International Journal for Quality Research

8

Authors: Alina-Andreea Dragoescu Urlica, Laura-Ioana Coroama-Dorneanu, Lulzime Kamberi, Natalia Malenko

The paper presents the follow-up of a case study investigation with students of ESP (English for Specific Purposes) on a tertiary level (1st and 4th year students), consisting of collaborative learner-teacher activities, including concept mapping and content-based learning. The results of our project in progress are considered for an optimal adaptation of an ESP textbook which is intended for students in several areas related to the Life Sciences (Agriculture, Biotechnologies, Biology, Genetic Engineering, Horticulture, etc.). The framework of the course support we propose, as well as our methodology and tool kit are provided by ecolinguistics and the aim is achieving ecological learning and meaningful communication in the language class and beyond. The object of this exploratory study is to highlight the potential of collaborative learning environments, to enable students to employ conceptual mapping and find relations between significant concepts in the Life Sciences. The feedback was collected from ESP learners as materials were collaboratively selected and designed together with students, based on the construction of conceptual maps. The question raised in our preliminary study draws on a review of the literature pertinent to meaningful conceptual learning. Some of the key concepts addressed in the ecologically-designed English courses are analysed, focusing on feedback from the students and constantly adapting our findings to better serve their needs.

14

Authors: Iman Adeinat

Many Instruments that are developed and used to measure and evaluate the service quality do not provide a metric for firms to reference in order to adjust their resources to improve service quality. To address this deficit, this study aims at measuring the relative service-quality efficiency of fast food restaurants in a franchise system using data envelopment analysis (DEA). According to the results of the DEA model, efficient and inefficient outlets in the franchise system are identified even though there are no statistically significant differences between the restaurants in regard to their respective service quality scores. The findings open up a new discussion on how would service provider view service quality while taking into consideration efficiency of their business since the results suggest that when firms focus strongly on service quality, a decline in efficiency may result.

14

Authors: Anna V. Shokhnekh

The articles studies the main notions, principles, and procedures of strategic quality management of small business in the system of digital economy in view of risks of drift from the position of the cognitive approach; directions of strategic quality management of small business are given, which allow creating a mechanism of timely classification of risks, for the purpose of forming the algorithm of leveling the strategic drift; the developed procedures of strategic quality management of small business for adaptation in the system of making of managerial decisions are presented. Negative barriers of development of small business in digital economy, which form in the conditions of weak information capacity that hinders identification of substantial changes in external environment are determined. Rejection of very important information that goes along the routes of information and digital communications due to organizational, political, and cultural motives put small business into strategic drift, causing bankruptcy.

16

Authors: Chukwunonso Emmanuel Ozoemena, Philip Hackney, Martin Birkett, David Bell

In the design of statistical experiments, situations may arise when resource constraints hinder the use of factorial designs for process improvement. This paper explores how 9, 18 and 27-run orthogonal arrays compare against each other and against a proposed experimental plan referred to as a 'Segmented Fractional Plan' when used to fractionate 33 and 34 factorial experiments. Based on the analysis of 8 responses from 6 factorial experiments, it was observed that to identify the process setting that produces the desired product quality, with a reduced number of experimental runs, the segmented fractional plan can perform as well or better than some orthogonal arrays thus, providing an option for fractionating 33 and 34 factorial experiments.

16

Authors: Natalia V. Bannikova, Tatyana N. Kostyuchenko, Natalia N. Telnova, Svetlana S. Vaytsekhovskaya

The article deals with the analysis of the status and trends of the development of the dairy business in Russia, particularly through the example of the Stavropol Territory. The analysis is indicative of the relocation of milk production in the sector of small and medium agribusiness due to the cow population decline: on the one hand, in the sector of large agricultural enterprises, and on the other hand - in the sector of household plots. A dependence of economic efficiency of the dairy business on the increase in the size of cow population has been found, but the scale effect is underused because of inadequate investment attractiveness of this type of business. Quality management should be used for increasing it. The article presents the evaluation of possible changes of status of dairy breeding based on the forecast of the key performance indicators of the industry broken down by categories of households in the region through analytical graduation and trend extrapolation. The scenario forecasting of the development of the industry in the agricultural enterprises of the Stavropol Territory served as a basis for the identification of the focus areas of the state support of the of the dairy business development on the basis of quality management. Recommendations for increasing the efficiency of dairy business (with the help of increasing the productiveness of milk cows by means of increasing the breed structure of cattle, improvement of farms, implementation of the innovational technologies of cattle-breeding management, and improvement of feeding) and for increasing the quality and milk and milk products through refusal from using mixtures and through production of "eco-milk", its branding and certification are offered. Guaranteeing high quality of "eco-milk" (high nutrition, high fat level, and rich vitamin structure) will allow reducing elasticity of demand for it and will stimulate successful development of entrepreneurship.

16

Authors: Badr Dakkak, El Hassan Irhirane, Ahmed Bounit

Industrial maintenance occupies a predominant place in manufacturing companies and it effectively contributes to the improvement and the development of the production tool. However, the major concern of industrialists is to carry out efficient interventions in optimal time without penalizing production. Faced with this challenge, maintenance actors often find it difficult to choose the right skills to assign to the different tasks, depending on the complexity and the rapidity required of each task. In this article, we present a tool that helps manufacturers to choose the right actors for maintenance interventions. It is based on the practice of the experimental design and the estimation of the levels of competences of each actor in each maintenance level. Such a tool highlights and takes into account two important responses being the rapidity and quality of interventions. The results obtained were simulated on simulation software and examples of treatment of the results were also presented.

18

Authors: Pawan Kumar Chand, Ashwin Sadasiva Kumar, Amit Mittal

The purpose of this research paper is to understand the role of employability skills and emotional intelligence toward employer satisfaction in recruiting fresh information technology engineering graduates from institutions of higher learning in India. Using a structured questionnaire, the study surveyed 507 employers from the information technology sector companies in India, who as recruiters conduct campus placement drives across various engineering schools in the country. An application of structured equation modeling to the data revealed emotional Intelligence partially mediates in the relationship between employability skills and employer satisfaction while recruiting these fresh engineering IT graduates. The finding of the study will be supportive for the students, academicians and practitioners in recognizing the need of soft skills for making young engineering graduates employable.

20

Authors: Dragana Rejman Petrović, Predrag Mimović

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to, based on the model developed to improve supplier performance and models for supplier evaluation and ranking in different types of supply chains, contribute to the expansion of existing conceptual frameworks for measuring supplier performance, indicating that some key performance indicators used to evaluate and rank suppliers have a different relative importance in different types of supply chains. Design/methodology/approach - The research includes evaluation, ranking, and comparison of six suppliers belonging to an efficient type of supply chain and an agile type of supply chain. For the evaluation and ranking of suppliers by types of supply chains, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and the data envelopment analysis (DEA) are combined. Novelty - Research in this field has dealt with supplier evaluation and ranking without taking into account the characteristics of different types of supply chains. The contribution of this paper lies in the development of a new model for supplier evaluation and ranking, taking into account the priorities of key performance indicators in different types of supply chains, providing management support in decision-making through simulation and finding the optimal solution for a particular supply chain. Practical implications - Developed and proposed models provide company management with the opportunity to apply a multiple-criteria decision-making model as a support in evaluating and ranking suppliers in different types of e-supply chains.