Chandrasekharan Rajendran

The relationship between service quality and customer satisfaction – a factor specific approach

The relationship between service quality and customer satisfaction has received considerable academic attention in the past few years. But the nature of the exact relationship between service quality and customer satisfaction (especially in the way the two constructs have been operationalized) is still shrouded with uncertainty. Many researchers have operationalized customer satisfaction by using a single item scale and many others have used multiple item scales. The present study adopts a different approach and views customer satisfaction as a multi dimensional construct just as service quality, but argues that customer satisfaction should be operationalized along the same factors (and the corresponding items) on which service quality is operationalized. Based on this approach, the link between service quality and customer satisfaction has been investigated. The results have indicated that the two constructs are indeed independent but are closely related, implying that an increase in one is likely to lead to an increase in another.

Ant-colony algorithms for permutation flowshop scheduling to minimize makespan/total flowtime of jobs

Abstract The problem of scheduling in permutation flowshops is considered with the objective of minimizing the makespan, followed by the consideration of minimization of total flowtime of jobs. Two ant-colony optimization algorithms are proposed and analyzed for solving the permutation flowshop scheduling problem. The first algorithm extends the ideas of the ant-colony algorithm by Stuetzle [Proceedings of the 6th European Congress on Intelligent Techniques and Soft Computing (EUFIT ’98), vol. 3, Verlag Mainz, Aachen, Germany, 1998, p. 1560], called max–min ant system (MMAS), by incorporating the summation rule suggested by Merkle and Middendorf [Proceedings of the EvoWorkshops 2000, Lecture Notes in Computer Science No. 1803, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2000, p. 287] and a newly proposed local search technique. The second ant-colony algorithm is newly developed. The proposed ant-colony algorithms have been applied to 90 benchmark problems taken from Taillard [European Journal of Operational Research 64 (1993) 278]. First, a comparison of the solutions yielded by the MMAS and the two ant-colony algorithms developed in this paper, with the heuristic solutions given by Taillard [European Journal of Operational Research 64 (1993) 278] is undertaken with respect to the minimization of makespan. The comparison shows that the two proposed ant-colony algorithms perform better, on an average, than the MMAS. Subsequently, by considering the objective of minimizing the total flowtime of jobs, a comparison of solutions yielded by the proposed ant-colony algorithms with the best heuristic solutions known for the benchmark problems, as published in an extensive study by Liu and Reeves [European Journal of Operational Research 132 (2001) 439], is carried out. The comparison shows that the proposed ant-colony algorithms are clearly superior to the heuristics analyzed by Liu and Reeves. For 83 out of 90 problems considered, better solutions have been found by the two proposed ant-colony algorithms, as compared to the solutions reported by Liu and Reeves.

Determinants of customer‐perceived service quality: a confirmatory factor analysis approach

The research literature on service quality has indeed swelled enormously over the past few years with numerous researchers administering various models across the world. Nevertheless, the SERVQUAL instrument forms the basis on which all other works have been actualized. Interestingly, the conceptualization, measurement and applications of SERVQUAL across different industrial and commercial settings are not bereft of controversies either. A careful examination of the instrument divulges that the factors and the corresponding items are not comprehensive as it appears that the instrument has left out certain important constituents of service quality. In this background, the current research work strives to bring to light some of the critical determinants of service quality that have been overlooked in the literature and proposes a comprehensive model and an instrument framework for measuring customer perceived service quality. The instrument has been designed with specific reference to the banking sector. Data have been collected from customers of banks in a huge developing economy. The proposed instrument has been empirically tested for unidimensionality, reliability and construct validity using a confirmatory factor analysis approach. The present study offers a systematic procedure that could form the cornerstone for providing further insights on the conceptual and empirical comprehension of customer perceived service quality and its constituents.

Customer perceptions of service quality: A critique

Empirical research on service quality and satisfaction has unearthed multitudinous archetypes by various researchers across the world. However, all of them have been primarily built on the SERVQUAL instrument, a 22-item scale that measures service quality. The efficacy of SERVQUAL in measuring service quality has been criticized by different authors for diverse reasons, such as the operationalization of expectations, the reliability and validity of the instruments difference score formulation and the scales dimensionality across disparate industrial settings. In spite of these animadversions, there is a universal conformity that the 22 items are reasonably good predictors of service quality in its entirety. But a scrupulous scrutiny of the scale items connotes that the scale is not all-inclusive in the sense that it fails to address some of the critical aspects of customer perceived service quality. This paper endeavours to unearth and unravel such critical constituents of service quality which, hitherto, have been untouched in the literature, and advances a framework that could form the bedrock for a better understanding of customer perceived service quality and its determinants.

A holistic model for total quality service

Total quality service (TQS) is a socio‐technical approach for revolutionary and effective management. However, the contemporary quality management literature is overridingly manufacturing oriented and there seems to be a dearth of comprehensive studies (from the management’s perspective) addressing the critical dimensions of TQS that will depict a holistic TQM philosophy in service organizations. The present study is an earnest endeavour to fill this void. Based on a thorough review of the prescriptive, practitioner, conceptual and empirical literature, the study has identified 12 dimensions as crucial for the inculcation of a TQM ambience in a service set‐up. The criticality of each of these dimensions from a service perspective is corroborated in detail. An instrument for measuring TQS with specific reference to the banking sector has been developed. Data have been collected from executives from banks in a developing economy. The instrument has been empirically tested for unidimensionality, reliability and construct validity using a confirmatory factor analysis approach. A model for TQS has also been proposed, illustrating the relationships between the various dimensions. The present research work offers a systematic framework for the conceptual and empirical understanding of TQS and its critical factors.

A comparative study of dispatching rules in dynamic flowshops and jobshops

This paper presents a comparative study on the performance of dispatching rules in the following sets of dynamic manufacturing systems: flowshops and jobshops, and flowshops with missing operations and jobshops. Three new dispatching rules are proposed. We consider a total of 13 dispatching rules for the analysis of the relative performance with respect to the objectives of minimizing mean flowtime, maximum flowtime, variance of flowtime, proportion of tardy jobs, mean tardiness, maximum tardiness and variance of tardiness. First, we carry out the simulation study in flowshops with jobs undergoing processing on all machines sequentially and in jobshops with random routeing of jobs. The results of the study reveal some interesting observations on the relative performance of the dispatching rules in these two types of manufacturing systems. Next, we consider flowshops with missing operations on jobs and jobshops with random routeing of jobs. We observe some interesting results in the sense that the performance of dispatching rules is being influenced by the routeing of jobs and shopfloor configurations.

Efficient dispatching rules for scheduling in a job shop

Abstract We consider in this article the development of new and efficient dispatching rules with respect to the objectives of minimizing mean flowtime, maximum flowtime, variance of flowtime, proportion of tardy jobs, mean tardiness, maximum tardiness and variance of tardiness. We present five new dispatching rules for scheduling in a job shop. Some of these rules make use of the process time and work-content in the queue of the next operation on a job, by following a simple additive approach, in addition to the arrival time and dynamic slack of a job. An extensive and rigorous simulation study has been carried out to evaluate the performance of the proposed dispatching rules against those rules such as the SPT, WINQ, FIFO and COVERT, and the best existing rule. It has been observed that the proposed rules are not only simple in structure, but also quite efficient in minimizing several measures of performance. The important aspects of the results of experimental investigation are also discussed in detail.

A Conceptual model for total quality management in service organizations

The manufacturing landscape of the corporate world has undergone a quality revolution, resulting in a plethora of research works on the tools, techniques, critical dimensions and other organizational requirements for the effective implementation of total quality management (TQM). But the same cannot be said with certainty of service industry management. Research works on total quality service (TQS) is not exhaustive in the sense that there appears to be a vacuum in the literature as far as a holistic model (from the perspective of the management) is concerned. The present study is an attempt to fill this gap. Based on an extensive review of the vast literature on TQM and TQS, the study has identified 12 dimensions of TQS as being critical for effective implementation of quality management in service organizations. The momentousness of each of these dimensions from the manufacturing and service perspectives has been authenticated. The different roles that these dimensions play in the manufacturing and service milieu have also been discussed. A conceptual model for TQS has been proposed demonstrating the relationships among its dimensions. The present work aspires to provide a basis for a thorough and insightful discernment of TQS and its critical dimensions.

Heuristic algorithm for scheduling in a flowshop to minimize total flowtime

Abstract In this article, a heuristic algorithm is presented for scheduling in a flowshop to minimize the total flowtime of jobs. A heuristic preference relation is developed and used as the basis for job insertion to build up the complete schedule. When evaluated over a large number of problems of various sizes, the proposed heuristic is found to be very effective in yielding optimal or near-optimal solutions and emerges superior to the existing heuristics.

An efficient heuristic for scheduling in a flowshop to minimize total weighted flowtime of jobs

The problem of scheduling in a flowshop is considered with the objective of minimizing the total weighted flowtime of jobs. A heuristic algorithm is developed by the introduction of lower bounds on the completion times of jobs and the development of heuristic preference relations for the scheduling problem under study. An improvement scheme is incorporated in the heuristic to enhance the quality of its solution. The proposed heuristic, with and without the improvement scheme, and the existing heuristics are evaluated by a large number of randomly generated problems. The results of an extensive computational investigation for various problem sizes are presented. It has been observed that both versions of the proposed heuristic perform better than the existing heuristics in giving a superior solution quality and that the proposed heuristic without the improvement scheme yields a good solution by requiring a negligible CPU time. In addition, an experimental investigation is carried out to evaluate the effectiveness of the improvement scheme when implemented in the proposed heuristic and the existing heuristics, as well as the effectiveness of a variant of the scheme. The results are also discussed.