Jean-Luc Maire

A typology of “best practices” for a benchmarking process

Purpose – The paper aims to provide guidelines of companies in identifying their best practices with reference to a French example.Design/methodology/approach – The paper describes first the evolution of benchmarking, which nowadays is more and more based on the identification of good practices to acquire or transfer. Then we present a typology of best practices which can help a company to discern more effectively what could be relevant to exchange in benchmarking. Finally, we describe the best practice specification (BPS) method, which helps a company to locate and specify its good practices likely to be transferred within the framework of benchmarking.Findings – The paper underlines the difficulty of a company to clearly define what a “best practice” is and the lack of methods which could help it to identify its best practices.Research limitations/implications – Future research will be to develop a method of acquisition and representation of the best practices. In particular, it will be a question of st...

Benchmarking process formalization and a case study

Aims to formalize the benchmarking process by proposing methods and tools for the steps of the process. Focuses on the first two phases of the benchmarking process: measurement and self analysis (phase 1), and determination of subject and partners of a benchmarking study (phase 2). For this purpose, related to the first phase, a method of diagnosis is employed. In the second phase, three different data analysis methods (lexical analysis, principal components analysis and common factor analysis) are utilized. These two phases serve the purpose of an internal benchmarking (comparison between different domains of activities in the enterprise) and of an external benchmarking study (comparison between different enterprises). Three enterprises are selected for the benchmarking application. Related data are collected and analyzed, and results are reported.

A model of characterization of the performance for a process of benchmarking

A process of benchmarking implies the use of a model of representation and evaluation of the performance allowing a comparison between firms, and from which a simulation of the effects of the potential actions for each one of these companies can then be carried out. The model that we propose provides a vision of the performance of each company on several successive levels of aggregation and associates various possible views with each one of these levels. The tool which we developed makes it possible to simulate the effects of an improvement action on the interdependent views of the representation. The analysis of the results generated by these various scenarios contributes then to the decision concerning the choice of the objectives of improvement and improvement action plans specific to each partner.

How to sustain improvement at high level: Application in the field of statistical process control

Purpose – Many companies can today attest to having obtained significant progress in their performance using some improvement processes (six sigma, 5S, business process reengineering, etc.). But they can also attest to experiencing difficulties in sustaining the use of these processes over time. The aim of this paper is to describe all the specific actions which can contribute to the sustaining of these processes.Design/methodology/approach – An empirical research methodology is used by carrying out a survey of 40 Swiss and French manufacturing companies regarding their approach to the sustaining of some of their improvement processes.Findings – A model of sustainability for an improvement process is proposed. This model is founded on three axes: organic state, return on effort and facilitation. To sustain an improvement process over time consists in taking these three axes into account by managing their relative importance in space and over time. The paper details the generic actions associated with each...

Gage R2&E2: an effective tool to improve the visual control of products

Purpose – The variability of the results of a visual control is often high. This paper aims to propose a new tool to give information about what improvement actions can be carried out to reduce this variability.Design/methodology/approach – The variability of a visual control can be measured by Kappas Fleiss which measures the level of agreement between appraisers and experts. The R&R Gage is then classically used to give information about corrective actions which can be carried out in order to improve this level of agreement. The paper demonstrated that this information is not always sufficient.Findings – By considering the two essential steps of a visual control (exploration and evaluation), the R2&E2 Gage proposed gives more precise information about the improvement actions to carry out to reduce the variability of a visual control. Repeatability and reproducibility, for detection and evaluation purposes, are considered separately.Research limitations/implications – This R2&E2 gage is one result of a ...

Extended visual appearance texture features

The research purpose is to improve surface characterization based on what is perceived by human eye and on the 2006 CIE report. This report defines four headings under which possible measures might be made: color, gloss, translucency and texture. It is therefore important to define parameters able to discriminate surfaces, in accordance with the perception of human eye. Our starting point in assessing a surface is the measurement of its reflectance (acquisition of ABRDF for visual rendering), i.e. evaluate a set of images from different angles of lighting rather than a single image. The research question is how calculate, from this enhanced information, some discriminating parameters. We propose to use an image processing approach of texture that reflects spatial variations of pixel for translating changes in color, material and relief. From a set of images from different angles of light, we compute associated Haralick features for constructing new (extended) features, called Bidimensional Haralick Functions (BHF), and exploit them for discriminating surfaces. We propose another framework in three parts such as color, material and relief.

A Smart System for Haptic Quality Control

Perceived quality has become an important factor in the choice of products by customers. The human perception process involves complex phenomena at a physical and psychological level that enable us to sense the world and extract information about it. Because of the qualitative way humans represent and communicate sensations, the field of sensory perceptions makes extensive use of semantics. The use of knowledge-based systems in the field of perceived quality is hence natural. This project focuses on haptics in quality control in industry. In particular, the aim is to develop a smart system which will enable to make decisions about the haptic quality of a product. This paper introduces the framework used for the development of this smart system, based on the KREM model. An ontological structure is proposed in order to represent knowledge related to the measure of sensory perceptions in general, and of haptic ones in particular. The proposed domain ontologies about haptic control, that were elicited using semantic analysis, are aligned with the SSN ontology.

A haptic quality control method based on the human somatosensory system

The sense of touch is probably the most complex human sense, because it involves a very large number of sensory receptors spread over the whole body, and takes at the same time full advantage of the human nervous system complexity and power. Although this complexity enables us to perceive the world around us and interact with it, it is also a great source of variability when it comes to controlling the quality of products in a manufacturing environment. Indeed, human subjectivity and preferences, as well as the level of cognitive charge, directly influence the performance of a controller, thus impacting the resulting quality of accepted products, as well as the related economical costs and costumer satisfaction level. We address this issue through three propositions that aim at managing the sense of touch in the context of industrial quality control. (1) The proposed formalization of haptic sensations simplifies the description vocabulary and avoids confusing sensations mix. Nine generic elementary sensations were extracted from a semantic analysis of usual descriptors, and used to define generic haptic anomalies. (2) The modelling of the influence of exploration conditions on haptic perception enables to set common and coherent ways to touch objects. (3) The structuring of the control process is inspired by previous studies in visual quality control. It was applied to the sense of touch and adapted to its specificities. In particular, an intelligent decision method based on the exploration model is proposed, to improve the performance of quality control, and reduce the cognitive charge of controllers for them to focus on perceived sensations. This paper presents the solutions proposed in order to solve the problems associated with the use of the human somatosensory system as a measurement system, while minimizing the variability of quality control decisions.

A Smart System to Standardize the Specifications of Haptic Quality Control

The specific attention paid to the quality perceived through the senses of costumers when touching a product has led to a rapid growth in the industrial interest for the field of haptics. Controlling the quality of products with such expectations has become a challenge for manufacturers, especially considering the current lack of a generic method to standardize control specifications and provide efficient control tools, whether a manual or automated control is considered. This study provides a new insight on the definition of control specifications regarding perceived quality control. Smart systems have proven useful and efficient in a number of other domains, but has never been applied in a generic manner to the control of the quality related to the sense of touch. Therefore, a system based on formalized knowledge on haptic perceptions and its relations with quality control is proposed. This paper presents the proposed approach for the standardization of haptic quality control specifications, along with an example of a manufacturing application. The structure of the proposed knowledge model is detailed, as well as the semantic approach that enabled the development of a formalized haptic sensation vocabulary. An experimental method was used to model the influence of exploration on perception, considering the application case.