Customer related facilities management processes: understanding the needs of the customer

In the past, organisations could concentrate on their internal capabilities, emphasising product performance and technology innovation. Organisations that did not understand their customers’ needs eventually found that competitors could make inroads by offering products or services better aligned to their customers’ preferences. Many Facilities Management organisations today have a mission focused on the customer, and how the organisation is performing its customers’ perspective has become a priority for the organisational management. How the FM organisation is performing through the eyes of its customers has therefore become a priority issue for facilities managers. This captures the ability of the organisation to provide quality goods and services, the effectiveness of their delivery, and overall customer service and satisfaction. It places importance on the organisation’s ability to achieve its vision, and how it wants to be seen by its customers. This paper will discuss some of the important FM customer related processes and mechanisms associated with its measurement identified through a series of case studies carried out as part of a major research stud

Total Quality Facilities Management and Innovation: A Synergistic Approach

The ideas of quality and performance management and innovation in facilities management service provision are not new. Total Quality Management (TQM) is widely recognised throughout the world as a concept capable of providing competitive advantage. Innovation has also received considerable attention as having a crucial role in securing sustainable competitive advantage. However, there has been little consideration of the potential for integration of TQM practices with innovation principles in determining facilities management performance. TQM and innovation appear to corroborate each other and are becoming increasingly important in facilities management. This study takes a theoretical approach to critically review the relationship between TQM and innovation and to determine the relationship between TQM and Innovation in regard to facilities service provision. The theoretical implication is that FM service providers may adopt a synergistic approach to TQM and innovation, leading to sustained competitive advantage in terms of better positioning themselves within the saturated FM marketplace

National Innovation Network at the Crossroads – in Search of a New Support Formula for Proinnovative Services for Small and Medium Enterprises

Celem artykułu jest analiza jakościowa systemu wsparcia innowacyjnej przedsiębiorczości opartego na Krajowej Sieci Innowacji oferującej usługi proinnowacyjne dla małych i średnich przedsiębiorstw w Polsce. Formułowane wnioski oparte są na wynikach ogólnopolskich badań przeprowadzonych przez autora wśród firm sektora MŚP, będących zarówno beneficjentami usług KSI (ogółem zbadano 381 podmiotów), jak i firm niekorzystających wcześniej z tych usług (próba badawcza liczyła 1100 podmiotów). Podstawowe zastrzeżenia zgłaszane przez małych i średnich przedsiębiorców dotyczą pasywności tych ośrodków w budowaniu partnerskiej współpracy, zdolności do rozpoznania rzeczywistych potrzeb przedsiębiorstwa oraz umiejętności dostosowania oferty usług w odpowiedzi na rzeczywiste potrzeby przedsiębiorstw. W artykule zawarto rekomendacje zmian w systemie świadczenia usług proinnowacyjnych w ramach wsparcia publicznego oferowanego przez ośrodki Krajowej Sieci Innowacji w odniesieniu do „filozofii”, zakresu i instrumentów wsparcia

Self-machinery?: steel trusses and the management of ruptures in eighteenth-century Europe

Abstract: Effectiveness Of Rice Husk Ash And Poly Aluminum Chloride In Reducing Exposure Colour Liquid Waste Industry Sasirangan. Sasirangan fabric industry is the textile of industry in Kalimantan Selatan produce wastewater of dyeing cloth sasirangan process that uses water as a primary adjuvant in stage process.The study aims to determine the effectiveness of rice husk ash and Poly Aluminium Chloridereduce levels of dyes in wastewater sasirangan "Oriens Handycraft". This study tested a laboratory scale with dose variation of rice husk ash and Poly Aluminium Chloride for reduced levels of dyes in wastewater sasirangan. The study design is a randomized pretest - posttest control group design. The population of the waste liquid fabric manufacturesasirangan results and samples are the waste from the manufacture of cloth sasirangan which represents the population. This study conduct statistical tests usingKruskal Wallis and Mann-Whitney Test.Theresultsofthestudyof color levels priorto treatment equal to 2,712 PtCo and after treatment ranges from 676.3 to 978.7 PtCo at a dose of 58 grams of rice husk ash; 59 g; 60 g; 61 g; 62 gr and Poly Aluminium Chloride 0.5 gr. For a dose of 58 grams of rice husk ash; 59 g; 60 g; 61 g; 62 gr and Poly Aluminium Chloride 1 g of color levels before treatment and after PtCo 1775 amounted to 227.7 PtCo ranges up to 240 PtCo. Rice husk ash and Poly Aluminium Chloride effective at pH 6.5 - 7. Results of normality test showed abnormal data. Kruskal Wallis test probability value 0.002 <0.05, there is a difference between the average dosing in the control group and the treatment group and the Mann-Whitney Test probability value of 0.009 (0.018 <0.05), the rice husk ash dosing and Poly Aluminium Chloride 1 g more effective than rice husk ash dosing and Poly Aluminium Chloride 0.5 g.Efforts government can do is provide the appropriate policy on effluent quality standards and attention to industrial waste disposal sasirangan. For the industry can manage its waste before waste into the environment. Keywords: SasiranganWaste; Materials coagulant; pH; Dye

Optimization of cellulose phosphate synthesis from oil palmlignocellulosics using wavelet neural networks

Cellulose phosphate was synthesized from microcrystalline cellulose derived from oil palm lignocellu-losics via the H3PO4/P2O5/Et3PO4/hexanol method. The influence of process variables (viz. temperature,reaction time, and the H3PO4/Et3PO4ratio) on the properties of the resulting cellulose phosphate wasinvestigated using a wavelet neural network model with the goals of ascertaining which factors werecritical and of determining optimized reaction parameters for this synthesis. The experimental resultscorroborated the good fit of the wavelet neural network model. The prediction errors were quite small(less than 7%), and the regression values (R2greater than 0.99) were also satisfactory

Digital Barriers: Making Technology Work for People

This paper was originally given as an oral presentation at the ‘3rd International Conference for Universal Design’, International Association for Universal Design, Hamamatsu, Japan (2010) and subsequently published. Peer reviewed by the conference’s International Scientific Committee, it looks at how the emerging techniques of design ethnography could be applied in a business context and qualitatively evaluates the benefits. It outlines the differences between inclusive design research conducted for digital devices/services and the large body of existing research on inclusive products, buildings and environments. It advances the view that technology companies are today in danger of repeating the same inclusive design mistakes made by kitchen and bathroom manufacturers 20 years ago, and calls for technology companies to develop new techniques to avoid this happening. The paper charts in detail the challenges and processes involved in transferring academic inclusive design research into the business arena, describing research conducted by Gheerawo and his co-authors on projects with research partners Samsung and BlackBerry. The paper helped define the ‘people and technology’ research theme in the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design’s Age & Ability Research Lab, which Gheerawo leads. It was also important, as part of evidence of the benefits of an inclusive technology approach, in persuading a number of companies (Sony, BT, Samsung) to undertake new studies with the Lab. Gheerawo used this pathfinder paper in further work, including an essay on digital communication for www.designingwithpeople.org (i-Design3 project EPSRC), membership of the steering committee for Age UK’s Engage accreditation for business, and lectures at ‘CitiesforAll’ conference, Helsinki (2012), ‘WorkTech’, London (2010), ‘Budapest Design Week’ (2011) and the ‘Business of Ageing’ conference, Dublin (2011). Gheerawo also co-wrote an article ‘Moving towards an encompassing universal design approach in ICT’ in The Journal of Usability Studies (2010), for which he was also a guest editor

Design Thinking

{Excerpt} In a world of continuous flux, where markets mature faster and everyone is affected by information overload, organizations regard innovation, including management innovation, as the prime driver of sustainable competitive advantage. To unlock opportunities, some of them use mindsets and protocols from the field of design to make out unarticulated wants and deliberately imagine, envision, and spawn futures. Design is more important when function is taken for granted and no longer helps stakeholders differentiate. In the last five years, design thinking has emerged as the quickest organizational path to innovation and high-performance, changing the way creativity and commerce interact. In the past, design was a downstream step in the product development process, aiming to enhance the appeal of an existing product. Today, however, organizations ask designers to imagine solutions that meet explicit or latent needs and to build upstream entire systems that optimize customer experience and satisfaction. Therefore, although the term design is commonly understood to describe an object (or end result), it is in its latest and most effective form a process, an action, and a verb, not a noun: essentially, it is a protocol to see, shape, and build. Lately, design approaches are also being applied to infuse insight into the heart of campaigns and address social and other concerns

Assessing user experience of context-aware interfaces in a retail store

Context-awareness is becoming an essential functionality of mobile applications. However, it remains challenging to capture the contextual experience in innovation research, since early-stage technologies have not reached maturity to be implemented in a real-life context. Moreover, users have difficulty in evaluating implicit interactions with context-aware interfaces since imagination of users is limited. Assuming that context impacts user experience, virtual reality (VR) provides an untapped potential for the domain of innovation research. The aim of this study (in progress) is to investigate the potential of user tests in virtual reality (here virtual retail store) for human-computer interaction to better match the needs of users and designers. Initially, the mock-up has been implemented in a retail store with its context-awareness being simulated using the Wizard of Oz methodology (N = 18). This approach is found to be time-consuming and not sufficient for evaluating radical context-aware innovations

Business Model Innovation

[Excerpt] Who is your customer? What does the customer value? How do you deliver value to customers at an appropriate cost? Business models that focus on the who, what, and how to clarify managerial choices and their consequences underpin the operations of successful organizations