A Framework To Align Strategy, Improvement Performance, And Customer Satisfaction Using An Integration Of Six Sigma And Balanced

This dissertation investigated the development, implementation, and evaluation of a management methodology founded on the alignment among the strategy, performance, and customer to bring value to any organization. A case study/action research in a service organization, called Institution Z, provided the opportunity to assess the effects of the proposed Six Sigma Scorecard (SSS) methodology in the productivity indicators (measured by cycle time, line capacity, and number of errors). The Case study/action research was conducted in three phases: Model and Concepts Design, Data Collection, and Findings. During the research, validity was pursued by using triangulation and theory to help maintain the case under research control. The observation of the SSS methodology in a real organization allowed the researcher to describe the merging process between Balanced Scorecard and Six Sigma methodology and their relationships to each other. The SSS methodology allowed identification of improvement projects that contribute to organizational strategy, implementation of strategies and provide feedback to the top level of management establishing alignment at three organizational levels - corporate, business, and functional. The results of the implementation of the SSS methodology in Institution Z showed a 40% improvement of the cycle time of the auto credit process, a 500% increase in the capacity of the process, and 65% decrease in the number of non-added value activities. During the same period of time, the BSC indicators showed a positive impact, specifically one financial indicator known as Level of Intermediation or GIC grew from 30% to 42% as it was expected by the end of the SSS implementation. The demonstration of the SSS framework in a Case study justifies the need for a combined methodology that aligns strategy, performance improvement and organizational outputs in a feedback loop. More research in this area is needed, especially investigations that include assessment studies where different management approaches are used alone and combined with strategic tools, and investigations that measure the relationship between level of coherence in the three merging points of the SSS and the results reached at the performance of the organization

A Method for Scenario-based Risk Assessment for Robust Aerospace Systems

A methodology for the conceptual design phase risk assessment of an aerospace system was proposed. The method was designed to examine political, social, and economic risk over a systems lifecycle through the use of future scenarios to bound uncertainty. A decision support framework was developed to allow the user to visualize the differences in performance and economic metrics between design options as well as allowing the user to visualize the effects of mitigating certain risks. A historical proof of concept was developed to test the methodology. The results indicated that the new method will work to examine political, social, and economic risk during conceptual level design, and that this information can be used to aid in design down-selection and decision making. The use of scenario-based analysis as an alternative to traditional probabilistic analysis allowed for better traceability and bounding of uncertainty. Other findings regarding the use of a risk analysis early during concept design and future work are also discussed.Ph.D.Committee Chair: Mavris, Dimitri; Committee Member: Hollingsworth, Peter; Committee Member: Kirby, Michelle; Committee Member: Schrage, Daniel; Committee Member: Seng, Gary; Committee Member: Volovoi, Vital

Development of a maintenance management framework to facilitate the delivery of healthcare provisions in the Kingdom of Saudia Arabia

The recent economic crisis has prompted many organizations to review their maintenance operations with the main objective of controlling costs while trying to maintain a similar level of services and quality. The healthcare industry in Saudi Arabia faced a similar set of problems as the main sponsor (i.e. the Government) received lower revenues from oil export. As intimated by Saudi government officials, the current growth rate in healthcare expenditure is unsustainable in the longer term and efforts are being made to manage resources more efficiently. One area under consideration is the maintenance functions of Saudi hospitals and clinics, as these operations accounted for the bulk of the maintenancerelated expenditure. As the largest strategic hospital in the Kingdom, the Riyadh Military Hospital (RMH) has a long term plan to improve the quality and reliability of its services, through better utilization of resources. The present project forms part of the on-going strategic review of the hospital’s current maintenance operations including outsourcing and subsequent management of contractors and suppliers. A key challenge is to understand how maintenance activities could be managed more successfully and implemented in a cost-effective way. Two sets of questionnaires were designed and distributed to the staff including contractors in the Maintenance Department. The questionnaire surveys were supplemented by interviews to assess the managers’ awareness/understanding of the importance of leadership, change management, transparency, documentation, communication and clarity of strategy. By means of statistical analysis, the data/information thus gathered was analyzed using a range of quality and reliability tools and techniques. A number of correlations have been identified which confirmed the observations of previous studies. For example, there appeared to be a significant correlation between "the clarity of strategy" and "consistency of maintenance performance", and between "a happy worker" and "the clarity of instructions" and "availability of appropriate tools". Five main parameters have been identified as critical to the success of the maintenance operations at RMH: clarity of policies and procedures; support of senior management; organizational structure; employee qualifications (i.e. technical knowledge and skills); and clarity of maintenance contracts (including communications with external contractors). Informed by the work of others for the engineering and related industries, a maintenance management framework has been proposed for the healthcare industry in Saudi Arabia. Part of the framework has been implemented at the case study hospital to facilitate validation. It was found that the framework provides a useful means for integrating various maintenance-related activities and to allow guidelines to be provided on the monitoring and control of the processes. This in turn enabled a substantial revision to be made to the current maintenance procedures at the hospital. The effectiveness of the revised maintenance procedures has been investigated using limited field studies. It is pleasing to note that encouraging results have been obtained. For example, the total number of dockets (i.e. maintenance work orders) issued for general maintenance over a 4-month period fell by 23% when compared with the figure for the previous year. The present study has made a significant contribution in the development of a maintenance management framework for the healthcare industry in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Maximising microprocessor reliability through game theory and heuristics

PhD ThesisEmbedded Systems are becoming ever more pervasive in our society, with most routine daily tasks now involving their use in some form and the market predicted to be worth USD 220 billion, a rise of 300%, by 2018. Consumers expect more functionality with each design iteration, but for no detriment in perceived performance. These devices can range from simple low-cost chips to expensive and complex systems and are a major cost driver in the equipment design phase. For more than 35 years, designers have kept pace with Moore's Law, but as device size approaches the atomic limit, layouts are becoming so complicated that current scheduling techniques are also reaching their limit, meaning that more resource must be reserved to manage and deliver reliable operation. With the advent of many-core systems and further sources of unpredictability such as changeable power supplies and energy harvesting, this reservation of capability may become so large that systems will not be operating at their peak efficiency. These complex systems can be controlled through many techniques, with jobs scheduled either online prior to execution beginning or online at each time or event change. Increased processing power and job types means that current online scheduling methods that employ exhaustive search techniques will not be suitable to define schedules for such enigmatic task lists and that new techniques using statistic-based methods must be investigated to preserve Quality of Service. A new paradigm of scheduling through complex heuristics is one way to administer these next levels of processor effectively and allow the use of more simple devices in complex systems; thus reducing unit cost while retaining reliability a key goal identified by the International Technology Roadmap for Semi-conductors for Embedded Systems in Critical Environments. These changes would be beneficial in terms of cost reduction and system exibility within the next generation of device. This thesis investigates the use of heuristics and statistical methods in the operation of real-time systems, with the feasibility of Game Theory and Statistical Process Control for the successful supervision of high-load and critical jobs investigated. Heuristics are identified as an effective method of controlling complex real-time issues, with two-person non-cooperative games delivering Nash-optimal solutions where these exist. The simplified algorithms for creating and solving Game Theory events allow for its use within small embedded RISC devices and an increase in reliability for systems operating at the apex of their limits. Within this Thesis, Heuristic and Game Theoretic algorithms for a variety of real-time scenarios are postulated, investigated, refined and tested against existing schedule types; initially through MATLAB simulation before testing on an ARM Cortex M3 architecture functioning as a simplified automotive Electronic Control Unit.Doctoral Teaching Account from the EPSRC

Total Quality Management and Six Sigma

In order to survive in a modern and competitive environment, organizations need to carefully organize their activities regarding quality management. TQM and six sigma are the approaches that have been successful in solving intricate quality problems in products and services. This volume can help those who are interested in the quality management field to understand core ideas along with contemporary efforts done in the field and authored as case studies in this volume. This volume may be useful to students, academics and practitioners across diversified disciplines

Projeto robusto de parâmetros (prp) aplicado na otimização de retificação cilíndrica com múltiplas respostas.

Na indústria automobilística, o processo de retificação cilíndrica é amplamente aplicado na produção seriada de peças com geometrias específicas e, muitas vezes, de materiais não convencionais, sendo este processo complexo e com vários fatores que influenciam suas saídas, como qualidade dos produtos, produtividade e custo, por exemplo. Portanto, este trabalho apresenta a aplicação do PRP (Projeto Robusto de Parâmetros) por meio do arranjo cruzado, aliado à MSR (Metodologia de Superfície de Resposta), utilizada na otimização do processo de retificação cilíndrica externa de mergulho em anéis de pistão de ferro fundido recobertos com cromo duro, numa indústria multinacional de autopeças, visando à redução de custo do processo sem comprometer a qualidade do produto, que é observada especificamente em três dimensões de sua geometria, denominadas como T₁, T₂ e T₃, bem como na vida útil do dressador, medida em número de dressagens. Como variáveis controláveis do processo foram consideradas a velocidade de avanço de mergulho do rebolo (Va), a velocidade de avanço da dressagem (Vfd), a velocidade periférica do rebolo (Vs) e a profundidade de dressagem (ad), bem como dois ruídos do processo, sendo as posições das peças na máquina (Z₁) e os dois mandris aplicados na fixação das peças (Z₂). Auxiliando no processo de otimização são aplicados o método do EQM (Erro Quadrático Médio), o MCG (Método do Critério Global) e o algoritmo GRG (Gradiente Reduzido Generalizado). Finalmente a otimização propôs os parâmetros Va = 0,190 mm/min, Vfd = 59 mm/min, Vs = 39 m/s e ad = 0,016 mm, com os quais foram realizados experimentos de confirmação, que validam a eficácia dos métodos aplicados, mostrando a capacidade do processo antes e após a otimização, bem como os ganhos monetários auferidos

SPQmm : a software product quality maturity model using ISO/IEEE standards, metrology, and sigma concepts

In the software engineering literature, there are numerous maturity models for assessing and evaluating a set of software processes. By contrast, there is no corresponding maturity model for assessing the quality of a software product. The design of such a model to assess the quality of a software product therefore represents a new research challenge in software engineering. Our main goal is to make available to industry (and consumers) a maturity model for assessing and improving the quality of the software product. This Software Product Quality Maturity Model (SPQMM) consists of three quality maturity submodels (viewpoints) that can be used not only once the software product has been delivered, but also throughout the life-cycle: • Software Product Internal Quality Maturity Model- SPIQMM, • Software Product External Quality Maturity Model - SPEQMM, and • Software Product Quality-in-Use Maturity Model- SPQiUMM In this thesis, we introduce the Software Product Quality Maturity Model (SPQMM), which could be used from three different viewpoints: the software product internal quality, the software product external quality, and the software product quality in-use. This quality maturity model is a quantitative model, and it based on the ISO 9126(software product quality measures), ISO 15026 (software integrity levels), IEEE Std. 1012 (software verification and validation) and on six-sigma concepts. To build such a quality maturity model, we have combined the set of quality measures into a single number for each quality characteristic by assuming that all the measures for a single quality characteristic have an equal weight in the computation of a single value for that quality characteristic (they all make an equal contribution), yielding a quality level for that quality characteristic. The resulting quality level is then transformed based on the software integrity level into a sigma value positioned within a quality maturity level

Catalogue of the public documents of the Fifty-fifth Congress and of other departments of the Government of the United States for the period from July I, 1897, to June 30, 1899.

Document Catalogue. (no date) HD 317, 55-3, v96, 1069p. [3838] For the 55th Congress