The Impact of Employee Satisfaction on Functional Quality Services at Chicken Inn Outlets in Harare, Zimbabwe

The study was focusing on the impact of employee satisfaction on functional quality services at Chicken Inn outlets in Harare. The main objective of the study was to find the relationship between employee satisfaction and functional quality. Causal research design was used to find out how employee satisfaction affects the functional service quality of Chicken Inn and the study used questionnaires for collecting primary data. Probability and simple random sampling techniques was used in selecting the respondents. A sample size of 123 was used for the study. The data collected was analyzed through the use SPSS by regressing and correlating the variables in order to determine the strength of the relationship. The research findings from the hypothesis tests explore that there is a moderate relationship between employee satisfaction and functional quality. The study recommends Chicken Inn to adopt internal marketing as a way of satisfying employees internally as they are the ambassadors of the company. The company should also apply performances appraisals and several training on monthly bases so that the employees will be equipped with the required skills to cope up with changes in technology in the hospitality industry. Keywords: Employee satisfaction, Service quality, functional qualit

DETC2002/DTM-34030 VIEWING PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT AS A DECISION PRODUCTION SYSTEM

ABSTRACT Product development includes many different types of decision-making by engineers and managers. Design decisions determine the product form and specify the manufacturing processes to be used. Development decisions control the progress of product development projects by specifying which activities should happen, their sequence, and who should perform them. This paper introduces the concept of a decision production system to describe a product development organization as a system of decision-makers who use and create information to develop a product. This perspective does not advocate any particular type of product development process. Instead, it looks at the organization in which the product development process exists and considers the decision-makers as a manufacturing system that can be viewed separately from the organization structure

Controlling Iteration in Product Development Processes

Iteration is a dominant though unwelcome feature of product development. Controlling this iteration can reduce the time needed to complete product development projects. Management must decide how long each project should spend in a design stage before it undergoes a design review (or test). This paper presents a model of iteration that can be used to make this decision. The paper considers the single-project case and two scenarios in which multiple projects require a common reviewer. These results give some insight into how managers should control iteration to improve their product development processes

Virtual versus physical prototypes : development and testing of a prototyping planning tool

This thesis documents the development of a heuristics-based decision-making tool to guide a designer’s choice between virtual or physical prototypes, based in part upon published prototyping strategies, as well as the design, implementation, and results of a pilot experimental study used to test this virtual-vs-physical decision-making tool for prototypes. Eighty undergraduate mechanical engineering students volunteered for a pilot experiment to test the decision-making tool. They were given the choice of physically or virtually prototyping a four-bar linkage. Forty participants in this pilot study were instructed to use a Likert-scale instrument to choose their prototyping technique, and an additional 40 participants, who did not use the instrument, served as a control group for evaluating the effectiveness of the instrument. Analysis of participants’ performance metrics undeniably shows that virtual prototyping is the optimal technique for this design problem, as virtual prototypers on average across both test groups achieved performance metrics almost five times higher in about half the time compared to physical prototypers. With the aid of a heuristics-based decision-making tool, 10% more participants in the experimental group picked the best technique versus those who did not use the tool in the control group (32 of 40, and 28 of 40, respectively). The prototyping choices of participants among each test group were analyzed using the comparison of two population proportions, and results from a two-tailed z-test yielded p = 0.303, thus the null hypothesis cannot be rejected with statistical significance for the test of two population proportions. Although the difference in choice of the optimal prototyping technique between test groups of this pilot study is not statistically significant, it serves as a preliminary model for a systematic approach that incorporates consideration of type of prototype as a strategic decision. Although the findings of this four-bar linkage study cannot be extrapolated to a generic prototyping process, this work provides a paradigm for thinking critically about virtual vs. physical prototyping decisions using a heuristics-based, structured prototyping strategy. The pilot results provide a template and motivation for conducting a larger scale experiment for generic prototyping applications.Mechanical Engineerin

Viewing Product Development as a Decision Production System

Product development includes many different types of decision-making by engineers and managers. Design decisions determine the product form and specify the manufacturing processes to be used. Development decisions, however, control the progress of the development process by defining which activities should happen, their sequence, and who should perform them.This paper introduces the concept of a decision production system to describe a product development organization as a system of decision-makers who use and create information to develop a product. This perspective does not advocate any particular type of product development process. Instead, it looks at the organization in which the product development process exists and considers the decision-makers as a manufacturing system that can be viewed separately from the organization structure.A new perspective is needed to reconcile product development practice and design theory. This paper argues that viewing product development as a decision production system provides a perspective to understand the costs and benefits associated with different forms of product development processes. The paper describes some of the benefits that this perspective and decision production system models would bring to product development organizations and to the design research community. Comprehensive models are needed to improve communication about the nature of product development and to understand the impact that changing product development processes will have on the organization's overall performance and profitability

When costs from being a constraint become a driver for concept generation

Managing innovation requires solving issues related to the internal development and engineering processes of a company (supply side), in addition to facing the market and competition (demand side). In this context, the product development process is crucial, as different tradeoffs and issues that require managerial attention tend to arise. The main challenges result in managers requiring practical support tools that can help them in planning and controlling the process, and of designers requiring them for supporting their design decisions. Hence, the thesis aims to focus on product costs to understand its influence on design decisions as well as on the overall management of the product development process. The core part of the thesis is based on the models and methods developed for enhancing cost analysis at the beginning of the product development process. This investigation aims to determine the importance of cost estimation in improving the overall performance of a newly designed product. The focus on post-sales and, more generally, on the customer, has become so relevant that manufacturers have to take into account not only the most obvious aspects about the product and related services, but even consider the associated implications for customers during product use. However, implementing a product life cycle perspective is still a challenging process for companies. From a methodological perspective, the reasons include uncertainty regarding the available approaches and ambiguity about their application. In terms of implementation, the main challenge is the long-term cost management, when one considers uncertainty in process duration, data collection, and other supply chain issues. In fact, helping designers and managers efficiently understand the strategic and operational consequences of a cost analysis implementation is still a problem, although advanced methodologies for more in-depth and timely analyses are available. And this is even more if one considers that product lifecycle represents a critical area of investment, particularly in light of the new challenges and opportunities provided by big data analysis in the Industry 4.0 contexts. This dissertation addresses these aspects and provides a methodological approach to assess a rigorous implementation of life-cycle cost while discussing the evidence derived from its operational and strategic impacts. The novelty lies in the way the data and information are collected, dynamically moving the focus of the investigation with regard to the data aggregation level and the product structure. The way the techniques have been combined represents a further aspect of novelty. In fact, the introduced approach contributes to a new trend in the Product Cost Estimation (PCE) literature, which suggests the integration of different techniques for product life-cycle cost analysis. The findings obtained at the end of the process can be employed to assess the impact of platform design strategy and variety proliferations on the total life-cycle costs. By evaluating the possible mix of options, and hence offering the optimal product configuration, a more conscious way for planning the product portfolio has been provided. In this sense, a detailed operational analysis (as the cost estimation) is used to inform and drive the strategic planning of the portfolio. Finally, the thesis discusses the future opportunities and challenges for product cost analysis, assessing how digitalisation of manufacturing operations may affect the data gathering and analysis process. In this new environment, the opportunity for a more informed, cost-driven decision-making will multiply, leading to varied opportunities in this research field

Large scale interoperability, integrating the Daidalos project

This paper discusses the challenges of large scale integration within the context of the massive collaborative mobile & wireless systems beyond 3G research project Daidalos. It first examines the relationship of the Daidalos architecture. It then identifies an integration model that was used for the project, with an overview of the testing processes, tools, and methodologies employed. Next, discusses the Daidalos demonstration scenario, and shows how it was used in the integration execution validation and verification activity of the project. The article closes with a discussion of the research necessary to develop these capabilities further

Discussion forums - From idea creation to incremental innovations. Focus on heart-rate monitors

siirretty Doriast

Decomposition in Product Development

Product development organizations seek to create profitable product designs. This paper discusses how the decomposition of the profit maximization problem leads to traditional product development processes. Decomposition provides a framework that integrates the conceptual models of decision-based design and the traditional description of product development processes. This paper identifies the key reasons for decomposition and discusses why the decomposition varies among product development organizations

Implementing E-Commerce model for Agricultural Produce: A Research Roadmap

The advancement in technology and the increase in usage of Internet access has revolutionized the landscape of agriculture using E-Commerce. Several E-Commerce websites are operative in India to promote uniformity in agricultural marketing across the integrated markets by removing information asymmetry between buyers and sellers. Stakeholders are reluctant to utilize this new technology for trading agricultural produces in spite of close opportunities. Pricing mechanism of the online trading portals neither generates maximum revenue during high demand and less supply nor ensures minimum loss due to the decay or down selling of the products. Static pricing mechanism prevents the sellers from joining this online system, as it does not provide many benefits to an online customer. A continuous adjustable dynamic pricing mechanism that can adapt the market condition and quality degradation is crucial for maintaining the seller revenue and customer interest. This paper explains several existing dynamic pricing mechanisms and analyzes their relevance in the field of agro-marketing. In this paper, several research challenges on dynamic pricing approach of E-Commerce have been summarized. The factors like demand, supply, and freshness of the agri-products must +be considered for the development of a pricing mechanism in the dynamic environment of E-Commerce