Search results

A high percentage of circuit boards manufactured in the electronics industry are of an irregular shape and are produced on a standard panel outline to facilitate assembly handling. The unused pieces of circuit board pass through the same processes as the useful parts and are normally discarded. This excess material could, among other things, be used to evaluate the quality of a bare board or an assembly. This paper will highlight the usefulness of designing test patterns on this excess material, namely test coupons, in terms of how these can be used to monitor all of the manufacturing and assembly process steps. It will also show how these coupons can be used to make the board easier to assemble and how they may actually lead to an improvement in the quality of the assembly and an increase in production yields. Suggestions will be made as to the types of test pattern that can be used, as well as how these patterns can be utilised as process control checkers. Since the test coupons are incorporated in the board design, a quality check of 100% of the boards that are being processed is possible. This would highlight any board‐to‐board variation if it were present. It would also allow for destructive testing to be carried out, without damaging any of the working product. The applications of these patterns are wide ranging. They can be used to check bare board quality—etch definition, layer registration, plating quality, solder mask definition etc. They can also be used to monitor the assembly processes for SMT and conventional PTH assembly types—cut and clinch quality, paste printing quality, onsertion accuracy, reflow/flow soldering quality and assembly cleanliness, among others. Many of these applications are examined in this paper.

As a workplace, Higher Education has long been spatially socialized as a heteronormative with counter spaces (LGBTQ resource centers) in which assumptions about an individual's sexuality have been assumed as heterosexual or gay/lesbian pushing mononormativity. This study focused on the narratives of six bisexual faculty and staff to uncover how mononormativity is (re)produced in the workplace. We analyze the ways in which bisexual faculty and staff experience an unevenness of power in communicating their bi identity. We drew on Lefebvre's (1991) theory to understand how the social workplace is sexualized presenting our findings through an ethnodrama.

This paper aims to propose a conceptual framework to integrate a maturity model to the supply chain (SC) strategy, in order to understand how a maturity model can be useful in diagnosing and developing the capabilities of SC business processes (BPs) to meet SC's strategy.

The proposed framework was based on an SC strategy framework, in which a maturity model was added in order to diagnose and identify SC process capabilities that need to be developed, per maturity level, according to the type of SC strategy and the competitive strategy. A grid was proposed to analyze the relationship between them. An exploratory case study (multiple cases) was applied to verify the applicability of the model.

Findings indicate that a maturity model can delimit and align, as far as the company needs to reach, the SC strategic interests with the company's competitive objectives. However, some barriers and facilitating factors implicit can impact on this alignment. It is also noted that the maximum level of SC management (SCM) maturity may not be in the strategic interest of the company.

Due to the few empirical studies on the value of maturity models, this research contributes to the understanding of the usefulness of an SC process maturity model for the SC strategy. Moreover, the framework can show how a maturity model can serve as a parameter and guide to develop the capabilities of processes, resources and activities to meet the SC strategy and the reach of the competitive strategy.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a nursing quality indicator (NQI) framework and provide a comprehensive reporting mechanism for nursing care.

Mixed method, including patient records audit, patient experience questionnaire, nurse self-report questionnaire and collecting ward-level information. The sample was 53 patients and 22 nurses.

Outputs from the NQI framework domains offer a more comprehensive understanding of nursing quality compared to when domains are analysed separately. The NQI framework also provides a more inclusive mechanism for assuring nursing care.

Sample size was limited to 53 English-speaking patients who consented to participating in the study.

One design strength was the ability to describe individual patient care across the four domains and subsequently show relationships between nursing knowledge, nursing interventions and patient outcomes/experiences. Additionally, corroborated information from three sources (documentation review, patient and nurse responses) strengthened the conclusion that the NQI framework could provide more comprehensive assurances on nursing quality and identify care improvements.

This paper aims to present and discuss an innovative maturity model (MM) to assess supply chain quality management (SCQM). The SCQM MM can be used to guide organizations in the development and improvement of quality in their supply chains (SCs). Additionally, this paper intends to better understand that integration and its impacts on organizational performance.

The proposed MM was developed based on an exhaustive literature review of the most relevant MMs developed in the areas of quality management, supply chain management and other relevant domains.

The proposed MM consists of a matrix with 100 criteria organized in five organizational dimensions and five maturity levels, embracing the most relevant SC issues and describing a progressive path towards a state of full maturity.

It is an innovative tool useful for both academic experts and practitioners to integrate quality management across the SC, thus promoting and improving organizational performance from an integrated and sustainable perspective.

The key aim of this narrative literature review, therefore, is to identify the key conceptual categories that inform the construction of positive person-centred culture within hospitals, and how these frameworks are brought to bear upon organisational culture within healthcare systems in Australia.

This narrative review presents a thematic synthesis of literature identified through a systematic search protocol undertaken across 19 academic databases and Google Scholar as an additional search tool. Thematic qualitative analysis was performed on the research results to determine the common themes within the diverse literature presented within this study.

Culture change interventions in hospitals attempt to address the problem of widespread unprofessional behaviour within healthcare systems. However, diverse definitions and seemingly fragmented approaches to understanding and enacting organisational culture change present a significant hurdle in achieving cohesive and sustainable healthcare reform. This narrative literature review offers a comprehensive conceptual view of the key approaches that inform positive person-centred culture within hospital settings. In total, three primary dimensions, belonging, behaving and being, aligned against organisational goals, individual behaviours and worker as well as organisational identity were identified. Other individual and group interactional dynamics that give rise to negative organisational culture are further analysed to understand the fault lines along which existing culture change interventions are typically operationalised.

This review is not exhaustive and is limited in its methodological scope. The central values and themes identified within the literature are integral to designing humanised healthcare systems. However, owing to the qualitative nature and contextual variability of these factors, these themes do not lend themselves to replicable quantification.

This analysis contributes to foundational research efforts towards transforming healthcare practice to be more aligned with humanised and equitable values within increasingly complex healthcare organisational settings. Designing culture change interventions that align more suitably with the values-driven categories identified in this literature review may increase the effectiveness and sustainability of these interventions and reform efforts at organisational and systemic levels.

This article presents a comprehensive framework to approach healthcare organisational reform through shared and equitable models of operation, management and governance rather than continuing to promote narrowly defined outcomes derived from commodified models of healthcare practice.

The purpose of this study is to describe the workplace culture and factors associated with it from the viewpoint of the personnel providing care to patients with dual diagnosis.

Data were collected from six organizations using an electronic survey in 2019. The respondents (n = 75) worked in addiction psychiatry in specialized health care and provided care to patients. The data were statistically analyzed.

Workplace culture was evaluated as positive. Stress was experienced occasionally (Md = 2.58, Q1 = 1.96, Q3 = 3.03), job satisfaction levels were moderate (Md = 4.83, Q1 = 4.28, Q3 = 5.44) and the practice environment was evaluated as neutral (Md = 4.46, Q1 = 4.00, Q3 = 5.04). Gender, age in years, employment relationship, work time, staffing, number of patients and the participants’ experience in health care and experience in their current workplace had statistically significant associations with workplace culture.

In Finland, there have been attempts to reform service structures that also influence mental health and substance addiction services. Workplace culture is one approach to promote service development. Yet, there has been no research on workplace culture in the context of the care of patients with dual diagnosis. The results of this study bring knowledge about how health-care personnel perceives stress, job satisfaction and their practice environment in addiction psychiatry, which can be used to further develop services and workplace culture.

The aim of this study is to develop a framework for measuring of service supply chain (SSC) maturity process.

The main framework of the SSC maturity was developed by reviewing the concepts and models of SSC, business excellence, maturity and supply chain performance evaluation. Then, the maturity level of each excellence criterion was defined in the proposed model by using the excellence criteria for SSC and the concept of Plan, Do, Check and Act (PDCA) cycle in combination with the process survey tools maturity model. Based on the excellence criteria and their maturity levels, a questionnaire was designed to practically measure the proposed framework.

The concepts and features of maturity levels defined for each of the excellence criteria were used to implement and operationalize the proposed framework and evaluate the SSC processes.

Through the assessment of the existing status of SSC processes, the findings allow managers to reach a better understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of such processes. Then, some opportunities are provided for improving each excellence criterion to enhance the performance of each process.

In fact, this study provides guidelines for organizations to measure their progress and performance and improve their management systems. The main advantages of the proposed SSC measurement framework include self-assessment facilitation, calculation of criteria scores and development of uses. The proposed model, like quality and productivity awards, can pave the way for increased competitiveness of the service industry.

The purpose of this paper is to study how a general standardized processes assessment capability/maturity model, such as Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI), can be combined to a standardized benchmark of logistics processes best practices, such as FD X50-604, to propose a new approach that evaluates logistics processes capability/maturity.

First, an analysis study of CMMI model and X50-604 standard is performed. In order to prove their coherence, a deep comparative analysis of CMMI and X50-604 practices is conducted. As illustration, the paper focuses on a particular application of this approach to evaluate capability/maturity of distribution logistics activities. An industrial case study that aims the validation of this particular application is finally conducted in a furniture company.

The authors estimate that the paper findings provide an operational guide for industrials to evaluate their distribution processes that is a practical, verifiable, repeatable and extensible to other logistics process areas and an interesting opportunity to evolve the standard FD X50-604 regarding CMMI requirements to assess capability/maturity of logistics processes.

In general, the few capability/maturity-driven models analyzed in literature present some limits that do not allow their diffusion in the industrial level, especially in logistics. This study proposes a new approach based on standards that provide an operational guide for industrials to evaluate their distribution processes based on capability/maturity concept.