On the analogy between the evolution of thermodynamicand bibliometric systems: a breakthrough or justa bubble?

This paper presents an in depth study of an interesting analogy, recently proposed by Prathap (Scientometrics 87(3):515-524, 2011a), between the evolution of thermodynamic and bibliometric systems. The goal is to highlight some weaknesses and clarify some ‘‘dark sides'' in the conceptual framework of this analogy, discussing the formal validity and practical meaning of the concepts of Energy, Exergy and Entropy in bibliometrics. Specifically, this analogy highlights the following major criticalities: (1) the definitions of E and X are controversial, (2) the equivalence classes of E and X are questionable, (3) the parallel between the evolution of thermodynamic and bibliometric systems is forced, (4) X is a non-monotonic performance indicator, and (5) in bibliometrics the condition of ‘‘thermodynamic perfection'' is questionable. Argument is supported by many analytical demonstrations and practical example

A short survey on Air Quality Indicators: properties, use and (mis)use

Purpose - Analysis and comparison of three existing indicators of the air quality: the American air quality index, the French Atmo, and the Italian Indice di Qualita` dell'Aria. Design/methodology/approach - International general and organic regulations to control air quality do not exist yet. Consequently many countries have independently implemented specific indicators to monitor the air pollution and then alert people of resulting health risks. The paper focuses on three of them. Each one is independently presented showing the peculiarities. Therefore, these indicators are compared to identify the features they have in common, as well as those that set them apart, and to figure out which are either restrictive or permissive, and what are their qualities and drawbacks. Findings - The three mentioned indicators convert the real health risk due to air pollution into numerical information, in different ways. Doing this, they carry out some simplifications or assumptions, which can be questionable. The main difficulty is to understand if the indicators aggregate the different pollutant concentrations consistently with the real effects on human health. Research limitations/implications - This paper analyses only three specific indicators of the air quality, selected among the existing ones. Practical implications - Indicators should carefully be analysed to understand if they properly represents the real effects of pollutants on human health. The most critical aspect to consider is the aggregation of the different pollutant concentrations in one information. Originality/value - This paper analyses the efficacy of representation of some air quality indicators. It discusses if indicators aggregation is consistent with the real effects on human healt

Classification of Performance and Quality Indicators in Manufacturing

A critical aspect in operations management is to represent the firm goals properly. This is usually done by translating the organisational results and objectives in ‘performance measurements'. The scientific literature shows many applications in different fields such as quality, production, logistics, marketing, etc. Nevertheless, a general theory formalising basic and application concepts is still lacking. This paper shows a classification of ‘performance indicators' in manufacturing, providing a mathematical structure to the concept of ‘indicator'. This approach is based on the formalism of the Representation Theory. All the mentioned concepts are explained and discussed through practical example

Quality & Quantity journal: a bibliometric snapshot

This article analyzes the Quality & Quantity journal from the point of view of some bibliometric indicators: the Hirsch (h) and the g-index for journals, the total number of citations, the h- and the g-spectrum. Journal time evolution is also studied and discussed in detail. As a final point, an interesting issue about how to objectively evaluate the journal popularity in the professional world—rather than the scientific/academic—is presented and left open

Prioritization of QFD Customer Requirements Based on the Law of Comparative Judgments

Quality function deployment (QFD) is a useful tool to improve the design/development process of products and services. The initial phases of the QFD process—that is, those concerning the collection and analysis of the so-called voice of the customer—are probably the most critical, because any distortion can propagate to the whole process results, making it ineffective or even misleading. The focus of this article is on the phase of prioritization of customer requirements (CRs). There are numerous techniques for this task; however, (1) the simplest often introduce questionable or unrealistic assumptions, whereas (2) the most sophisticated often require too much elaborate and repetitious information from customers, which may lead to inconsistencies. This article introduces a new prioritization technique based on the Thurstone's law of comparative judgment. This technique makes it possible to aggregate the evaluations by multiple respondents and transform them into an interval scale, which depicts the relative importance of CRs. The greatest strength of this technique is combining a refined theoretical model with a simple and user-friendly data collection process. The description is supported by a realistic application example concerning the prioritization of QFD's CRs in the design of an aircraft sea

Aggregating multiple ordinal rankings in engineering design: the best model according to the Kendall's coefficient of concordance

AbstractAggregating the preferences of a group of experts is a recurring problem in several fields, including engineering design; in a nutshell, each expert formulates an ordinal ranking of a set of alternatives and the resulting rankings should be aggregated into a collective one. Many aggregation models have been proposed in the literature, showing strengths and weaknesses, in line with the implications of Arrow's impossibility theorem. Furthermore, the coherence of the collective ranking with respect to the expert rankings may change depending on: (i) the expert rankings themselves and (ii) the aggregation model adopted. This paper assesses this coherence for a variety of aggregation models, through a recent test based on the Kendall's coefficient of concordance (W), and studies the characteristics of those models that are most likely to achieve higher coherence. Interestingly, the so-called Borda count model often provides best coherence, with some exceptions in the case of collective rankings with ties. The description is supported by practical examples

A new technique based on the Law of Comparative Judgment for quality-related problems

A relatively diffused problem in the quality engineering/management field is that in which a set of judges express their individual (subjective) judgments on a specific attribute of some objects, and these judgments have to be fused into a collective one. The goal of this paper is to develop a new technique that combines the Thurstone’s Law of Comparative Judgment (LCJ) with an ad hoc response mode based on preference orderings. This technique allows to express the collective judgment of the objects on a ratio scale and is applicable to a variety of practical contexts

A new proposal to improve the customer competitive benchmarking in QFD

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a structured tool that supports the design of new products/services, translating customer requirements into technical and process characteristics. The so-called Customer Competitive Benchmarking is a module of the QFD’s House of Quality, in which a sample of (potential) customers express their perceptions on a set of competing products/services, within the same market segment of the one to be designed; this information is then elaborated by a cross-functional team of experts and used to define improvement and strategic goals. Despite the importance of this kind of benchmarking for the whole QFD process, the scientific literature reveals limited research. This paper critically analyzes the canonical procedure of customer-competitive benchmarking, highlighting its major weaknesses and problematic aspects. Additionally, it proposes an alternative procedure to overcome (at least partly) those weaknesses, without undermining the simplicity in data collection and processing of the canonical procedure. This alternative procedure utilizes the Thurstone’s Law of Comparative Judgment, which allows to transform subjective judgments by multiple respondents into a collective cardinal scaling. The description is supported by several pedagogical and real-life examples

Design and development of a new large-scale metrology system: MScMS (Mobile Spatial coordinate Measuring System)

This thesis arises from the research activity developed at the Industrial Metrology and Quality Engineering Laboratory of DISPEA - Politecnico di Torino, on a new system prototype for dimensional measurement, called Mobile Spatial coordinate Measuring System (MScMS). MScMS determines dimensional features of large-size objects and has been designed to overcome some limits shown by other widespread measuring sets used nowadays, like Coordinate Measuring Machines (CMMs), theodolites/tacheometers, photogrammetry equipments, GPS based systems, Laser Trackers. Basing on a distributed sensor networks structure, MScMS can accomplish rapid dimensional measurements, in a wide range of indoor operating environments. It consists of distributed wireless devices, communicating with each other through radiofrequency (RF) and ultrasound (US) transceivers. This frame makes the system easy to handle and to move, and gives the possibility of placing its components freely around the workpiece. The wireless devices − known as "Crickets" − are developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Being quite small, light and potentially cheap (if mass produced), they fit to obtain a wide range of different network configurations. These features make the new system suitable for particular types of measurement, which can not be carried out, for example, by conventional CMMs. Typical is the case of large-size objects which are unable to be transferred to the measuring system area (because of their dimensions or other logistical constraints) and thus require the measuring system to be moved to them. In the dissertation the system is described exhaustively and characterized through practical experiments. Then, the system is compared to classical CMMs and the indoor-GPS (iGPS), an innovative laser based system for large-scale metrology. Finally, future directions of this research are give

Critical remarks on the Italian research assessment exercise VQR 2011–2014

For nearly a decade, several national exercises have been implemented for assessing the Italian research performance, from the viewpoint of universities and other research institutions. The penultimate one – i.e., the VQR 2004–2010, which adopted a hybrid evaluation approach based on bibliometric analysis and peer review – suffered heavy criticism at a national and international level. The architecture of the subsequent exercise – i.e., the VQR 2011–2014, still in progress – is partly similar to that of the previous one, except for a few presumed improvements. Nevertheless, this other exercise is suffering heavy criticism too. This paper presents a structured discussion of the VQR 2011–2014, collecting and organizing some critical arguments so far emerged, and developing them in detail. Some of the major vulnerabilities of the VQR 2011–2014 are: (1) the fact that evaluations cover a relatively small fraction of the scientific publications produced by the researchers involved in the evaluation, (2) incorrect and anachronistic use of the journal metrics (i.e., ISI Impact Factor and similar ones) for assessing individual papers, and (3) conceptually misleading criteria for normalizing and aggregating the bibliometric indicators in use