Search results

1 – 10 of over 54000
Article
Publication date: 20 June 2008

B. Sharma and O.P. Gandhi

The lubricating oil is a non‐renewable source of energy and its useful life is limited due to deterioration during its usage. It is desirable to maximize its use to conserve this…

2174

Abstract

Purpose

The lubricating oil is a non‐renewable source of energy and its useful life is limited due to deterioration during its usage. It is desirable to maximize its use to conserve this scarce resource. At present, continuation or change of the engine oil is decided, based on the manufacturer's recommendation and experience. The suggested engine oil change period is conservative and results in non‐efficient usage of engine oil. This practice needs refinement to include all possible properties/attributes of engine oil and use of appropriate procedure to assess its realistic performance. The paper aims to analyze the procedure.

Design/methodology/approach

Oil reliability polygraph is used to analyze the engine oil performance during operation. Reliability analysis of the engine oil is carried out by comparing the area of oil reliability polygraph at a given operation time with the area for the fresh engine oil. The suggested procedure is illustrated by means of an example.

Findings

Physical and chemical properties responsible for performance degradation of the engine oil are considered as engine oil reliability attributes. The value of these attributes from time to time, obtained by analyzing samples drawn from the system, is analyzed through oil reliability polygraph. In this approach, the engine oil reliability attributes at a given operation time are represented in terms of reliability value to obtain the “oil reliability polygraph”.

Originality/value

The suggested procedure will be helpful for maintenance personnel in taking planned maintenance action.

Details

Industrial Lubrication and Tribology, vol. 60 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0036-8792

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 17 August 2012

Nak Hwan Choi and Yen‐Soon Kim

Cheerful emotions are associated with achievement goals and quiescence emotions are associated with protection goals. The compatibility between consumer's goal orientation and the…

Abstract

Purpose

Cheerful emotions are associated with achievement goals and quiescence emotions are associated with protection goals. The compatibility between consumer's goal orientation and the types of emotions can be extended to linking the types of emotions with the types of the product attributes used in advertisement. Previous studies have kept silent about the roles of differences between types of feelings induced from different advertisements on evaluating target advertised. The purpose of this paper is to explore the different effects of emotions triggered by the advertising information on evaluating the target.

Design/methodology/approach

Restaurant attributes were classified into hedonic and performance and reliability attributes. In total, three types of scenarios and advertisements were developed to induce the specific affect and 165 undergraduate students were assigned to one of three groups, each group consisting of 55 participants. Different scenarios and advertisements were provided to different group members and participants filled out the questionnaire. ANOVA was used to verify differences of feeling types (cheerful and quiescent) induced from each scenario and advertisement. Multiple regression analysis was used to verify the effects of feeling types induced from each scenario and advertisement on restaurant evaluations.

Findings

The appeals created by using each attribute induce positive emotions differently between the types of attributes which have a strong influence on restaurant appraisal. That is, the appeal using hedonic and performance attributes helps consumers feel cheerful more than quiescence. In addition, the appeal by using reliability attributes helps consumers feel more quiescence than cheerful. Also the cheerful emotions have more positive influences on restaurant appraisal than quiescence emotions do when appealed by using hedonic and performance attributes. Furthermore, quiescence emotions have more positive influences on restaurant appraisal than cheerful emotions when appealed by using reliability attributes.

Practical implications

It is of great importance for restaurant marketers to induce positive affects useful for customers' evaluation in a competitive environment. This research provides the insights into the roles of specific emotions induced from three types of restaurant attributes on the evaluation. Marketers should examine what types of goals consumers have and make an effort to trigger emotions by carefully using product attribute to be advertised to be consistent with the goals.

Originality/value

The main theoretical contribution of this paper is to extend prior affect‐as‐information researches to the effects of specific feelings compatible with certain types of restaurant attributes on evaluation.

Details

Nankai Business Review International, vol. 3 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2040-8749

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 15 January 2010

Yaron Hollander

We review what is known and what is still unknown about the process of revealing the impact of unreliability on travel choices. We do this from the perspective of a…

Abstract

We review what is known and what is still unknown about the process of revealing the impact of unreliability on travel choices. We do this from the perspective of a demand-modelling practitioner who wishes to allow for the benefits from improved reliability in the assessment of a transport scheme. We discuss the travel responses affected by unreliability, the requirements from the data used to model these responses, the explanatory variables used in these models and the additional information required as input when applying them. One of our findings is that there is a conflict between existing studies in their conclusions about the aversion to early arrival. Another notion is that it is unclear whether the common simplified treatment of the distribution of preferred arrival times is acceptable. We also suggest that the dominance of departure time shifting as a primary response to unreliability might refute the common assumptions about travellers' choice hierarchy, which was established without considering the impact of unreliability; this raises questions about the robustness of assignment models that do not allow time shifting.

Details

Choice Modelling: The State-of-the-art and The State-of-practice
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84950-773-8

Article
Publication date: 25 November 2021

Saurabh Panwar, Vivek Kumar, P.K. Kapur and Ompal Singh

Software testing is needed to produce extremely reliable software products. A crucial decision problem that the software developer encounters is to ascertain when to terminate the…

Abstract

Purpose

Software testing is needed to produce extremely reliable software products. A crucial decision problem that the software developer encounters is to ascertain when to terminate the testing process and when to release the software system in the market. With the growing need to deliver quality software, the critical assessment of reliability, cost of testing and release time strategy is requisite for project managers. This study seeks to examine the reliability of the software system by proposing a generalized testing coverage-based software reliability growth model (SRGM) that incorporates the effect of testing efforts and change point. Moreover, the strategic software time-to-market policy based on costreliability criteria is suggested.

Design/methodology/approach

The fault detection process is modeled as a composite function of testing coverage, testing efforts and the continuation time of the testing process. Also, to assimilate factual scenarios, the current research exhibits the influence of software users refer as reporters in the fault detection process. Thus, this study models the reliability growth phenomenon by integrating the number of reporters and the number of instructions executed in the field environment. Besides, it is presumed that the managers release the software early to capture maximum market share and continue the testing process for an added period in the user environment. The multiattribute utility theory (MAUT) is applied to solve the optimization model with release time and testing termination time as two decision variables.

Findings

The practical applicability and performance of the proposed methodology are demonstrated through real-life software failure data. The findings of the empirical analysis have shown the superiority of the present study as compared to conventional approaches.

Originality/value

This study is the first attempt to assimilate testing coverage phenomenon in joint optimization of software time to market and testing duration.

Details

International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, vol. 39 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0265-671X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 7 August 2017

Adarsh Anand and Gunjan Bansal

The “quality” of any product or service defines the agility of the product and its life cycle in dynamic environment. The demand of high “quality” becomes an imperative concern…

Abstract

Purpose

The “quality” of any product or service defines the agility of the product and its life cycle in dynamic environment. The demand of high “quality” becomes an imperative concern, when “software” is acting as a product or a service. Since the nature of the software is intangible and more complex, therefore the assurance of providing accurate results is anxiety for companies. The overall quality of the software is based upon many individual factors (or attributes) that makes software reliable, inclined and a long-lasting product in the marketplace. But how these factors can influence each other is significant to identify. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to study the quality aspect of the software and analyse the interrelationship of impactful attributes.

Design/methodology/approach

The analysis has been done through responses sought from software development teams/clients in India. The questionnaire related to the software quality was administered to the sample population. Interconnection among impactful characteristics has been analysed by using a qualitative technique called interpretive structural modelling (ISM). The driving and dependency of the attributes under consideration has been classified using cross-impact matrix multiplication applied to classification (MICMAC) analysis. The procedure of applying ISM method has been automated and provided it as package “ISM” using R software.

Findings

In general, it is very complex job to determine the most impactful attribute of software quality. By applying ISM and MICMAC analysis on the set of attributes under consideration, it has been found that “reliability” along with “usability” and “performance” is the most influential attribute of software quality and preferred most.

Research limitations/implications

Though ISM provides an organized modelling framework yet its results are considered less statistically significant. Therefore, it would be interesting to concatenate the present findings with the findings of any analytical methodology; which gives statistically significant results.

Practical implications

The present proposal deals with the interpretation of the software quality attributes and their contextual relationship but with more effective and efficient manner. It can help management to understand the complexity of relationship amongst attributes (which are quality attributes here) more accurately and precisely. Since today is an era of automation, the manual part is being substituted so as to reduce the labour cost, improve safety, security and product quality to increase production. This study is, therefore, an effort and a helping hand in making the hassle free calculations for obtaining intermediate matrices and doing eventual calculations.

Social implications

n numbers of parameters can be selected to analyse the interrelationship of any project/study. Eradication human errors in applying transitivity law or applying any other operation in solving problem. The package created here can save precious time of users. Provides well-formatted and readable excel output files that make interpretation easier.

Originality/value

Software is one such product/service which plays a significant role in this high-technological world, where each and every firm try their best to be on the top of the list of consumers’ preference. For this purpose, companies reduce manual efforts by converting it into qualitative software that provides deliverables in a systematic manner. Therefore, it becomes imperative to study various interrelated quality attributes of the software. On the similar platform, ISM is a widely used technique and just to provide a helping hand in quantification of the qualitative attributes this paper facilitates the readers with algorithm developed using R software.

Details

Journal of Advances in Management Research, vol. 14 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0972-7981

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 30 November 2021

Anderson Barbosa Lacerda, Augusto Sérgio da Silva Souza, Glycia Keylla Lucia Da Silva, Eduardo H. Malheiros De Azevedo and Fagner José Coutinho De Melo

The present research aims to evaluate the quality of services provided by the Basic Health Units (UBS) of the Unified Health System (SUS) located in the city of Recife, in the…

Abstract

Purpose

The present research aims to evaluate the quality of services provided by the Basic Health Units (UBS) of the Unified Health System (SUS) located in the city of Recife, in the state of Pernambuco, Brazil, using the Kano model integrated with the dimensions of quality proposed by the service quality (SERVQUAL) model.

Design/methodology/approach

The research was classified as bibliographic, descriptive, quantitative and surveyable. A structured questionnaire based on the Kano Model integrated with the dimensions of quality proposed by the SERVQUAL model, applied online through Google Forms. The questionnaires were distributed on social networks, obtaining a non-probabilistic sample of 120 individuals, collected for convenience.

Findings

Through the analysis of the Kano Model, it was possible to observe that all the investigated attributes are classified as one-dimensional. Among the attributes that deserve to be highlighted are attributes “Clean and pleasant environment”, “Reliability and security of information”, “Knowledge of employees to perform services”, “Service performed in the promised time”, “Polite and kind staff in dealing with users” and “Effectiveness of the service provided” due to having the longest intervals when considering the satisfaction and dissatisfaction coefficients, above 1.575. These attributes must be considered as critical priorities when implementing improvements, since their presence considerably increases users' satisfaction, as well as their absence generates great dissatisfaction.

Originality/value

The research is original and justified by the potential use of a quality assessment tool in the public health service, especially primary care. It is noteworthy that there are few works that integrate the Kano and SERVQUAL models applied in the public health service and that this integration can contribute to the national and international literature, mainly in the identification and prioritization of areas for improvement.

Details

Benchmarking: An International Journal, vol. 29 no. 9
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1463-5771

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 January 1993

Michael D. Richard and Arthur W. Allaway

Addresses two shortcomings of service quality empirical research.Investigates the importance of service quality as a predictor of actualchoice behaviour and examines the…

2003

Abstract

Addresses two shortcomings of service quality empirical research. Investigates the importance of service quality as a predictor of actual choice behaviour and examines the importance of process and outcome quality attributes as predictors of choice. Uses regression analysis to investigate the importance of service quality attributes on choice. Suggests that consumers utilise multiple process and outcome quality attributes in their choices.

Details

Journal of Services Marketing, vol. 7 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0887-6045

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 10 August 2012

Andi Rahadiyan Wijaya, Jan Lundberg and Uday Kumar

A common model in the age‐based replacement policy is based on the cost attribute and assumes that the model parameters are known. In practice, the model parameters are estimated…

Abstract

Purpose

A common model in the age‐based replacement policy is based on the cost attribute and assumes that the model parameters are known. In practice, the model parameters are estimated from limited historical data, which brings uncertainty into the model. Moreover, minimizing the cost is not the only goal of the maintenance activity. From the decision maker's point of view, the multi‐attributes and the uncertainty of the age‐based replacement policy are two important aspects to take into consideration in the decision‐making process. The purpose of this paper is to propose an approach for a robust‐optimum multi‐attribute age‐based replacement policy.

Design/methodology/approach

The proposed approach is based on a combination of the multi‐attribute age‐based replacement policy and robust design problem philosophy. A case study is provided for illustrating the application of the proposed method.

Findings

It is found that the proposed approach can determine the interval time for preventive replacement that provides a robust and optimum solution for a multi‐attribute age‐based replacement policy.

Practical implications

The proposed approach can be used by the decision maker in determining a robust‐optimum interval time for preventive replacement of multi‐attribute age‐based replacement, a time interval which is not only optimum, but also robust.

Originality/value

This paper presents an approach that simultaneously considers the multi‐attributes and the uncertainty in the age‐based replacement policy which is, to date, not available.

Details

Journal of Quality in Maintenance Engineering, vol. 18 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1355-2511

Keywords

1 – 10 of over 54000