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This paper aims to report and analyse the lessons learned from a case study on the implementation of a quality management system within an IT Division in a higher education (HE) organisation.

The paper is based on a review of the relevant literatures and the use of primary sources such as document analysis, participant observation and interviews to develop a case study that describes and evaluates the implementation process.

The case study identifies four factors central to the effective implementation of the quality management system within a Division of a HE institution: senior leadership and sponsorship; stakeholder engagement; the management of culture change; and implementing quality processes.

The case study reveals that the implementation of quality management systems requires sustained effort, continuous leadership, and the long term commitment of resources and systematic auditing of performance and is best done on an incremental basis.

The paper is based on a single organisation case study, and utilises a variety of data collection methods to generate findings. The study findings illustrate that HE institutions may achieve greater success in implementing quality management systems if they focus on a particular division rather than an organisation‐wide approach.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between the four cultural dimensions of the competing values framework (CVF) (group, developmental, hierarchical, and rational cultures) and four types of performance: product quality, process quality, product innovation, and process innovation. Theoretically, this represents the contrasts among the four quadrants of CVF in terms of their respective outcomes, with quality and innovation reflecting the contrast between control and flexibility orientations, and product and process reflecting the contrast between external and internal orientations.

Data were collected from 194 middle and senior managers of Australian firms who had knowledge of past and present organizational practices relating to quality and innovation‐related aspects in the organization.

Developmental culture was found to be the strongest predictor among the four cultural dimensions, as it shows relationships with three of the performance measures: product quality, product innovation, and process innovation. Rational culture shows a relationship with product quality, and along with group and hierarchical cultures, it also plays a role in predicting process quality.

The results provide key insights for managers to appropriately understand the fit between the culture and the strategic direction of the firm. The findings also encourage firms to appreciate the balanced view on what seems to be multiple cultural characteristics within the same organization.

By simultaneously examining the relationships between different cultural dimensions and different types of performance, this paper extends the previous empirical studies which linked CVF with a specific measure of performance.

The purpose of this paper is to provide practitioners of management with a comparative analysis of how two global firms ensure quality standards in new product development/new product manufacturability processes and manage design changes in reduced product life cycles in the current economic recession.

The firms selected were: Newell Rubbermaid, a high‐volume manufacturer with a diverse product offering, designing and manufacturing consumer products for large retail customers, and General Electric Healthcare Coils, a low‐volume manufacturer of a niche product for the magnet resonance imaging medical diagnostic systems. This case study presented a review of the quality steps performed when they are faced with a design change to a part, benchmarking their quality processes with the highest industrial standards possible.

The effective managing of engineering change has always been difficult, time consuming, and a regular source of inefficiency and irritation for manufacturers. Best‐in‐class companies understand that better change processes can drive top‐line benefits and the two distinct companies have developed very similar processes through effective industrial benchmarking activities that result in improving speed to market while maintaining high‐quality standards.

The component part design revision processes are well documented between the two firms, with an appropriate comparative analysis.

Corporate management has demonstrated a commitment to component part quality throughout the development and redesigns processes and has earned and maintained the reputation of best‐in‐class manufacturing in their respective fields. Through successful quality assurances and collaboration processes, the companies studied found stability in a very turbulent financial and service‐orientated marketplace.

This paper sets out to consider the role that can be played by independent professional accreditation systems and processes in influencing and grounding the intrinsic quality of what is offered by a service provider who has secured this certification.

The approach takes the form of personal interviews conducted with senior management personnel within a range of accommodation providers who were responsible for preparing their accreditation submission.

More than 80 percent of respondents agreed that the process of applying for accreditation forced a critical review of all aspects of their operations, and heightened their awareness of things that could prove problematic and ways by which these problems could be effectively countered. Respondents also agreed that the process served to motivate the development and detailed documentation of policies, systems and procedures, which enabled greater consistency in the standard of what is provided.

The findings suggest that rigorous accreditation processes help service providers to review and confirm the appropriateness of what may already be in place, to ground the quality of what might need to be put in place, and to improve the standard of what is currently in place.

The paper augments what is posited by the service‐profit chain framework, shows how a focus on intrinsic quality can help to close the service design and standards gap, and also shows how extrinsic and independent professional accreditation processes can ground and enable the intrinsic quality and standard of what is offered.

Although online health communities (OHCs) and online patient reviews can help to eliminate health information asymmetry and improve patients' health management, how patients write online reviews within OHCs is poorly understood. Thus, it is very necessary to determine the factors influencing patients' online review behavior in OHCs, including the emotional response and reviewing effort.

Based on expectation-disconfirmation theory, this study proposes a theoretical model to analyze the effects of service quality perception (i.e. outcome quality and process quality perceptions) and disconfirmation (i.e. outcome quality and process quality disconfirmations) on patients' emotional response and reviewing effort. The authors test the research model by using empirical data collected from a popular Chinese OHC and applying ordinary least squares (OLS) regression and zero-truncated negative binomial (ZTNB) regression models.

Both service quality perception and disconfirmation have a positive effect on patients' positive emotional intensity in textual reviews, and disease severity enhances these relationships of process quality. Moreover, there is an asymmetric U-shaped relationship among service quality perception, disconfirmation and reviewing effort. Patients who perceive low service quality have higher reviewing effort, while service quality disconfirmation has the opposite relationship. Specifically, patients' effort in writing textual reviews is lowest when perceived outcome quality is 3.5 (on a five-point scale), perceived process quality is 4 or outcome quality and process quality disconfirmations are −1.

This study is the first to examine patients' online review behavior and its motivations and contributes to the literature on online reviews and service quality. In addition, the findings of this study have important management implications for service providers and OHC managers.

As a problem-solving tool, the kaizen event (KE) is underutilised in practice. Assuming this is due to a lack of group process quality during those events, the authors aimed to grasp what is needed during high-quality KE meetings. Guided by the phased approach for structured problem-solving, the authors built and explored a measure for enriching future KE research.

Six phases were used to code all verbal contributions (N = 5,442) in 21 diverse, videotaped KE meetings. Resembling state space grids, the authors visualised the course of each meeting with line graphs which were shown to ten individual kaizen experts as well as to the filmed kaizen groups.

From their reactions to the graphs the authors extracted high-quality KE process characteristics. At the end of each phase, that should be enacted sequentially, explicit group consensus appeared to be crucial. Some of the groups spent too little time on a group-shared understanding of the problem and its root causes. Surprisingly, the mixed-methods data suggested that small and infrequent deviations (“jumps”) to another phase might be necessary for a high-quality process. According to the newly developed quantitative process measure, when groups often jump from one phase to a distant, previous or next phase, this relates to low KE process quality.

A refined conceptual model and research agenda are offered for generating better solutions during KEs, and the authors urge examinations of the effects of well-crafted KE training.

There is a consensus suggesting that the theoretical underpinning associated with supply chain quality management practices remain evolutionary to current thinking. Therefore, this study aims to explore how absorptive capacity (AC) supports supply chain quality integration (SCQI) by building product and process quality within a supply chain (SC).

A comparative case study of global pharmaceutical manufacturers in a developing market was undertaken. A two-round qualitative research method was designed to collect data through 54 semi-structured interviews with pharmaceutical managers and senior managers.

The results demonstrate that AC is essential to the development of SCQI because of its ability to use valuable strategic and operational knowledge, which is important when improving consistent internal product and process quality, along with establishing a robust SC design. The authors found that AC enables companies to design their quality and continuously improve their products and processes among their SC members.

The authors acknowledge that these sets of findings are difficult to generalise to other sectors, however, the authors are confident that they can be extrapolated to other companies in the pharmaceutical industry.

The study develops a framework to support practitioners and decision makers to leverage their AC towards facilitating their SCQI practices.

This study explains the role of the AC process in relation to SCQI practices, in the context of the pharmaceutical SC. The study profiles the characteristics of dynamic capabilities to increase the companies’ competencies, processes and resources.

Loyalty has become the most important strategic aim in the hotel industry. The purpose of this paper is to obtain an empirical understanding of loyalty in the Kuala Lumpur hotel sector.

The dimensions of service quality as perceived by hotel customers were identified through the literature review. Hypotheses were formulated and tested to: examine the effects of process quality and outcome quality on perceived value, tourist satisfaction, and tourist loyalty; and to determine if perceived value and tourist satisfaction play a mediating role in the effect of process quality and outcome quality on tourist loyalty. In this study, the sample was 417 respondents from the international tourists who stay at least one night in four- or five stars hotels in Kuala Lumpur. Collected data were analyzed by structural equation modeling.

The statistical findings supported a relationship between process quality and outcome quality with perceived value and tourist satisfaction, and tourist loyalty with perceived value and tourist satisfaction. The results also indicated that process quality and outcome quality did not have a direct effect on tourist loyalty. Perceived value and tourist satisfaction mediated the relationship between process quality and outcome quality with tourist loyalty.

The finding of this study proposed that the hoteliers targeting international tourists with service quality including process and outcome quality should focus more on these factors to build loyalty. For instance, the tangible, responsiveness, reliability, empathy, assurance, and convenience as the dimensions of process quality and valence, waiting time, and sociability as the dimensions of outcome quality should meet the needs of the international tourists, therefore increasing tourist loyalty through perceived value and tourist satisfaction.

The conventional wisdom of managers in the US dictates that improving product quality will increase the cost of making the product which will either increase the price or reduce the profits. Shows that improving the quality of a product or service will not necessarily increase its manufacturing cost. Obtains information on fundamental theories and case histories from business literature and uses evidence to support the hypothesis from the case histories of several US companies which have achieved higher quality with lower quality costs and improved profitability. Examples from the literature include the case histories of companies such as Florida Power & Light, Globe Metallurgical, Motorola, and Westinghouse Commercial Nuclear Fuel Division. These examples indicate increases in return on assets, improved customer satisfaction, increased market share, and increased revenues and profits. Suggests that a company which can achieve successfully both higher quality and lower cost will have improved productivity, lower manufacturing costs, better quality, greater customer satisfaction, a higher market share and greater profitability.

The usage of additive manufacturing (AM) technology in industries has reached up to 50 per cent as prototype or end-product. However, for AM products to be directly used as final products, AM product should be produced through advanced quality control process, which has a capability to be able to prove and reach their desire repeatability, reproducibility, reliability and preciseness. Therefore, there is a need to review quality-related research in terms of AM technology and guide AM industry in the future direction of AM development.

This paper overviews research progress regarding the QC in AM technology. The focus of the study is on manufacturing quality issues and needs that are to be developed and optimized, and further suggests ideas and directions toward the quality improvement for future AM technology. This paper is organized as follows. Section 2 starts by conducting a comprehensive review of the literature studies on progress of quality control, issues and challenges regarding quality improvement in seven different AM techniques. Next, Section 3 provides classification of the research findings, and lastly, Section 4 discusses the challenges and future trends.

This paper presents a review on quality control in seven different techniques in AM technology and provides detailed discussions in each quality process stage. Most of the AM techniques have a trend using in-situ sensors and cameras to acquire process data for real-time monitoring and quality analysis. Procedures such as extrusion-based processes (EBP) have further advanced in data analytics and predictive algorithms-based research regarding mechanical properties and optimal printing parameters. Moreover, compared to others, the material jetting progresses technique has advanced in a system integrated with closed-feedback loop, machine vision and image processing to minimize quality issues during printing process.

This paper is limited to reviewing of only seven techniques of AM technology, which includes photopolymer vat processes, material jetting processes, binder jetting processes, extrusion-based processes, powder bed fusion processes, directed energy deposition processes and sheet lamination processes. This paper would impact on the improvement of quality control in AM industries such as industrial, automotive, medical, aerospace and military production.

Additive manufacturing technology, in terms of quality control has yet to be reviewed.