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Managing enterprise performance is an important, yet a difficult process due to its complexity. The process involves monitoring the strategic focus of an enterprise, whose performance is measured from the analysis of data generated from a wide range of interrelated business activities performed at different levels within the enterprise. This study aims to investigate management data systems technologies in terms of how they are used and the issues that are related to their effective management within the broader context of enterprise performance management (EPM).

A range of recently published research literature on data warehousing, online analytic processing and EPM is reviewed to explore their current state, issues and challenges learned from their practice.

The findings of the study are reported in two parts. The first part discusses the current business practices of these technologies, and the second part identifies and discusses the issues and challenges the business managers dealing with these technologies face for gaining competitive advantage for their businesses.

The study findings are intended to assist the business managers to effectively understand the issues and technologies behind EPM implementation.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a solution to the problem of a lack of machine processable semantics in business process management.

The paper introduces a methodology that combines domain and company‐specific ontologies and databases to obtain multiple levels of abstraction for process mining and analysis. The authors valuated this approach with a real case study from the apparel domain, using a prototype system and techniques developed in the Process Mining Framework (ProM). The results of this approach are compared with similar research.

Semantically enriching process execution data can successfully raise analysis from the syntactic to the semantic level, and enable multiple perspectives of analysis on business processes. Combining this approach with complementary research in semantic business process management (SBPM) can provide results comparable to multidimensional analysis in data warehouse and on line analytical processing (OLAP) technologies.

The approach and prototype described in this paper improve the richness of semantics available for open‐source process mining and analysis tools like ProM, and the richness and detail of the resulting analysis.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the longitudinal evolution of quality costs measurement, depicted in 99 real data studies of the last 30 years. A meta-analysis of these articles is conducted, in order to highlight the evolution of the variables that have been used for the study of quality costing, in relation to the date of publication, business sector and geographical origin of each paper.

The analysis of the cost components has been conducted with the use of multiple correspondence analysis, which is a useful tool for the exploration of the interrelations among all elements, aiming at the identification of the dominant and most substantial tendencies in their structure.

The findings suggest that the level of analysis of quality costs is related to the date of publication, the business sector and the origin of each research. Furthermore, it is pointed out that the most prominent prevention costs are related to suppliers’ assurance, internal audit and new product’s design and development. Appraisal costs are mostly defined by quality audits and procurement costs, while failure costs by defect/failure analysis, low quality losses, complaint investigation and concessions and warranty claims.

The present paper is a longitudinal meta-analysis of 99 quality cost papers that have been published in the last 30 years. It explores the evolution of research in quality costing, not only in relation to the cost components in use, but also in terms of date of publication, business sector and geographical origin of the studies.

Given the fact that the Greek food and beverage (F&B) sector, along with the tourism sector, is the basis of Greek economy, the purpose of this paper is to depict the extent to which Greek F&B enterprises have embraced quality costing, as a means toward economic development and quality assurance. Since no previous research has taken place in this area, the paper aims to analyze whether the quality costing approach has been adopted, in order to achieve quality improvement and a reduction of production costs.

As the variables in this research are mostly nominal, and no similar work has been previously conducted in Greece, an exploratory approach is adopted, specifically multiple correspondence analysis. This approach enables the researcher not only to analyze the phenomenon in a more holistic way, but also to highlight potential issues and questions that have not been previously identified.

The research concludes that Greek F&B enterprises have not yet accepted the assumption that quality costing leads to a reduction of production costs and to quality improvement. Furthermore, a second analysis highlights that “turnover” and “ISO-HACCP systems” are the most dominant demographic variables, which have a direct relationship to prevention and internal failure costs.

Since the Greek F&B industry constitutes the larger “employer” of domestic manufacturing, this research sheds light on the role that quality costing plays in the development and success of the Greek F&B sector, by exploring the approach that has been adopted by F&B enterprises, as well as the economic outcome of this process.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how the sophistication of a quality costing system depends on the quality management maturity (QMM) level in Food and Beverage (F&B) enterprises. Since no previous research has taken place in this area, the paper aims at analyzing the relationships between quality costing and the specific variables that define the various maturity stages.

A structured questionnaire was used to survey 457 F&B companies. This produced 104 usable responses (23 percent response rate). Multidimensional correspondence analysis (MCA) with hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) were used to detect and represent underlying structures in the categorical data set and to detect possible clusters between variables.

The more mature a company’s QMM, the more emphasis they placed on appraisal quality costs and effective use of quality costs information. Prevention costs have no statistically significant connection with the level of maturity. A generalized “expensive” use of quality costing, with no focus on problematic areas and possible solutions, does not always lead to the resolution of problems.

A complicated – and some think unfair – tax system, combined with limited cash liquidity constitutes an unstable environment for Greek companies, in which they have to survive and develop. This environment does not support quality costing, thus resulting in limited interest by company management in participating in the authors’ research. Furthermore, the Greek Uniform Chart of Accounts and the Greek Accounting Standards do not include specific quality-related accounts, making it difficult for companies to measure quality costs and for researchers to investigate the quality costing field.

It is the first time that QMM levels of Greek F&B companies have been reported. The research explores the characteristics that a quality costing system of Greek F&B organizations develop at the various maturity levels. The analysis uses an exploratory method – MCA – which can highlight intense correspondences of characteristics and clusters, which cannot be predicted in advance.

The texturalcentric model of visual and tactile response to textural fabric surfaces was used to extract characteristics that could be used to build a construct definition of texture perception. Using multidimensional scaling analysis permitted subjects to provide numeric judgements of fabrics rather than using words with the individual's historic definition of those terms or without knowledge of some terms. Two hundred and forty subjects (50 per cent male, 50 per cent female) provided visual, tactile, or visual and tactile ratings of similarities of fabrics. The 47 fabrics were used in two administrations to ascertain cross‐validation. Data were analysed using M‐D SCAL Version 5M. Dimensions or characteristics of fabric were statistically analysed and named using bipolar adjectives: rough to smooth, plane to depth, irregular to regular surface units, shiny to matt, fine to coarse, light weight to heavy weight, simple to complex, small units to large units, open to compact, and soft to bumpy‐rough.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the level of the importance and implementation of the critical success factors (CSFs) required for the appropriate function of a quality management system (QMS) in ISO 9001:2008-certified companies and the differences between the CSFs and the demographic variables of the companies.

A research project was carried out in Greek companies from all business sectors using the questionnaire technique. The selected companies all implement a QMS in accordance with the ISO 9001:2008 standard. Correspondence analysis, a methodology from the multidimensional statistics field, was also used to identify significant differences between the importance and implementation levels of the CSFs of the QMS.

The importance that quality assurance managers attribute to these CSFs was high enough in most categories, but there was a significant difference in the implementation level, which displayed much lower scores. The most important factors seem to be management commitment, education, and communication, while the least important were the availability of data and use of statistics. Differences between categories of demographic variables were present only for the firm size variable.

The study was based on the perception (i.e. subjective data) of only one quality manager/representative of each company.

The paper provides information to certified companies in Greece on the differences in the importance and implementation levels of quality management practices (especially for hard factors) and motivation to investigate possible causes. Moreover, the most important factors for the successful implementation of ISO 9001 are presented.

This paper describes the implementation and given importance of the CSFs in companies with experience of the ISO 9001:2008 standard and for the analysis of the data a methodology from the multidimensional field is applied, with the complementary use of some special tables of coincidences.

There is a tremendous explosion in the amount of data that organizations generate, collect and store. Managers are beginning to recognize the value of this asset, and are increasingly relying on intelligent systems to access, analyze, summarize, and interpret information from large and multiple data sources. These systems help them make critical business decisions faster or with a greater degree of confidence. Data mining is a promising new technology that helps bring business intelligence into these systems. While there is a plethora of data mining techniques and tools available, they present inherent problems for end‐users such as complexity, required technical expertise, lack of flexibility and interoperability, etc. These problems can be mitigated by deploying software agents to assist end‐users in their problem solving endeavors. This paper presents the design and development of an intelligent software agent based data analysis and mining environment called IDM, which is utilized in decision making activities.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the benefits of ISO 9001 certification and the association between them, the level of implementation of the critical success factors (CSFs) required for the appropriate functioning of the quality management system in ISO 9001:2008 certified companies and between other demographic variables.

A research project was carried out in Greek companies from all business sectors using the questionnaire technique. The selected companies implement a quality management system in accordance with the ISO 9001:2008 standard. Correspondence analysis, a methodology from the field of multidimensional statistics, was used to identify significant differences between the effects on performance and other variables such as the implementation level of CSFs relating to the quality management system and years of certification.

External benefits seem to be more important than internal benefits. The least important benefits were mostly business results, such as profits, costs and market share. Differences were detected between the level of performance and certain demographic variables such as the use of International Organization for Standardisation (ISO) alone, size and years of certification. The certified companies have generally benefited from ISO implementation.

The study was based on the perceptions (subjective data) of only one quality manager/representative from each company. The motives for ISO certification, which can seriously affect the benefits derived, were not examined.

The measures presented here can be used by certified companies to evaluate performance (financial or not) related to ISO 9001 certification and to discover those factors that contribute to the better exploitation of the ISO 9001:2008 standard.

This paper aims to evaluate performance since the implementation of the ISO 9001:2008 standard in Greek companies, which are confronting a tough economic environment and to analyse this data with a methodology from the multidimensional field, with the complementary use of some special tables of coincidence.

As business globalisation and internet usage continue to grow, the internet‐based version of data warehouse systems (DWS) is expected to improve traditional DWS. However applying the web‐based interfaces to client‐server‐based DWS structures may cause problems such as inflexibility, inefficiency, loss of scalability, and threats to security. These arise due to the complexity of manipulation and management of heterogeneous data with various categories of decisional tasks. This paper seeks to develop a flexible mechanism by applying Extensible Markup Language as a foundation for an internet‐based DWS and to overcome the weaknesses of solely client‐server‐based DWS architecture.

For better control and security the proposed architecture utilises an embedded pull‐push mechanism to propagate the distributed decision information. This research also justifies the feasibility of the proposed mechanism by implementing a prototype, evaluating its performance, and conducting a real business case study.

The results indicate that the mechanism can not only improve DWS scalability and efficiency, but also enhance security.

The proposed architecture provides a support mechanism for business intelligence to efficiently and flexibly help companies make the right decisions in real time, grasp business opportunities and gain competitive advantage.