Barriers to ISO 9001 Implementation in Moroccan Organizations: Empirical Study

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore obstacles to ISO 9001 quality management system implementation in Moroccan firms. Design/methodology/approach: A questionnaire survey has been conducted among a heterogeneous sample of 200 organizations, operating in different sectors in Morocco, yielding a response rate of 57.5%. The authors have studied barriers to quality initiatives in general and obstacles to QMS implementation in particular through an extensive literature review. Questions related to profiles of respondents, reasons of seeking certification, external consultancy and barriers to ISO 9001 implementation experienced by surveyed organizations. For the purpose of this study, authors considered three categories of quality inhibiting factors: organizational, technical and costs related barriers. Findings: Results indicate that surveyed companies sought ISO 9001 certification mainly for marketing reasons and experienced many difficulties during the implementation process. Barriers reported by respondents were mostly organizational. Resistance to change headed the list according to participants’ opinion. Also, findings highlighted the prominence of bureaucracy and poor interdependence between departments in organizations. Lack of communication, poor top management commitment and insufficient trainings were also ascertained to be obstacles to QMS implementation in Morocco. Originality/value: Earlier studies were led by different researchers in different countries about barriers to quality initiatives in general and to ISO 9001 implementation in particular. Few of those studies were conducted in Arab speaking countries but no research has been carried in Morocco. This study on obstacles to QMS implementation in Morocco will help in completing the jigsaw of difficulties faced by organizations worldwide when preparing to ISO 9001 certification. Research limitations/implications: This research is limited by the geographic context of the study Morocco, although results can be extrapolated to Arab speaking countries in general. Practical implications: The findings of this paper provide Moroccan managers with a practical understanding of the factors that are likely to obstruct ISO 9001 QMS implementation. Managers should overcome these barriers to achieve a successful implementation and higher QMS performance.Peer Reviewe

Removal of chromium (III) by two-aqueous phases extraction

Two-aqueous phase extraction of chromium (III) as a solute from their aqueous solutions was investigated using polyethoxylated alcohols (CiEj) as a biodegradable non-ionic surfactant in the presence of anionic sodium dodecylbenzene sulfonate (SDBS). First, the combined effects of chromium and surfactants mixture (anionic and non-ionic) on the cloud point temperature were determined. After this, the phase diagrams of binary systems water–surfactant (NW342 and C10E3) were traced. According to the given surfactants concentration, the extracted solute reached 98.5% and 60% for NW342 and C10E3, respectively at pH equal to 3. The addition of sodium chloride lowers the cloud point temperature of surfactant where the phenomenon of salting-out was pronounced. Under the optimal extraction conditions, the suggested extraction mechanism is based on chromium species-NW342 non-ionic surfactant micelles solvatation. Since, the prevalence species (93.82%) were Cr(III)4(OH)66+, given by a theoretical calculation using CHEAQS V. L20.1. The first stage regeneration of NW342 surfactant was 27.82% at pH equal to 4.23 factorial designs were employed for screening the factors that would influence the overall optimization of a batch procedure of sorption

DFT Study of Electronic and Optical Properties of Small Oligothiophenes Based on Terthiophene End-capped by Several Donor Groups

Eight small molecules based on terthiophene end-capped by several donor groups have been carried out using density functional theory (DFT) and time-dependent (TDDFT) methods in neutral and doped states. The theoretical ground-state geometry, electronic structure and optical properties of the studied molecules were obtained by the DFT and TD-DFT methods at the B3LYP level with 6-31G(d) basis set. Theoretical knowledge of the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO), the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) energy levels the gap energy (Eg) and the open-circuit voltage (Voc) of the studied compounds are calculated and discussed. The effects of the donor group substituents on the geometries and optoelectronic properties of these materials are discussed to investigate the relationship between molecular structure and optoelectronic properties. The results of this work suggest some of these materials as a good candidate for organic solar cells. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17807/orbital.v9i3.99

A regexcriteria API to complete the power of regular expressions engine

Regular expressions are heavily used in the field of computer programming. They are known by their strength to search or replace parts of strings according to a given structure (mails, phone, numbers, etc.). Currently  regular expressions are only used to search for some patterns or to make some substitutions in strings. However, the need may be wider than that when it comes to order the results of a regular expression or to group them according to some criteria. Developers are always called to analyze the results of a regular expression by doing some restrictions such as (equal, not equal, between) or  some projections like (maximum, average, grouping by ..) or sorts. Unfortunately, to do these treatments, the developer must implement his own algorithms which cost him a remarkable effort and a waste of time. We propose in this paper an API called RegexCriteria inspired from Hibernate Criteria to support developer while analysing the results of a regular expression

New Small Compounds Based on Thienylenevinylene with D-A-D Structure for BHJ Applications: Theoretical Study

In this work, ten new small molecules based on Thienylenevinylene as a donor and heterocyclic group A as acceptor of electrons with the donor-acceptor-donor D-A-D structure were studied by density functional theory (DFT) and time-dependent DFT (TDDFT) methods using the Gaussian09 program. The geometric and electronic properties of these compounds have been analyzed and reported by using the DFT /B3LYP level with 6-31G (d,p) basis set. Thus, we calculated the optical properties (absorption/emission) using the TDDFT/CAM-B3LYP/6-31G (d,p) method. The influence of the change of acceptor (π-linker) on the electrochemical, photovoltaic and optic properties has been investigated and discussed. The studied compounds have low energy gap which decreases by going from C1 to C10, this improve the intramolecular charge transfer in these molecules. This work shows that the studied compounds are promising and have good properties for optoelectronic and photovoltaic applications, especially in BHJ solar cells with maximum power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 10% for C7 and C9. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17807/orbital.v12i4.152

Correlation between the tribology of concrete and the rheology of the corresponding mortars

The present work aims to study the possibility of characterizing the pumpability of concrete from the rheology of the derived mortars, i.e. concrete mortar (CM) and concrete equivalent mortar (CEM). As concrete is a material that is heavier than mortar, it is better to carry out tests on mortar. To this end, two test campaigns are presented in this article; the first campaign concerns the formulation of admixed concrete based on two mineral additions, namely limestone fillers and blast furnace slag. The aim of this first campaign was to study the tribological behavior of the formulated concretes. In the second test campaign, the formulations of the mortars were derived from the formulations of the corresponding concretes. Afterwards, a rheological study was carried out on these mortars. Analysis of the results obtained showed that there is a good correlation between the developed concretes and their corresponding CEMs, with fairly high determination coefficients

Photolysis of fluometuron in the presence of natural water constituents

International audiencePhototransformation of the herbicide fluometuron (1 ΜM) in natural sunlight was investigated in neutral Milli-Q water and in synthetic waters containing either fulvic acids, nitrate ions or both in order to mimic reactions taking place in aquatic environments. Fluometuron degradation followed a pseudo-first order kinetics. The reaction was faster in synthetic than in Milli-Q water. Fulvic acids (10 mg L-1) increased the rate of fluometuron photolysis by a factor 2.5 and nitrates (25 mg L-1) by a factor 15. Identification of major photoproducts was conducted under laboratory conditions using LC-ESI-MS. Numerous photoproducts were detected and tentatively characterized. In the presence of nitrates, hydroxylation of the aromatic ring with or without hydrolysis of CF3 into CO2H and oxidation of the urea chain leading to demethylation were observed. In the presence of fulvic acids, hydroxylation of the aromatic ring was the major reaction route