child obesity among school age children is epidemic in the United States (U.S.). A critical review of literature was completed that concluded that Body Mass Index (BMI) screening for early identification and growth surveillance is needed for successful school-based obesity prevention intervention programs. This study used total survey design methods to identify the BMI screening practices of school nurses (SNs) and to identify the facilitating factors and barriers to BMI screening in public elementary schools among school age populations. Focus groups were used to identify current BMI screening practice in terms of facilitating factors and barriers. Survey methods were used to determine the validity of the barriers and facilitating factors identified in the focus groups. An adapted version of the Health People 2010 Determinants of Health Model guided this research. Results from 3 focus groups with SNs (N=25) working in public elementary schools indicated that SN BMI screening practice was conditional to policy, school social and physical environments, risk/protection, and access to quality health care. Themes related to geographic area emerged. All SNs described teachers as the most important facilitating factor. Suburban SNs identified that gym teachers were especially important to their BMI screening process. Urban SNs collectively agreed that trained personnel such as aides would be very helpful for data collection and BMI conversion. Rural SNs were also interested in collaborative work but focused on assisting one another as opposed to hiring assistance. Primary barriers voiced by SNs included lack of privacy, time, and policy. School size and amount of space the SNs had to assess a child were barriers, but for rural SNs this assumed there was a specific area designated as a clinic. For suburban SNs, having space to obtain BMIs located near a gym class was important. Urban SNs focused their concerns primarily on school organization and the logistic of obtaining data. Age and grade level had an effect on how rapidly data were collected. Geography in terms of the number and distance of schools that any one nurse is assigned affects the time a nurse can collect data. Subsequent to the focus group work a survey entitled the Body Mass Index Screening Survey (BMI-SS) was developed to allow for a more thorough assessment of SN BMI screening practices. Total survey design methods were used to establish face and content validity as well as baseline reliability. Face validity was established by subjective determination using 3 SN in a focus group discussion. Content validity was established with a Content Validity Index (.80) by 3 SN experts and 10 clinicians. Reliability was established through test-retest by 10 SN certification students. Administration of the survey to a randomly selected group of SNs is recommended so that data can be used to support policy and obesity intervention standards for care of school age children