An investigation into the collection, measurement and use of quality costs within a high volume production environment

The thesis describes an investigation into the collection and measurement of quality costs. It goes on to explain the manner in which this information was presented and used as an integral part of a specific (high volume manufacturing) company's total quality drive. Finally, it demonstrates how the cost of quality can help to identify and direct efforts to improve quality. Guidelines are given for the collection and analysis of quality cost data within the packaging industry. A comprehensive literature survey covering issues directly related to the objectives of the research, and peripheral issues of importance, was carried out. Literature on case studies for the promotion of quality were also included 'in the survey. The survey was confined to English language publications, using a list of keywords relating to money (i.e. cost, profit, economic, etc.) and topics ranging from the use of "quality improvement" as a business strategy to the quality-related costs associated with specific manufacturing operations. The search was primarily confined to quality related literature. This literature was reviewed and discussed in the light of the research experience, some gaps in the literature and information available were identified. These are discussed as a part of the development of a dedicated methodology, within the final chapter. A three stage, action research methodology was adopted. Action research encompasses direct involvement in organisational change whilst providing an increase in the knowledge base for a specific topic. This was the best possible option as the project specification relates to a practical problem with theoretical relevance. The main advantage of action research is that it is carried out in real-time and produces a concrete result, putting something of real practical worth back into an organisation. Four practical costing models were identified: (i) Prevention, Appraisal, Failure Model; (ii) Process Cost Model; (iii) Economic Balance of Quality (Optimum Quality Cost) Model; and (iv) Total Loss to Society (Quadratic Loss Function) Model. A host firm was used to test (i) and (ii). These two models were chosen because they exhibited certain characteristics. They both form part of British Standard - BS 6143, have had some publicity in the form of articles within professional journals, and have been utilised within both manufacturing and service industries to provide quality costing data. The British Standard (BS) 6143: Parts 1 (1991) and 2 (1990) was used as the primary guide. A detailed analysis of the applicability of both models was carried out, with necessary modifications being made to suit the host firms' particular industry (plastic injection moulding). This analysis is reported and discussed at length. Among the key conclusions are that quality costing can have a, very positive effect upon an organisations' quality improvement drive, and that the careful development of a specific cost model (in this instance the P.A.F. model) and a methodology for employing it, within a larger framework, should be considered essential. Further conclusions are that all organisations are at various stages in the use of formal measurement systems. As such, the identification of what stage an organisation has progressed to, and the determination of how they should proceed, is important for forward progress in the use of quality measurement systems. A conceptual framework has been designed for this purpose. A set of guidelines for quality cost collection and analysis within the packaging industry (high volume manufacturing) was created. As was a matrix to show an organisations' current place and potential development within certain key parameters, for example: i) company awareness, ii) costing models used, iii) measurement systems in place. The methodology developed for the host company is being used within other companies from the same corporate group. This is allowing refinement of the original model to take place. Other recommendations for further study are proposed in order to establish the validity of the above measurement system framework. This research has contributed to the existing knowledge base by trailing and modifying existing models within a specific environment, and through the development of a conceptual framework for assessing an organisations quality measurement system development. The direct contribution to the host company, in terms of practical and theoretical assistance has been considerable. This is fully detailed within the thesis

The Teaching of Procedure Across Common Law Systems

What difference does the teaching of procedure make to legal education, legal scholarship, the legal profession, and civil justice reform? This first of four articles on the teaching of procedure canvasses the landscape of current approaches to the teaching of procedure in four legal systems—the United States, Canada, Australia, and England and Wales—surveying the place of procedure in the law school curriculum and in professional training, the kinds of subjects that “procedure” encompasses, and the various ways in which procedure is learned. Little sustained reflection has been carried out as to the import and impact of this longstanding law school subject. Through a comparative approach, this series of articles explores what difference the approach a particular jurisdiction has chosen to adopt makes for legal education, legal scholarship, the practice of law and the profession, and to civil justice reform in our legal system. En quoi l’enseignement de la procédure civile modifi e-t-il les études juridiques, la recherche juridique, la profession d’avocat et la réforme de la justice civile? Ce premier de quatre articles sur l’enseignement de la procédure dresse le tableau de l’approche actuellement utilisée dans quatre systèmes juridiques – aux États-Unis, au Canada, en Australie, en Angleterre et au Pays de Galles – et se penche sur la place qu’occupe la procédure dans le programme des facultés de droit et dans la formation professionnelle, les matières qui constituent la « procédure » et les diverses façons d’apprendre la procédure. L’importance et l’incidence de cette matière traditionnelle des facultés de droit ont fait jusqu’ici l’objet de fort peu de réfl exion en profondeur. Par le biais d’une approche comparative, cette série d’articles examine en quoi l’approche adoptée dans ces pays modifi e chez nous les études et la recherche juridiques, la pratique du droit, la profession d’avocat et la réforme du système de justice civile

Egalitarian taxation : equality of resources, market luck and leisure

No abstract provide

Overcoming the false-minima problem in direct methods: Structure determination of the packaging enzyme P4 from bacteriophage φ13

The problems encountered during the phasing and structure determination of the packaging enzyme P4 from bacteriophage φ13 using the anomalous signal from selenium in a single-wavelength anomalous dispersion experiment (SAD) are described. The oligomeric state of P4 in the virus is a hexamer (with sixfold rotational symmetry) and it crystallizes in space group C2, with four hexamers in the crystallographic asymmetric unit. Current state-of-the-art ab initio phasing software yielded solutions consisting of 96 atoms arranged as sixfold symmetric clusters of Se atoms. However, although these solutions showed high correlation coefficients indicative that the substructure had been solved, the resulting phases produced uninterpretable electron-density maps. Only after further analysis were correct solutions found (also of 96 atoms), leading to the eventual identification of the positions of 120 Se atoms. Here, it is demonstrated how the difficulties in finding a correct phase solution arise from an intricate false-minima problem. © 2005 International Union of Crystallography - all rights reserved

Management consultancy’s role in delivering lasting [triple bottom line] benefits

Management consultants have become ubiquitous in helping improve organizational performance. This paper presents an investigation of the impact of their interventions on organizational sustainability and growth through the performance improvement work carried out for and with their clients. The paper presents the findings of a questionnaire survey of 440 respondents from 206 countries; 197 of respondents were Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) and 243 from large organizations. There is a particular focus on knowledge transfer in terms of urgency and impact of the work with regard to the extent to which consulting interventions in SMEs, as well as large multinational corporations, embed long-term sustainability practices

Speech audiometry test with picture-related sentence lists in Modern Greek for partially hearing children

Objective: The aim of this study was to develop Greek Sentence Based Speech Audiometry Test in quiet test for Hearing Impaired (HI) children (G-SEBSAT). Methods: Seventy-six children were recruited following approval by the local ethics committee and after obtaining informed consent from their parents. The collection of vocabulary was based on showing pictures selected from popular reading materials in Greek to hearing impaired HI children. A grammatical content analysis was carried out to determine the average syntactic and morphological structures of the sentences used by the HI children. Ten picture related sentence lists were developed based on the vocabulary and the grammatical analysis, and recorded by a male native speaker of standard Modern Greek. These were presented to both normal hearing (NH) and HI children, and the average speech response threshold (SRT) as well as the slope of the SRT curve at the SRT level of 50% correct responses (S50) were recorded in both groups. Sentence lists were validated with respect to the variability of their difficulty within each group, as well the test-retest variability of the respective SRT scores. Results: The average speech response threshold (SRT) across all lists for HI children was 65.27 dB and the slope of the SRT curve at the SRT level of 50% correct responses was 3.11%/dB. The corresponding results across all lists for NH children were 17.66 dB and 9.7%/dB, respectively. The SRT of HI children were strongly positively correlated, in a statistically significant manner with the PTA in both the test and the retest sessions (test: r=0.750, P < 0.0005; retest: r=0.753, P < 0.0005). The Spearman correlation of the rankings of SRT values and the slope values was 0.998 and 0.997 respectively for the HI and 0.939 and 0.88, for the NH group, indicating very low variability across the test and retest sessions. In addition, the analysis of variance (ANOVA) of the average SRT in NH children and the SRT residuals in the HI group indicated that the different sentences were of the same difficulty within each group. ((F(9,81)=0.401, p=0.930 and (F(9,93)=2.241, p=0.025 respectively). Conclusions: A validated sentence based speech audiometry test was created in Greek for the first time. SRT and S50 values for both NH and HI children are comparable to similar tests developed in other languages

Interpretation of wide-angle reflection travel-times in realistic crust-mantle structures

A method for the interpretation of wide-angle reflection travel-times in laterally varying crust-mantle structures is formulated. A datum correction is first carried out by ray-tracing to remove the effects of refraction above the reflector. The resulting time-distance data may be then expressed in a form which permits, given multiple coverage of the sub-surface, the independent determination of velocity and reflector topography. The method has been tested on model data and found to be effective. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; ARK: https://n2t.net/ark:/88439/y013185 Permalink: https://geophysicsjournal.com/article/58 &nbsp

Packaging redesign – benefits for the environment and the community

This paper aims to underline the importance of the packaging redesign process and the potential benefits that can be derived from this for both the environment and the community. The research demonstrates that the redesign of paper corrugated packaging has cost savings for most links of the supply chain such as the industrial customers, retailers, wholesalers and final consumers. In addition, an applied case study will be used that aims to provide evidence that the redesign process could further offer weight and transportation benefits, provide better environmental performance and finally offer better protection for the packaged products. The alternative packaging suggestions made in the research refer to the secondary paper corrugated packaging since the objective is to show the value of the redesign process. The research provides the tools for a packaging designer, on how to estimate, analyse, redesign and compare different approaches, finding the way to a more sustainable packaging supply chain