International Journal for Quality Research

8

Authors: Zdravko Krivokapic, Olivera Crnogorac, Aleksandar Vujovic, Jelena Jovanovic, Sasa Petrovic

Research subjects of this study are certified companies and their commitment to innovation, as well as their own development and implementation of innovation. Certified companies are those companies that have set one or more standards: ISO 9001:2008, ISO 14001: 2004, HACCP, OHSAS 18001, ISO 17025:2006, ISO 27001. The research is based on 60 certified companies in Montenegro and 165 certified companies Republic of Srpska. The research was conducted at certified companies from all regions, for every activity and sizes. For this purpose it was used questionnaire with 91 questions and it was filled in like interview.

12

Authors: V. Vineet Kumar

Quality is an important aspect for every firm in modern era of competition. Every product has tough competition in terms of market reach. The factor, which actually makes any product long run in market, is quality and hence quality is the stepping-stone for success of any firm. For everyone meaning of quality is different. We have seen several economists who have defined quality by considering different factors, but what all of them have common in them is Customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction is the ultimate result of quality. In three-dimensional graphical representation of quality, optimum quality is obtained by using three-dimensional graph by considering some important factors governing quality of any product, limiting factor, and customer satisfaction.

14

Authors: Ephrem Gidey, Birhanu Beshah, Daniel Kitaw

Quality and productivity concepts were confusing and sometimes used interchangeably by experts both in industry and academics. Though researches, to some extent, tried to show the developments of quality and productivity, as yet, no research was devoted to study their evolution in a way to know how they reached into their existing form and their relationship, whether it existed. This study intends to disclose the reason behind the confusion and concept - intermix by studying the main advancements in the evolution of the two concepts. Their evolution is chronologically determined by grouping basic advancements in to distinct timeframes and their corresponding relationship is identified using natural selection and biased mutation approaches of evolution. The paper revealed that in the first period there was Seemingly Productivity; in the second Primarily Productivity; in the third Primarily Quality; in the fourth Primarily Quality-based Productivity (i.e. one after the other norm); and in the fifth period both quality and productivity will be equally primarily focus of firms (Primarily Quality and Productivity). Through logical justifications, observations made in the existing literature, and based on the nature of future competitiveness orientation, future relationship between the two concepts needs intelligence in that they will be equally, seemingly with trade-off, and concurrently important for organizational growth, agility, and excellence; one will never exist without the other, and after the other.

14

Authors: Revathy U. Thandapani, S. Sivasangari, Jamaiyah Haniff

The International Committee of Medical Journal Editor (ICJMJE) members require all clinical trials to register as a condition for publication. This policy applies to clinical trial starting enrolment after July 1, 2005. The National Medical Research Register (NMRR) was designed to meet this requirement yet extending it to include all types of medical research beyond clinical trials. Characteristics and flow of registered medical research as reported in the NMRR system is analysed; in terms of time trend time and differences in characteristics as a function of clinical specialty. A dataset comprising all research registered from year 2007 until 2012 in NMRR was downloaded on 26 Dec, 2012, and entered into a relational database to analyze aggregate data. The number of registered researches in NMRR system increased from 206 (September 2007) to 5107 (September 2007-Dec 2012), and the number of missing values in the data elements has generally declined. Most researches registered are those from student (57%; 2888/5107) and the rest from Ministry of Health (MOH) site researches (43%; 2219/5107). Most of the Interventional trials were phase III (56 %) and very small number of phase I. Heterogeneity in the reported methods by clinical specialty, sponsor type, therapeutic area, disease area, and research type was evident.

18

Authors: A. Sailaja, P.C. Basak, K.G. Viswanadhan

In modern industries, much emphasis is given to quality as it is the most effective tool which can capture, retain and enlarge customer base. The customer satisfaction is the ultimate goal of business and no other strategy can achieve it other than attaining best quality. An improvement in quality enhances customer satisfaction, taper s manufacturing costs and of course in turn, increases productivity. But in business scenario, improving quality should be considered along with the expenses associated with it. The strategy should be to achieve high Quality in a most economic way. So identifying effective methods for the analysis of economics behind quality and reduction of costs associated with achieving quality is a serious potential management problem and should be looked in to and analyzed. Economics of Quality analysis which is also termed as cost of quality or quality cost analysis has emerged as a powerful management tool for assessing the present quality level of the organization and to identify the improvement opportunities and also supports in decision making. This paper presents a study on quality cost analysis of two manufacturing units and tries to analyze the interrelationships between quality cost categories using statistical methods. The secondary data collected from the financial records of two firms under manufacturing sector is used for this analysis. The Pearson product momentum correlation coefficient between different quality cost categories provides insight to the relationships between different quality cost elements and in turn helps management to set action priorities to be addressed to achieve good quality at lower cost. The regression analysis helps the management in estimation or prediction of the unknown value of one variable from the known value of the other variable.