J. Carlos Prado

Personnel participation as a key factor for success in maintenance program implementation

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to put forward the methodology and most important aspects used at the Spanish group of timber companies Grupo Losan to design and implement a satisfactory preventive maintenance program in the manufacture of melamine and veneers in accordance with continuous improvement and TPM philosophy.Design/methodology/approach – The paper draws on empirical evidence from one case study and develops a framework for improvement in continuous improvement management for company competitiveness.Findings – The authors judge the difficulty in implementing a continuous improvement culture to be caused by the complexity of obtaining commitment and involvement from the personnel most affected by the project. In this context, a participative approach and a suitable methodology for implementation are key factors that are not always taken into account by companies. This experience also proposes the important role that researchers can play as “agents of change” from a viewpoint of “action re...

Employee participation systems in Spain. Past, present and future

Despite the importance placed upon new technologies, Continuous Improvement, or generally incremental improvement, without investment and based on the contribu tions from all members of the company, constitutes a fundamental way to maintain and increase a firms competitiveness. Within this context, this article analyses the evolution, current situation and future perspectives for systems used by companies in Spain to allow, facilitate or achieve personnel participation in Continuous Improvement. This has been done on the basis of some of the results from a study involving collaboration from 444 companies. Thus, it can be seen that initiatives of this type, although becoming increasingly relevant, do not boast a long tradition, which means there is a considerable number of systems that are very recent and not very structured. Trends existing at an international level that indicate a decline in Quality Circles in favour of Improvement Teams and Suggestion Systems have also been validated.

Measurement and analysis of customer satisfaction: company practices in Spain and Portugal

Purpose – The research objective is to analyze the situation and outlook for the future of the measuring and analysis practices used to determine customer satisfaction in 305 ISO 9000‐certified organizations of the Euro‐region Galicia (Spain)‐North of Portugal.Design/methodology/approach – The empirical study was conducted on a random sample of 305 ISO 9000 companies. Data were gathered by personally interviewing those responsible for quality management at the companies.Findings – Certified companies in the Euro‐region Galicia‐North Portugal have a high awareness of the need to measure and analyze the satisfaction of their customers and a predisposition towards it but, when it comes to putting said practice into action, they fall into certain methodological deficiencies that lead to their usefulness being only moderate.Research limitations/implications – This is a basically descriptive work concerning the practice of measuring and analyzing customer satisfaction in certified companies, within the Galicia ...

Creating an expert system for detailed scheduling

This paper presents our experience in the development of an expert system to be used for detailed scheduling in an industrial company. This was a middle‐sized company which builds metallic components for the automotive industry. Because of the complexity of the environment where it has to work, with many interactions between related functions in the company, the development of this system has required a great deal of collaboration among different experts. So, we had to develop a more sophisticated methodology for this development. The conclusions extracted from this work lead us to a generalization of the methodology employed, which is also presented here.

Continuous improvement and employee participation in SMEs

The active participation of all personnel is the basis for continuous improvement in companies. This paper describes the main features of systems for channelling such participation, used in a series of companies in the automotive parts industry in the Northwest of Spain. These characteristics were obtained from research carried out in mid‐1997 and based on personal interviews. Likewise, the great spread of this kind of practice found in this supply industry, mainly made up of SMEs, supports the idea that it is not only applicable in large companies. However, it should not be forgotten that the automotive sector has one of the longest traditions in continuous improvement and employee involvement activities.

Benchmarking for the development of quality assurance systems

This article aims to show a benchmarking experience developed by a Business Network for Experience Sharing in Quality (Benchmarking Network) made up of Spanish companies of different sizes and from different sectors. Co‐ordinated by a monitor, the participants were mainly managers from small companies with varying degrees of development in their quality assurance systems. The team learned to work in a team and discovered that, despite the different sectors, sizes, organization cultures and the like, their problems were similar and they were able to share experiences in quality management in an environment of co‐operation, where they could resolve a great deal of problems through an innovative system. After a brief summary of the problems involved in implementing quality assurance systems, the article puts forward the features of the initiative developed and the work methodology employed in the network. Details are given of what was experienced throughout the meetings held, and of the actions undertaken. Finally, the results achieved are presented.

Packaging Logistics. A Case Study in Dairy Sector

No many companies give importance to the impact of packaging design for achieving logistic efficiency and sustainability in the supply chain. This paper sets out to illustrate how the adoption of “Packaging Logistics” approach makes it possible to obtain competitive advantages throughout the supply chain. To illustrate this statement, in this paper, not only the conceptual field of this concept is developed, but also its application, analysing a case study in dairy sector.