quality management in the design of tlc call centers

immediate Abstract Call centres rely heavily on the self-service paradigm through the use of an automated IVR (Interactive Voice Response) system. The service time delivered by the IVR is a major component of the overall QoS (Quality of Service) delivered by the call centre. We analyse the structure and service times of IVR systems through a case study of five call centres in the telecommunications sector. The service trees of the call centres under survey are reconstructed by complete exploration and analysed through a set of metrics. The present design of service trees leads to service times typically larger than those spent waiting for a human agent and to excessively long announcements, with a negative impact on the overall QoS. Imbalances in the popularity of the services offered by the IVR can be exploited to reduce remarkably the average service time, by properly matching the most popular services with the shortest service times

The diffusion of international standards on managerial practices

This article presents a comprehensive framework which identifies the relevant factors that can influence the standard adoption process, along with insights for performing a qualitative perspective analysis on the possible market diffusion of a specific standard under development or under review. This article also shows an example of framework application to the ISO 22400 standard, evidencing organizational and managerial implications on the standard adoption process

The Logistic Maturity Model: Application to a Fashion Company

This paper describes the structure of the logistic maturity model (LMM) in detail and shows the possible improvements that can be achieved by using this model in terms of the identification of the most appropriate actions to be taken in order to increase the performance of the logistics processes in industrial companies. The paper also gives an example of the LMM’s application to a famous Italian female fashion firm, which decided to use the model as a guideline for the optimization of its supply chain. Relying on a 5-level maturity staircase, specific achievement indicators as well as key performance indicators and best practices are defined and related to each logistics area/process/sub-process, allowing any user to easily and rapidly understand the more critical logistical issues in terms of process immaturity

Lot Sizing Heuristics Performance

Each productive system manager knows that finding the optimal trade‐off between reducing inventory and decreasing the frequency of production/ replenishment orders allows a great cut‐back in operations costs. Several authors have focused their contributions, trying to demonstrate that among the various dynamic lot sizing rules there are big differences in terms of performance, and that these differences are not negligible. In this work, eight of the best known lot sizing algorithms have been described with a unique modelling approach and have then been exhaustively tested on several different scenarios, benchmarking versus Wagner and Whitin’s optimal solution. As distinct from the contributions in the literature, the operational behaviour has been evaluated in order to determine which one is more suitable to the characteristics of each scenario

An Analysis of the Effect of Operations Management Practices on Performance

In this paper we investigate the possible relationships among some optimization techniques used in Operations Management and the performance of SMEs that operate in the manufacturing sector. A model based on the Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) approach is used to analyse a dataset of small and medium-sized Italian enterprises. The model is expressed by a system of simultaneous equations and is solved through regression analysis. Taking advantage of the contributions presented previously, we focus our research on the Italian economy, highlighting the importance of Operations Management practices, which are relevant drivers of these firms’ performances

formulas of revised mrp

Information sharing among supply chain echelons is now an acquired result. As a consequence, most of the traditional techniques and procedures in production management must be revised and updated, exploiting the opportunities provided by new technologies. This paper presents an improved version of Material Requirement Planning procedure, which assumes information sharing capabilities and permits the creation of new business opportunities. In Orlickyʹs MRP, orders are computed considering the parent items gross requirements. On the contrary, here the order release procedure related to a certain item is computed both by exploiting all the information sharing advantages and by introducing a drastic innovation to the main process functioning. As a result, the proposed algorithm copes better with demand uncertainty, lowers the system nervousness and also removes the need for continuous forecast adjustments, thereby improving the ease in managing the material flow, allowing the development of new forms of collaboration among different supply chain partners and the creation of new business networks. The algorithm is presented in formulas to describe in detail each procedure step and calculations

Analytic Hierarchy Process for New Product Development

The success of a New Product Development (NPD) process strongly depends on the deep comprehension of market needs and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) has been commonly used to find weights for customers’ preferences. AHP best practices suggest that low‐consistency respondents should be considered untrustworthy; however, in some NPD cases – such as the one presented here – this stake can be extremely big. This paper deals with the usage of AHP methodology to define the weights of customer needs connected to the NPD process of a typical impulse buying good, a snack. The aim of the paper is to analyse in a critical way the opportunity to exclude or include non‐consistent respondents in market analysis, addressing the following question: should a non‐consistent potential customer be excluded from the analysis due to his inconsistency or should he be included because, after all, he is still a potential consumer? The chosen methodological approach focuses on evaluating the compatibility of weight vectors among different subsets of respondents, filtered according to their consistency level. Results surprisingly show that weights do not significantly change when non‐consistent respondents are excluded

Valutare l’investimento in sistemi ERP

Sulla scorta di esperienze com- plementari, viene svolta l’anali- si critica dei principali metodi suggeriti in letteratura per la valutazione di proposte di inve- stimento in sistemi ERP. Oltre a costruire uno stato dell’arte utile ai cultori della materia, gli autori giungono a prospettare un diverso approccio per l’in- quadramento dei costi e dei benefici che in vario modo vanno proiettivamente a connet- tersi con l’installazione di un sistema ER

Sistema di supporto alla diagnosi per la manutenzione di apparati complessi

In questo lavoro viene presentata una proposta per la strutturazione di un sistema di supporto alla diagnosi di apparati produttivi complessi nell’ambito della manutenzione. La proposta è indicata per l’applicazione nei casi in cui dalla sola rilevazione dei segnali di malfunzionamento non sia possibile individuare l’avaria, ma la formulazione della diagnosi sia subordinata all’effettuazione di un certo numero di test sull’apparato ed all’intervento di tecnici specialisti. In particolare nei seguenti casi: - in presenza di avarie difficilmente identificabili; - nella necessità di test costosi, di lunga durata o di complicata effettuazione; - in apparati in cui interventi di smontaggio o prove distruttive debbano essere minimizzate; - nella necessità di intervento da parte di tecnici altamente specializzati. Sotto queste condizioni, tutte le informazioni necessarie per formulare la diagnosi non sono inizialmente disponibili; di conseguenza, test ed interventi dei tecnici specialisti si ripetono alternandosi fino a quando non si è raggiunta una conoscenza sufficiente del malfunzionamento per poter procedere con la riparazione. Questa procedura è inevitabilmente lenta e costosa; la velocità con cui si riesce a raggiungere la diagnosi delle avarie ed a ristabilire le normali condizioni di funzionamento del sistema è infatti un fattore fondamentale. Nel metodo proposto i tecnici specialisti dispongono già dal primo intervento di un insieme adeguato di informazioni sull’apparato, a partire dalla rilevazione dell’anomalia. Ciò che consente loro di arrivare in un sol step alla formulazione della diagnosi nella quasi totalità dei casi, ottenendo così una drastica riduzione del downtime. Infatti, opportuni test preliminari sono selezionati, in base ad un trade-off tra l’obiettivo di ottenere informazione significative sull’avaria e l’obiettivo di minimizzare il costo globale dei test stessi. La proposta prevede la strutturazione della conoscenza a priori disponibile su una famiglia di apparati in sistemi di relazioni tra symptom, disease e test; nel momento in cui si accerta un malfunzionamento su un singolo apparato, le informazioni di base vengono confrontate con i segnali rilevati per giungere ad un insieme di massima di test preliminari. Solo un sottoinsieme di questi sarà poi effettivamente eseguito, dopo essere stato opportunamente selezionato in base al costo, alla complessità ed al grado di significatività a supporto della diagnosi finale. Nel metodo proposto viene considerata: - la compresenza sia di informazioni storiche sul macchinario sia di quelle che derivano dall’osservazione dei segnali deboli - la compresenza sia di costi fissi sia di costi orari per l’intervento dei tecnici specialistici - la possibilità che vengano modificate le risorse di manutenzione durante l’intervento L’intero sistema è stato infine validato su un caso di studio ed i risultati, convenientemente commentati, sono riportati per valutare le prestazioni della proposta