Search results for: website quality

Authors: Eva Nedeliakova, Juraj Camaj, Jaroslav Masek

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This contribution is focused on the methodology for identifying levels of quality and improving quality through new logistics model in railway transport. It is oriented on the application of dynamic quality models, which represent an innovative method of evaluation quality services. Through this conception, time factor, expected, and perceived quality in each moment of the transportation process within logistics chain can be taken into account. Various models describe the improvement of the quality which emphases the time factor throughout the whole transportation logistics chain. Quality of services in railway transport can be determined by the existing level of service quality, by detecting the causes of dissatisfaction employees but also customers, to uncover strengths and weaknesses. This new logistics model is able to recognize critical processes in logistic chain. It includes service quality rating that must respect its specific properties, which are unrepeatability, impalpability, their use right at the time they are provided and particularly changeability, which is significant factor in the conditions of rail transport as well. These peculiarities influence the quality of service regarding the constantly increasing requirements and that result in new ways of finding progressive attitudes towards the service quality rating.

Keywords: logistics model, quality, railway transport

Procedia PDF Downloads 568

Authors: Vaikunthan Rajaratnam

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Maintaining continuous professional development among clinicians has been a challenge. Hand surgery is a unique speciality with the coming together of orthopaedics, plastics and trauma surgeons. The requirements for a team-based approach to care with the inclusion of other experts such as occupational, physiotherapist and orthotic and prosthetist provide the impetus for the creation of communities of practice. This study analysed the community of practice in hand surgery that was created through a social networking website for professionals. The main objectives were to discover the usefulness of this community of practice created in the platform of the group function of LinkedIn. The second objective was to determine the usability of this platform for the purposes of continuing professional development among members of this community of practice. The methodology used was one of mixed methods which included a quantitative analysis on the usefulness of the social network website as a community of practice, using the analytics provided by the LinkedIn platform. Further qualitative analysis was performed on the various postings that were generated by the community of practice within the social network website. This was augmented by a respondent driven survey conducted online to assess the usefulness of the platform for continuous professional development. A total of 31 respondents were involved in this study. This study has shown that it is possible to create an engaging and interactive community of practice among hand surgeons using the group function of this professional social networking website LinkedIn. Over three years the group has grown significantly with members from multiple regions and has produced engaging and interactive conversations online. From the results of the respondents’ survey, it can be concluded that there was satisfaction of the functionality and that it was an excellent platform for discussions and collaboration in the community of practice with a 69 % of satisfaction. Case-based discussions were the most useful functions of the community of practice. This platform usability was graded as excellent using the validated usability tool. This study has shown that the social networking site LinkedIn’s group function can be easily used as a community of practice effectively and provides convenience to professionals and has made an impact on their practice and better care for patients. It has also shown that this platform was easy to use and has a high level of usability for the average healthcare professional. This platform provided the improved connectivity among professionals involved in hand surgery care which allowed for the community to grow and with proper support and contribution of relevant material by members allowed for a safe environment for the exchange of knowledge and sharing of experience that is the foundation of a community practice.

Keywords: community of practice, online community, hand surgery, lifelong learning, LinkedIn, social media, continuing professional development

Procedia PDF Downloads 316

Authors: Yuanxiang Miao

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Couchsurfing is a free homestay and social networking service accessible via the website and mobile app. Couchsurfers can directly request free accommodations from others and receive offers from each other. However, it is typically difficult for people to make a decision that accepts or declines a request when they receive it from Couchsurfers because they do not know each other at all. People are expected to meet up with some Couchsurfers who are kind, generous, and interesting while it is unavoidable to meet up with someone unfriendly. This paper utilized classification algorithms of Machine Learning to help people to find out the Good Couchsurfers and Not Good Couchsurfers on the Couchsurfing website. By knowing the prior experience, like Couchsurfer’s profiles, the latest references, and other factors, it became possible to recognize what kind of the Couchsurfers, and furthermore, it helps people to make a decision that whether to host the Couchsurfers or not. The value of this research lies in a case study in Kyoto, Japan in where the author has hosted 54 Couchsurfers, and the author collected relevant data from the 54 Couchsurfers, finally build a model based on classification algorithms for people to predict Couchsurfers. Lastly, the author offered some feasible suggestions for future research.

Keywords: Couchsurfing, Couchsurfers prediction, classification algorithm, hospitality tourism platform, hospitality sciences, machine learning

Procedia PDF Downloads 131

Authors: Omar Said Almushyt

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Quality management, in all countries all over the world, has become recently necessary to face challenges among companies. Software companies in KSA suffer from two problems, namely, low customer satisfaction, and low product quality. Implementation of quality management for a software company can solve these problems, by improving the quality of products and enhancing customer satisfaction. This will lead the company to be competitive. Introducing quality management system onto system analysis followed by system design and finally implementing that system can achieve these goals. Results of the present work showed that the proposed method can increase both the product quality by 10 % and the customer satisfaction by 20 %.

Keywords: quality, management, software, information engineering

Procedia PDF Downloads 439

Authors: Denise Levy

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Nuclear technology is part of our everyday life and its beneficial applications help to improve the quality of our lives. Nevertheless, in Brazil, most often the media and social networks tend to associate radiation to nuclear weapons and major accidents, and there is still great misunderstanding about the peaceful applications of nuclear science. The Educational Portal Radioatividades (Radioactivities) is a corporate social responsibility initiative that takes advantage of the growing impact of Internet to offer high quality scientific information for teachers and students throughout Brazil. This web-based initiative focusses on the positive applications of nuclear technology, presenting the several contributions of ionizing radiation in different contexts, such as nuclear medicine, agriculture techniques, food safety and electric power generation, proving nuclear technology as part of modern life and a must to improve the quality of our lifestyle. This educational project aims to contribute for democratization of scientific education and social inclusion, approaching society to scientific knowledge, promoting critical thinking and inspiring further reflections. The website offers a wide variety of ludic activities such as curiosities, interactive exercises and short courses. Moreover, teachers are offered free web-based material with full instructions to be developed in class. Since year 2013, the project has been developed and improved according to a comprehensive study about the realistic scenario of ICTs infrastructure in Brazilian schools and in full compliance with the best e-learning national and international recommendations.

Keywords: information and communication technologies, nuclear technology, science communication, society and education

Procedia PDF Downloads 326

Authors: Siham Boulaknadel

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Every culture has its share of a rich history of storytelling in oral, visual, and textual form. The Amazigh language, as many languages, has its own which has entertained and informed across centuries and cultures, and its instructional potential continues to serve teachers. According to many researchers, listening to stories draws attention to the sounds of language and helps children develop sensitivity to the way language works. Stories including repetitive phrases, unique words, and enticing description encourage students to join in actively to repeat, chant, sing, or even retell the story. This kind of practice is important to language learners’ oral language development, which is believed to correlate completely with student’s academic success. Today, with the advent of multimedia, digital storytelling for instance can be a practical and powerful learning tool. It has the potential in transforming traditional learning into a world of unlimited imaginary environment. This paper reports on a research project on development of multimedia Storytelling Website using traditional Amazigh oral narratives called “tell me a story”. It is a didactic tool created for the learning of good moral values in an interactive multimedia environment combining on-screen text, graphics and audio in an enticing environment and enabling the positive values of stories to be projected. This Website developed in this study is based on various pedagogical approaches and learning theories deemed suitable for children age 8 to 9 year-old. The design and development of Website was based on a well-researched conceptual framework enabling users to: (1) re-play and share the stories in schools or at home, and (2) access the Website anytime and anywhere. Furthermore, the system stores the students work and activities over the system, allowing parents or teachers to monitor students’ works, and provide online feedback. The Website contains following main feature modules: Storytelling incorporates a variety of media such as audio, text and graphics in presenting the stories. It introduces the children to various kinds of traditional Amazigh oral narratives. The focus of this module is to project the positive values and images of stories using digital storytelling technique. Besides development good moral sense in children using projected positive images and moral values, it also allows children to practice their comprehending and listening skills. Reading module is developed based on multimedia material approach which offers the potential for addressing the challenges of reading instruction. This module is able to stimulate children and develop reading practice indirectly due to the tutoring strategies of scaffolding, self-explanation and hyperlinks offered in this module. Word Enhancement assists the children in understanding the story and appreciating the good moral values more efficiently. The difficult words or vocabularies are attached to present the explanation, which makes the children understand the vocabulary better. In conclusion, we believe that the interactive multimedia storytelling reveals an interesting and exciting tool for learning Amazigh. We plan to address some learning issues, in particularly the uses of activities to test and evaluate the children on their overall understanding of story and words presented in the learning modules.

Keywords: Amazigh language, e-learning, storytelling, language teaching

Procedia PDF Downloads 403

Authors: Omer Akkaya, Nurullah Ekmekcı, Muammer Zerenler

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Innovation for businesses means a new product and service and sometimes a new implementation. Total Quality Management is a management philosophy which focus on customer, process and system.There is a certain relationship between principles of Total Quality Management and innovation performance. Main aim of this study is to show how the implementation and principles of Total Quality Management (TQM) affect a firm's innovation performance. Also, this paper discusses positive and negative affects of Total Quality Management on innovation performance and demonstrates some examples.

Keywords: innovation, innovation types, total quality management, principles of total quality management

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Authors: Mehrnoosh Askarizadeh

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To meet the challenges of the new global environment, companies have started paying great attention towards quality management as an integral part of their strategic business plans. The purpose of this article is to investigate the relationship between total quality management (TQM) and knowledge management (KM). Successful total quality management implementation throughout the organizations requires major changes in the main four aspects of knowledge management, namely: Creating, storage, sharing and application. Skill, knowledge and productivity are important factors in organization’s success and have important role. Therefore, TQM management system pays special attention to it. However, knowledge as the source is essential for organization’s survival. Our study points out how the quality management and knowledge management have been incorporated into each other for the development of the quality culture within the organization.

Keywords: knowledge management (KM), total quality management (TQM), organizational performance (OP), deming cycle

Procedia PDF Downloads 481

Authors: Ramona-Niculina Jurcau, Ioana-Marieta Jurcau, Dong Hun Kwak, Nicolae-Alexandru Colceriu

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Background: Academic environment led, in time, to the birth of some research subjects concluded with many publications. One of these issues is related to the learning stress. Thus far, the PubMed website displays an impressive number of papers related to the academic stress. Aims: Through this study, we aimed to evaluate the research concerning academic learning stress (ALS), by a retrospective analysis of PubMed publications. Methods: We evaluated the ALS, considering: a) different keywords as - ‘academic stress’ (AS), ‘academic stressors’ (ASs), ‘academic learning stress’ (ALS), ‘academic student stress’ (ASS), ‘academic stress college’ (ASC), ‘medical academic stress’ (MAS), ‘non-medical academic stress’ (NMAS), ‘student stress’ (SS), ‘nursing student stress’ (NS), ‘college student stress’ (CSS), ‘university student stress’ (USS), ‘medical student stress’ (MSS), ‘dental student stress’ (DSS), ‘non-medical student stress’ (NMSS), ‘learning students stress’ (LSS), ‘medical learning student stress’ (MLSS), ‘non-medical learning student stress’ (NMLSS); b) the year average for decades; c) some selection filters provided by PubMed website: Article types - Journal Article (JA), Clinical Trial (CT), Review (R); Species - Humans (H); Sex - Male (M) and Female (F); Ages - 13-18, 19-24, 19-44. Statistical evaluation was made on the basis of the Student test. Results: There were differences between keywords, referring to all filters. Nevertheless, for all keywords were noted the following: the majority of studies have indicated that subjects were humans; there were no important differences between the number of subjects M and F; the age of participants was mentioned only in some studies, predominating those with teenagers and subjects between 19-24 years. Conclusions: 1) PubMed publications document that concern for the research field of academic stress, lasts for 56 years and was materialized in more than 5.010 papers. 2) Number of publications in the field of academic stress varies depending on the selected keywords: those with a general framing (AS, ASs, ALS, ASS, SS, USS, LSS) are more numerous than those with a specific framing (ASC, MAS, NMAS, NS, CSS, MSS, DSS, NMSS, MLSS, NMLSS); those concerning the academic medical environment (MAS, NS, MSS, DSS, MLSS) prevailed compared to the non-medical environment (NMAS, NMSS, NMLSS). 3) Most of the publications are included at JA, of which a small percentage are CT and R. 4) Most of the academic stress studies were conducted with subjects both M and F, most aged under 19 years and between 19-24 years.

Keywords: academic stress, student stress, academic learning stress, medical student stress

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Authors: Nadia Fatima Zahra Malki

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Quality is one of the most important modern management patterns that organizations seek to achieve in all areas and sectors in order to meet the needs and desires of customers and to remain and continuity, as they constitute a competitive advantage for the organization. and among the most prominent organizations that must be available on the quality factor are health organizations as they relate to the most valuable component of production. It is a person, and his health, and any error in it threatens his life and may lead to death, so she must provide health services of high quality to achieve the highest degree of satisfaction for the patient. This research aims to study the quality of health services and the extent of their impact on patient satisfaction, and this is through an applied study that relied on measuring the level of quality of health services in the university hospital center of Algeria and the extent of their impact on patient satisfaction according to the dimensions of the quality of health services, and we reached a conclusion that the determinants of the quality of health services It affects patient satisfaction, which necessitates developing health services according to patients' requirements and improving their quality to obtain patient satisfaction.

Keywords: health service, health quality, quality determinants, patient satisfaction

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Authors: Rafla Hchaichi

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The public administration is currently experiencing in the field of quality unprecedented effervescence. However, in a globalized world more and more competitive, public services are confronted with the need to improve their performances which push public companies to implement quality approaches. Quality approaches have taken diverse forms such as service commitment, labels, certifications and the Common Assessment Framework. This paper provides an overview on the strategy for administrative development in Tunisia since the Carthaginian civilization until today. It outlines the evolution of quality management in the Tunisian public context while focusing on the National Referential of Quality of Administrative Services.

Keywords: quality approach, the common assessment framework, service commitment, label, certification, quality of public service, performance of public service, Tunisian Public Service

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Authors: Ganna Zakharova

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The persuasive influence of tourism promotional materials is very much experienced nowadays. In order to attract the attention of viewers, marketers choose various techniques in their digital texts. Video is an essential element for attraction and seduction; it is a trigger element for tourists. This solution for web marketing engages and convinces potential tourists to book a tourism product. Embedding video materials into a website provides useful information, create different feelings in viewers, and help them finalize their decisions. The present article discusses video solutions for health tourism websites used to allure potential tourists. The paper reviews the influential elements of persuasive tourism marketing videos. The article highlights how these components as persuasive strategies of tourism promotional materials can influence the decisions of tourism websites’ users. The result section provides the real examples of the deployment of the mentioned technique to convince the audience by the website of 'Karpaty' resort (Ukraine). This technique is worth attention as it plays an important role in the promotion of tourism services. The data collection of this study will provide updated information in relation to the rhetoric of tourism.

Keywords: tourism discourse, persuasive video, influential videos in marketing, persuasive discourse, tourism promotion

Procedia PDF Downloads 118

Authors: Lazhar Belkhiri, Ammar Tiri, Lotfi Mouni

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Water resources present to the public order of the world a very important problem for the protection and management of water quality given the complexity of water quality data sets. In this study, the water quality index (WQI) and irrigation water quality index (IWQI) were calculated in order to evaluate the surface water quality for drinking and irrigation purposes based on nine hydrochemical parameters. In order to separate the variables that are the most responsible for the spatial differentiation, the discriminant analysis (DA) was applied. The results show that the surface water quality for drinking is poor quality and very poor quality based on WQI values, however, the values of IWQI reflect that this water is acceptable for irrigation with a restriction for sensitive plants. Consequently, the discriminant analysis DA method has shown that the following parameters pH, potassium, chloride, sulfate, and bicarbonate are significant discrimination between the different stations with the spatial variation of the surface water quality, therefore, the results obtained in this study provide very useful information to decision-makers

Keywords: surface water quality, drinking and irrigation purposes, water quality index, discriminant analysis

Procedia PDF Downloads 86

Authors: Benjamin Kuester, Bjoern Eilert, Malte Stonis, Ludger Overmeyer

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Increasing quality requirements make reliable and effective quality management indispensable. This includes the complaint handling in which the 8D method is widely used. The 8D report as a written documentation of the 8D method is one of the key quality documents as it internally secures the quality standards and acts as a communication medium to the customer. In practice, however, the 8D report is mostly faulty and of poor quality. There is no quality control of 8D reports today. This paper describes the use of natural language processing for the automated evaluation of 8D reports. Based on semantic analysis and text-mining algorithms the presented system is able to uncover content and formal quality deficiencies and thus increases the quality of the complaint processing in the long term.

Keywords: 8D report, complaint management, evaluation system, text-mining

Procedia PDF Downloads 315

Authors: Gurmeet Kaur

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Agile software development methods are being recognized as popular, and efficient approach to the development of software system that has a short delivery period with high quality also that meets customer requirements with zero defect. In agile software development, quality means quality of code where in the quality is maintained through the use of methods or approaches like refactoring, test driven development, behavior driven development, acceptance test driven development, and demand driven development. Software quality is measured in term of metrics such as the number of defects during development of software. Usage of above mentioned methods or approaches, reduces the possibilities of defects in developed software, and hence improve quality. This paper focuses on study of agile based quality methods or approaches for software development that ensures improved quality of software as well as reduced cost, and customer satisfaction.

Keywords: ATDD, BDD, DDD, TDD

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Authors: Halima Akhtar, Abhijeet Chandra

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The paper attempts to analyze the factors that influence the Consumer Behavior to purchase apparel through the internet. The intentions to buy apparels online were based on in terms of user style, orientation, size and reputation of the merchant, social influence, perceived information utility, perceived ease of use, perceived pleasure and attractiveness and perceived trust and risk. The basic framework used was Technology acceptance model to explain apparels acceptance. A survey was conducted to gather the data from 200 people. The measures and hypotheses were analyzed using Correlation testing and would be further validated by the Structural Equation Modelling. The implications of the findings for theory and practice could be used by marketers of online apparel websites. Based on the values obtained, we can conclude that the factors such as social influence, Perceived information utility, attractiveness and trust influence the decision for a user to buy apparels online. The major factors which are found to influence an online apparel buying decision are ease of use, attractiveness that a website can offer and the trust factor which a user shares with the website.

Keywords: E-tailers, consumer behaviour, technology acceptance model, structural modelling

Procedia PDF Downloads 186

Authors: Jimeng Shi, Mahek Jain, Giri Narasimhan

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Time Series Forecasting (TSF) is used to predict the target variables at a future time point based on the learning from previous time points. To keep the problem tractable, learning methods use data from a fixed-length window in the past as an explicit input. In this paper, we study how the performance of predictive models changes as a function of different look-back window sizes and different amounts of time to predict the future. We also consider the performance of the recent attention-based Transformer models, which have had good success in the image processing and natural language processing domains. In all, we compare four different deep learning methods (RNN, LSTM, GRU, and Transformer) along with a baseline method. The dataset (hourly) we used is the Beijing Air Quality Dataset from the UCI website, which includes a multivariate time series of many factors measured on an hourly basis for a period of 5 years (2010-14). For each model, we also report on the relationship between the performance and the look-back window sizes and the number of predicted time points into the future. Our experiments suggest that Transformer models have the best performance with the lowest Mean Average Errors (MAE = 14.599, 23.273) and Root Mean Square Errors (RSME = 23.573, 38.131) for most of our single-step and multi-steps predictions. The best size for the look-back window to predict 1 hour into the future appears to be one day, while 2 or 4 days perform the best to predict 3 hours into the future.

Keywords: air quality prediction, deep learning algorithms, time series forecasting, look-back window

Procedia PDF Downloads 154

Authors: Anam Noshaba, Mahr Muhammad Saeed Akhtar

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The aim of this study was to find out the relationship between quality education and organizational culture. The population of this study was all the teachers of Public Degree Colleges located in Punjab. A sample of 400 teachers was selected by using a simple random sampling technique. Quality Education Assessment Questionnaire (QEAQ) and Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI) were used for data collection. Out of all, 90% of teachers responded. Findings showed that quality education and organizational culture are positively correlated. Results indicated that there is no difference in quality education and organizational culture by demographic variables of teachers. Future research is needed to study the viewpoint of other stakeholders of education regarding quality education and organizational culture.

Keywords: quality education, minimum quality standards, organizational culture, college level

Procedia PDF Downloads 139

Authors: Abeer Toheed Quadri, Maria Abubakar, Mehreen Sirshar

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Component Based Software Development (CBSD) is a new trend in software development. Selection of quality components is not enough to ensure software quality in Component Based Software System (CBSS). A software product is considered to be a quality product if it satisfies its customer’s needs and has minimum defects. Authors’ survey different research papers and analyzes various techniques which ensure software quality in component based software development. This paper includes an investigation about how to improve the quality of a component based software system without effecting quality attributes. The reported information is identified from literature survey. The developments of component based systems are rising as they reduce the development time, effort and cost by means of reuse. After analysis, it has been explored that in order to achieve the quality in a CBSS we need to have the components that are certified through software measure because the predictability of software quality attributes of system depend on the quality attributes of the constituent components, integration process and the framework used.

Keywords: CBSD (component based software development), CBSS (component based software system), quality components, SQA (software quality assurance)

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Authors: Beste Kaysı, Yasemin Topaloğlu

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Usability is one of the most important quality attributes for web-based information systems. Specifically, for e-commerce applications, usability becomes more prominent. In this study, we aimed to explore the features that experienced users seek in e-commerce applications. We used eye tracking method in evaluations. Eye movement data are obtained from the eye-tracking method and analyzed based on task completion time, number of fixations, as well as heat map and gaze plot measures. The results of the analysis show that the eye movements of participants' are too static in certain areas and their areas of interest are scattered in many different places. It has been determined that this causes users to fail to complete their transactions. According to the findings, we outlined the issues to improve the usability of e-commerce websites. Then we propose solutions to identify the issues. In this way, it is expected that e-commerce sites will be developed which will make experienced users more satisfied.

Keywords: e-commerce websites, eye tracking method, usability, website evaluations

Procedia PDF Downloads 182

Authors: Malki Nadia Fatima Zahra, Kellal Chaimaa, Brahimi Houria

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Quality is one of the most important modern management patterns that organizations seek to achieve in all areas and sectors in order to meet the needs and desires of customers and to remain continuity, as they constitute a competitive advantage for the organization, and among the most prominent organizations that must be available on the quality factor are health organizations as they relate to the most valuable component of production It is a person and his health, and that any error in it threatens his life and may lead to death, so she must provide health services of high quality to achieve the highest degree of satisfaction for the patient. This research aims to study the quality of health services and the extent of their impact on patient satisfaction, and this is through an applied study that relied on measuring the level of quality of health services in the university hospital center of Algeria and the extent of their impact on patient satisfaction according to the dimensions of the quality of health services, and we reached a conclusion that the determinants of the quality of health services. It affects patient satisfaction, which necessitates developing health services according to patients' requirements and improving their quality to obtain patient satisfaction.

Keywords: health service, health quality, quality determinants, patient satisfaction

Procedia PDF Downloads 66

Authors: Silvija ŠIljeg, Ante ŠIljeg, Ivan Marić

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Measuring housing quality is being done on objective and subjective level using different indicators. During the research 5 urban and housing indicators formed according to 58 variables from different housing, domains were used. The aims of the research were to measure housing quality based on GIS approach and to detect critical points of housing in the example of Croatian coastal Town Zadar. The purposes of GIS in the research are to generate models of housing quality indexes by standardisation and aggregation of variables and to examine accuracy model of housing quality index. Analysis of accuracy has been done on the example of variable referring to educational objects availability. By defining weighted coefficients and using different GIS methods high, middle and low housing quality zones were determined. Obtained results can be of use to town planners, spatial planners and town authorities in the process of generating decisions, guidelines, and spatial interventions.

Keywords: housing quality, GIS, housing quality index, indicators, models of housing quality

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Authors: Harsh Panchal, Saurabh Amrutkar

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Quality management is an essential part of any project that has directly related to the performance of a project. Quality management is depended on multiple factors at different stages in a project, right from time management to construction logistics. A project is a mixture of various components that include iternary management, health and safety, crew productivity, and many more. From the survey conducted, we came to the conclusion that advancement in technology and indigenous approach to any project will result in maximum quality standards and better project performance. In this paper, we discuss various components of the factors above that lead to compromise the quality of a project and how it can be controlled in order to achieve maximum quality assurance using quality planning and total quality management. The paper also focuses on limitations and problems faced in each factor responsible for quality management and to tackle them using techniques and processes based on activities and identifying the sequence, approaching critical path, and duration. The project management concept that deals with the sequence of scope cost time give us an overview regarding the ongoing quality management, in a nutshell, giving us hints to regulate the current procedure for maximum achievable quality. It also deals with the problems faced by engineers that make the mundane work process slow, reducing the quality outcome drastically.

Keywords: management, performance, project, quality

Procedia PDF Downloads 165

Authors: Chathurika Sewwandi Kannangara, Jerome Carson

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The objective of this research is to identify strengths among the individuals with dyslexia and design a positive psychology intervention to support such individuals. Dyslexia is a combination of abilities and difficulties that affect the learning process in areas as such reading, spelling and writing. It is a persistent condition. The research aims to adapt positive psychology techniques to support individuals with dyslexia. Population of the research will be undergraduate and college level students with dyslexia. First phase of the study will be conducted on a sample of undergraduate and college level students with dyslexia in Bolton, UK. The concept of treatment in positive psychology is not only to fix the component just what is wrong, instead it is also to develop and construct on what is right in the individual. The first phase of the research aims to identify the signature strengths among the individuals with dyslexia using Interviews, Descriptions on personal experiences on ‘My life with Dyslexia’, and Values in Action (VIA) strength survey. In order to conduct the survey for individuals with dyslexia, the VIA survey has been hosted in a website which is solely developed in the form of dyslexia friendly context. Dyslexia friendly website for surveys had designed and developed following the British Dyslexia Association guidelines. The findings of the first phase would be utilized for the second phase of the research to develop the positive psychology intervention.

Keywords: dyslexia, signature strengths, positive psychology, qualitative study, learning difficulties

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Authors: Joseph Roberson, Carina Kleynhans, Willie Coetzee

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The low entry barriers of the restaurant industry lead to an extremely competitive business environment. In this volatile business sector it is of the utmost importance to implement a strategy of quality differentiation. Vital aspects of a quality differentiation strategy are total quality management, benchmarking and service quality management. Ultimately, restaurant success depends on the continuous support of customers. Customers select restaurants based on their expectations of quality. If the customers' expectations are met, they perceive quality service and will re-patronize the restaurant. The restaurateur can manage perceptions of quality by influencing expectations while ensuring that those expectations are not inflated. The management of expectations can be done by communicating service quality to customers. The aim of this research paper is to describe the development of a grading process for restaurants. An assessment of the extensive body of literature on grading was conducted through content analysis. A standardized method for developing a grading system would assist in successful grading systems that could inform both customers and restaurateurs of restaurant quality.

Keywords: benchmarking, restaurants, grading, service quality, total quality management

Procedia PDF Downloads 333

Authors: Atul Dev, Pankaj Jha

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Dr. Genichi Taguchi looked at quality in a broader term and gave an excellent definition of quality in terms of loss to society. However the scope of this definition is limited to the losses imparted by a poor quality product to the customer only and are considered during the useful life of the product and further in a certain situation this loss can even be zero. In this paper, it has been proposed that the scope of quality of a product shall be further enhanced by considering the losses imparted by a poor quality product to society at large, due to associated environmental and safety related factors, over the complete life cycle of the product. Moreover, though these losses can be further minimized with the use of techno-safety interventions, the net losses to society however can never be made zero. This paper proposes an entirely new approach towards defining product quality and is based on Taguchi’s definition of quality.

Keywords: existing concept, goal post philosophy, life cycle, proposed concept, quality loss function

Procedia PDF Downloads 311

Authors: Urszula Malaga-Toboła, Marek Gugała, Rafał Kornas, Robert Rusinek, Marek Gancarz

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The work focused on presenting the elements that determine the quality of fresh milk in the context of the quality of its transport. The quality of the raw material depends on the quality of transport. Milk transport involves many activities in which, apart from the temperature and sterility of the means of transport, it is important not to expose the raw material to shocks. Recently, there have been changes in the milk supply chain, thus affecting the logistics processes between its links. Based on the conducted research and analyses, it was found that the condition of the road surface on which milk is transported affects its quality. For the T1 milk transport route- gravel roads of very poor and poor quality, the lowest number of bacteria and the highest number of somatic cells, fat content, and temperature of the transported milk were obtained. A well-organized integrated transport system is a real need for most companies today. The analysis showed significant differences in the quality of milk delivered to the dairy.

Keywords: fresh milk, transport, milk quality, dairy

Procedia PDF Downloads 81

Authors: Muhammad Yousaf Sadiq

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The complexity arises in defining the construction quality due to its perception, based on inherent market conditions and their requirements, the diversified stakeholders itself and their desired output. An quantitative survey based approach was adopted in this constructive study. A questionnaire-based survey was conducted for the assessment of construction Quality perception and expectations in the context of quality improvement technique. The survey feedback of professionals of the leading construction organizations/companies of Pakistan construction industry were analyzed. The financial capacity, organizational structure, and construction experience of the construction firms formed basis for their selection. The quality perception was found to be project-scope-oriented and considered as an excess cost for a construction project. Any quality improvement technique was expected to maximize the profit for the employer, by improving the productivity in a construction project. The study is beneficial for the construction professionals to assess the prevailing construction quality perception and the expectations from implementation of any quality improvement technique in construction projects.

Keywords: construction quality, expectation, improvement, perception

Procedia PDF Downloads 475

Authors: Perminderjit Singh, Sukhvir Singh

Abstract:

Total Quality Management (TQM) refers to management methods used to enhance quality and productivity in business organizations. Total Quality Management (TQM) has become a frequently used term in discussions concerning quality. Total Quality management has brought rise in demands on the organizations policy and the customers have gained more importance in the organizations focus. TQM is considered as an important management tool, which helps the organizations to satisfy their customers. In present research critical success factors includes management commitment, customer satisfaction, continuous improvement, work culture and environment, supplier quality management, training and development, employee satisfaction and product/process design are studied. A questionnaire is developed to implement these critical success factors in implementation of total quality management in Indian industry. Questionnaires filled by consulting different industrial organizations. Data collected from questionnaires is analyzed by descriptive and importance indexes.

Keywords: total quality management, critical success factor, employee satisfaction, supplier quality management, customer focus, quality information, quality measurement

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Authors: Kateřina Struhařová

Abstract:

The paper gives the evidence of quality of accounting information of Czech private companies. In general the private companies in the Czech Republic do not see the benefits of providing accounting information of high quality. Based on the research of financial statements of entrepreneurs and companies in Zlin region it was confirmed that the quality of accounting information differs among the private entities and that the major impact on the accounting information quality has the fact if the financial statements are audited as well as the size of the entity. Also the foreign shareholders and lenders have some impact on the accounting information quality.

Keywords: accounting information quality, financial statements, Czech Republic, private companies

Procedia PDF Downloads 304