E-business planning and analysis framework

This chapter reports on a framework that has been successfully used to analyze the e-business capabilities of an organization with a view to developing their e-capability maturity levels. This should be the first stage of any systems development project. The framework has been used widely within start-up companies and well-established companies both large and small; it has been deployed in the service and manufacturing sectors. It has been applied by practitioners and consultants to help improve e-business capability levels, and by academics for teaching and research purposes at graduate and undergraduate levels. This chapter will provide an account of the unique e-business planning and analysis framework (E-PAF) and demonstrate how it works via an abridged version of a case study (selected from hundreds that have been produced). This will include a brief account of the three techniques that are integrated to form the analysis framework: quality function deployment (QFD) (Akao, 1972), the balanced scorecard (BSC) (Kaplan & Norton, 1992), and value chain analysis (VCA) (Porter, 1985). The case study extract is based on an online community and dating agency service identified as VirtualCom which has been produced through a consulting assignment with the founding directors of that company and has not been published previously. It has been chosen because it gives a concise, comprehensive example from an industry that is relatively easy to relate to.

Developing a decision framework for the strategic sourcing of biomass

The deployment of bioenergy technologies is a key part of UK and European renewable energy policy. A key barrier to the deployment of bioenergy technologies is the management of biomass supply chains including the evaluation of suppliers and the contracting of biomass. In the undeveloped biomass for energy market buyers of biomass are faced with three major challenges during the development of new bioenergy projects. What characteristics will a certain supply of biomass have, how to evaluate biomass suppliers and which suppliers to contract with in order to provide a portfolio of suppliers that best satisfies the needs of the project and its stakeholder group whilst also satisfying crisp and non-crisp technological constraints. The problem description is taken from the situation faced by the industrial partner in this research, Express Energy Ltd. This research tackles these three areas separately then combines them to form a decision framework to assist biomass buyers with the strategic sourcing of biomass. The BioSS framework. The BioSS framework consists of three modes which mirror the development stages of bioenergy projects. BioSS.2 mode for early stage development, BioSS.3 mode for financial close stage and BioSS.Op for the operational phase of the project. BioSS is formed of a fuels library, a supplier evaluation module and an order allocation module, a Monte-Carlo analysis module is also included to evaluate the accuracy of the recommended portfolios. In each mode BioSS can recommend which suppliers should be contracted with and how much material should be purchased from each. The recommended blend should have chemical characteristics within the technological constraints of the conversion technology and also best satisfy the stakeholder group. The fuels library is made up from a wide variety of sources and contains around 100 unique descriptions of potential biomass sources that a developer may encounter. The library takes a wide data collection approach and has the aim of allowing for estimates to be made of biomass characteristics without expensive and time consuming testing. The supplier evaluation part of BioSS uses a QFD-AHP method to give importance weightings to 27 different evaluating criteria. The evaluating criteria have been compiled from interviews with stakeholders and policy and position documents and the weightings have been assigned using a mixture of workshops and expert interview. The weighted importance scores allow potential suppliers to better tailor their business offering and provides a robust framework for decision makers to better understand the requirements of the bioenergy project stakeholder groups. The order allocation part of BioSS uses a chance-constrained programming approach to assign orders of material between potential suppliers based on the chemical characteristics of those suppliers and the preference score of those suppliers. The optimisation program finds the portfolio of orders to allocate to suppliers to give the highest performance portfolio in the eyes of the stakeholder group whilst also complying with technological constraints. The technological constraints can be breached if the decision maker requires by setting the constraint as a chance-constraint. This allows a wider range of biomass sources to be procured and allows a greater overall performance to be realised than considering crisp constraints or using deterministic programming approaches. BioSS is demonstrated against two scenarios faced by UK bioenergy developers. The first is a large scale combustion power project, the second a small scale gasification project. The Bioss is applied in each mode for both scenarios and is shown to adapt the solution to the stakeholder group importance and the different constraints of the different conversion technologies whilst finding a globally optimal portfolio for stakeholder satisfaction.

Fuel supplier selection for large scale UK bioenergy schemes

This article presents a potential method to assist developers of future bioenergy schemes when selecting from available suppliers of biomass materials. The method aims to allow tacit requirements made on biomass suppliers to be considered at the design stage of new developments. The method used is a combination of the Analytical Hierarchy Process and the Quality Function Deployment methods (AHP-QFD). The output of the method is a ranking and relative weighting of the available suppliers which could be used to improve optimization algorithms such as linear and goal programming. The paper is at a conceptual stage and no results have been obtained. The aim is to use the AHP-QFD method to bridge the gap between treatment of explicit and tacit requirements of bioenergy schemes; allowing decision makers to identify the most successful supply strategy available.

A decision support system for supplier selection and order allocation in stochastic, multi-stakeholder and multi-criteria environments

Integrated supplier selection and order allocation is an important decision for both designing and operating supply chains. This decision is often influenced by the concerned stakeholders, suppliers, plant operators and customers in different tiers. As firms continue to seek competitive advantage through supply chain design and operations they aim to create optimized supply chains. This calls for on one hand consideration of multiple conflicting criteria and on the other hand consideration of uncertainties of demand and supply. Although there are studies on supplier selection using advanced mathematical models to cover a stochastic approach, multiple criteria decision making techniques and multiple stakeholder requirements separately, according to authors' knowledge there is no work that integrates these three aspects in a common framework. This paper proposes an integrated method for dealing with such problems using a combined Analytic Hierarchy Process-Quality Function Deployment (AHP-QFD) and chance constrained optimization algorithm approach that selects appropriate suppliers and allocates orders optimally between them. The effectiveness of the proposed decision support system has been demonstrated through application and validation in the bioenergy industry.

Decision-making in product quality based on failure knowledge

Decision-making in product quality is an indispensable stage in product development, in order to reduce product development risk. Based on the identification of the deficiencies of quality function deployment (QFD) and failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA), a novel decision-making method is presented that draws upon a knowledge network of failure scenarios. An ontological expression of failure scenarios is presented together with a framework of failure knowledge network (FKN). According to the roles of quality characteristics (QCs) in failure processing, QCs are set into three categories namely perceptible QCs, restrictive QCs, and controllable QCs, which present the monitor targets, control targets and improvement targets respectively for quality management. A mathematical model and algorithms based on the analytic network process (ANP) is introduced for calculating the priority of QCs with respect to different development scenarios. A case study is provided according to the proposed decision-making procedure based on FKN. This methodology is applied in the propeller design process to solve the problem of prioritising QCs. This paper provides a practical approach for decision-making in product quality. Copyright © 2011 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

Combined quality function deployment and logical framework analysis to improve quality of emergency care in Malta

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop an integrated patient-focused analytical framework to improve quality of care in accident and emergency (A&E) unit of a Maltese hospital. Design/methodology/approach – The study adopts a case study approach. First, a thorough literature review has been undertaken to study the various methods of healthcare quality management. Second, a healthcare quality management framework is developed using combined quality function deployment (QFD) and logical framework approach (LFA). Third, the proposed framework is applied to a Maltese hospital to demonstrate its effectiveness. The proposed framework has six steps, commencing with identifying patients’ requirements and concluding with implementing improvement projects. All the steps have been undertaken with the involvement of the concerned stakeholders in the A&E unit of the hospital. Findings – The major and related problems being faced by the hospital under study were overcrowding at A&E and shortage of beds, respectively. The combined framework ensures better A&E services and patient flow. QFD identifies and analyses the issues and challenges of A&E and LFA helps develop project plans for healthcare quality improvement. The important outcomes of implementing the proposed quality improvement programme are fewer hospital admissions, faster patient flow, expert triage and shorter waiting times at the A&E unit. Increased emergency consultant cover and faster first significant medical encounter were required to start addressing the problems effectively. Overall, the combined QFD and LFA method is effective to address quality of care in A&E unit. Practical/implications – The proposed framework can be easily integrated within any healthcare unit, as well as within entire healthcare systems, due to its flexible and user-friendly approach. It could be part of Six Sigma and other quality initiatives. Originality/value – Although QFD has been extensively deployed in healthcare setup to improve quality of care, very little has been researched on combining QFD and LFA in order to identify issues, prioritise them, derive improvement measures and implement improvement projects. Additionally, there is no research on QFD application in A&E. This paper bridges these gaps. Moreover, very little has been written on the Maltese health care system. Therefore, this study contributes demonstration of quality of emergency care in Malta.

Quality planning based on risk assessment

Product quality planning is a fundamental part of quality assurance in manufacturing. It is composed of the distribution of quality aims over each phase in product development and the deployment of quality operations and resources to accomplish these aims. This paper proposes a quality planning methodology based on risk assessment and the planning tasks of product development are translated into evaluation of risk priorities. Firstly, a comprehensive model for quality planning is developed to address the deficiencies of traditional quality function deployment (QFD) based quality planning. Secondly, a novel failure knowledge base (FKB) based method is discussed. Then a mathematical method and algorithm of risk assessment is presented for target decomposition, measure selection, and sequence optimization. Finally, the proposed methodology has been implemented in a web based prototype software system, QQ-Planning, to solve the problem of quality planning regarding the distribution of quality targets and the deployment of quality resources, in such a way that the product requirements are satisfied and the enterprise resources are highly utilized. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2010.

The perception of the African-American community through the eyes of the Hispanic media in the U.S.: a critical discourse analysis of the reporting of the death of Michael Brown

In this paper, 36 English and 38 Spanish news articles were selected from English and Spanish newspapers and magazines published in the U.S.A. from August 2014 to November 2014. All articles discuss the death of Michael Brown, the ensuing protests and police investigations. A discourse analysis shows that there are few differences between reporting by the mainstream and the Hispanic media. Like the mainstream media, the Hispanic media adopts a neutral point of view with regard to the African-American minority. However, it presents a negative opinion with regard to the police. It appears that the Hispanic media does not explicitly side with the African-American community, but rather agrees more with the mainstream media’s opinion and is substantially influenced by it.

La integración de las necesidades del cliente en los productos y servicios de la empresa

Las empresas de hoy día siguen persiguiendo el objetivo de poder ofrecer mejores productos que los competidores a mejores precios. Este propósito ha sido prácticamente el mismo desdeépocas pasadas, y la gran diferencia de hoy es el entorno en el cual se mueven, demasiado cambiante con una competencia intensa. ¿Cómo cumplir con este objetivo que todos persiguen? Un enfoque práctico consiste en buscar mecanismos deplaneación que permitan incorporar las necesidades de los clientes en el diseño o rediseño de los productos o servicios que ésta ofrece. La filosofía de la calidad brinda procesos sistemáticos que permiten incorporar estas necesidades en el diseño, rediseño, procesamiento y producción de los productos y servicios requeridos por los clientes. En este artículo presentaremos lasideas centrales de la metodología conocida como QFD (Quality Function Deployment) que permite incorporar la voz del cliente en la planeación, el diseño y la producción de los productosofrecidos por la compañía.

Propuesta metodológica para la selección, evaluación y reevaluación de proveedores de etiquetas en la Empresa Simoniz S.A. según numeral 8.4.1 de la Norma ISO 9001:2015

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Studio del processo di progettazione di una stampella sensorizzata

Lo studio presentato in questa tesi vuole riportare la ricerca e l’analisi di una nuova esperienza di utilizzo di una stampella, spinto dalla richiesta di migliorare la performance e l’interfaccia dello strumento con un paziente con rilevanti difficoltà motorie. Analizzando lo stato dell’arte e la ricerca in ambito ortopedico, la stampella risulta essere lo strumento più comunemente utilizzato in caso di riabilitazione o difficoltà motorie, ma, allo stesso tempo, comporta rischi e ulteriori danni al paziente, nel caso vi sia un uso scorretto dello strumento. Lo scopo principale del progetto è fornire un supporto, sia al paziente, sia alla terapia, tramite l’ottimizzazione e il miglioramento di alcuni elementi costituenti di una stampella e l’implementazione di un nuovo servizio. Durante lo studio sono stati sfruttati i metodi dell’ingegneria industriale, utili per le fasi di sviluppo del progetto, ma si è cercato anche di dare importanza alla user experience, riportando considerazioni e opinioni di diversi utilizzatori della stampella. Si spera che il risultato sia uno strumento funzionale, utile e soprattutto che vada incontro alle esigenze non solo dell’utente, ma anche delle figure che lo assistono, come il medico ortopedico o il fisioterapista.

Progettazione di serre scolastiche modulari attraverso il riutilizzo di componenti di facciata prefabbricati di Focchi SpA

Questo elaborato è il risultato dell’approfondimento del brief di tirocinio presso Focchi S.p.A. L’idea di progetto è quella di ricavare un prodotto industriale dai rifiuti, dai campioni inutilizzati e dagli avanzi di magazzino. Questo obiettivo richiede ideazione e costituzione di un’architettura prodotto, ma anche selezione dei materiali, implementazione tecnica e inserimento nel processo aziendale. Quindi il lavoro è cominciato con una documentazione sull’ambiente delle costruzioni, e i danni ambientali che progettare in maniera non-circolare comporta. Poi è stata studiata l’azienda e il percorso che i materiali fanno durante la produzione. Una volta inquadrato il problema è cominciata la fase di concept. La varietà di materiali ha generato molte idee, quindi ne è stata selezionata una utilizzando criteri misurabili, attraverso il metodo QFD, tenendo conto di vari parametri di natura ambientale, economica e sociale. Il concept selezionato è stato quindi una serra, da donare alle scuole primarie, in cui praticare l’idroponica: la struttura vetrata della serra è simile agli involucri trattati da Focchi e la destinazione didattica garantisce un buon impatto sulla comunità. A questo punto, il progetto è stato sviluppato, tramite uno studio dei dettagli tecnici. Quindi un inquadramento storico-architettonico è stato integrato con una documentazione normativa sulle strutture vetrate, oltre all’analisi del territorio circostante l’azienda in cui individuare possibili beneficiari del progetto. In seguito, c’è stata una fase di sketching, attraverso un’analisi dei requisiti della struttura e dei materiali a disposizione. Oltre ad una soluzione scalabile per il collegamento fra cellule, è stata definita la forma, disegnata con approccio modulare. Le ultime considerazioni riguardo la fattibilità del progetto sono state fatte dal punto di vista logistico ed economico, per un prodotto ormai sufficientemente dettagliato e pronto per l’implementazione.

Conceptualization of an Electric Compact SUV for the American and Italian Market using the IDeS Method

Electric cars are increasingly popular due to a transition of mobility towards more sustainable forms. From an increasingly green and pollution reduction perspective, there are more and more incentives that encourage customers to invest in electric cars. Using the Industrial Design and Structure (IDeS) research method, this project has the aim to design a new electric compact SUV suitable for all people who live in the city, and for people who move outside urban areas. In order to achieve the goal of developing a new car in the industrial automotive environment, the compact SUV segment was chosen because it is a vehicle very requested by the costumers and it is successful in the market due to its versatility. IDeS is a combination of innovative and advanced systematic approaches used to set up a new industrial project. The IDeS methodology is sequentially composed of Quality Function Deployment (QFD), Benchmarking (BM), Top-Flop analysis (TFA), Stylistic Design Engineering (SDE), Design for X, Prototyping, Testing, Budgeting, and Planning. The work is based on a series of steps and the sequence of these must be meticulously scheduled, imposing deadlines along the work. Starting from an analysis of the market and competitors, the study of the best and worst existing parameters in the competitor’s market is done, arriving at the idea of a better product in terms of numbers and innovation. After identifying the characteristics that the new car should have, the other step is the styling part, with the definition of the style and the design of the machine on a 3D CAD. Finally, it switches to the prototyping and testing phase to see if the product is able to work. Ultimately, intending to place the car on the market, it is essential to estimate the necessary budget for a possible investment in this project.

Disegno e Metodi applicati allo studio di una bicicletta pieghevole innovativa

L’elaborato è incentrato sullo studio di una bicicletta pieghevole innovativa attraverso i metodi dell’Ingegneria Industriale. All’interno del moderno contesto urbano, la bicicletta pieghevole rappresenta una soluzione valida per quegli utenti che cercano un mezzo versatile, autonomo, economico, compatto e adatto alla nuova mobilità intermodale. Negli ultimi anni i costruttori di pieghevoli si trovano a dover soddisfare le richieste di una clientela sempre più consapevole e attenta, cercando di proporre prodotti che siano in grado di combinare praticità e prestazioni, con particolare attenzione al dettaglio e all’immagine. Lo scopo di questo progetto è quello di disegnare un mezzo a propulsione muscolare che sia in grado di offrire la migliore esperienza d’uso possibile. Attraverso un’attenta analisi di mercato tramite il metodo del Quality Function Deployment si individuano le caratteristiche chiave del prodotto e si indirizza la fase di progettazione, portata avanti attraverso l’impostazione tecnica del prodotto il disegno di un meccanismo di piega inedito. Successivamente si passa alla definizione delle geometrie e alla realizzazione dello stile tramite la costruzione di un modello 3D al CAD, a cui segue una fase di analisi strutturale col Metodo degli Elementi Finiti, secondo le prove previste dalla normativa europea per la sicurezza delle biciclette, che porta al re-design alla validazione del prodotto finale.

A new concept for a Sport-Coupè car developed with the Industrial Design Structure method (IDeS)

The aim of this study, conducted in collaboration with Lawrence Technological University in Detroit, is to create, through the method of the Industrial Design Structure (IDeS), a new concept for a sport-coupe car, based on a restyling of a retro model (Ford Mustang 1967). To date, vintage models of cars always arouse great interest both for the history behind them and for the classic and elegant style. Designing a model of a vehicle that can combine the charm of retro style with the innovation and comfort of modern cars would allow to meet the needs and desires of a large segment of the market that today is forced to choose between past and future. Thanks to a well-conceived concept car an automaker company is able to express its future policy, to make a statement of intent as, such a prototype, ticks all the boxes, from glamour and visual wow-factor to technical intrigue and design fascination. IDeS is an approach that makes use of many engineering tools to realize a study developed on several steps that must be meticulously organized and timed. With a deep analysis of the trends dominating the automotive industry it is possible to identify a series of product requirements using quality function deployment (QFD). The considerations from this first evaluation led to the definition of the technical specifications via benchmarking (BM) and top-flop analysis (TFA). Then, the structured methodology of stylistic design engineering (SDE) is applied through six phases: (1) stylistic trends analysis; (2) sketches; (3) 2D CAD drawings; (4) 3D CAD models; (5) virtual prototyping; (6) solid stylistic model. Finally, Developing the IDeS method up to the final stages of Prototypes and Testing you get a product as close as possible to the ideal vehicle conceptualized in the initial analysis.