Patrick Beaujean

The Quality Backward Chain - The Adaptive Controller of Entrepreneurial Quality

To meet the challenge of producing innovative and technologically demanding products economically, companies need the ability of quick and flexible reaction to internal and external disturbances. Increased performance of a company can be achieved by focusing on improvements to effectiveness and efficiency; principal tasks of modern quality management. Quality management itself must not only face new entrepreneurial challenges; its main task remains consistently providing information for continuous improvements. Based on a new definition of quality, a framework is introduced that faces the entrepreneurial conditions from quality management’s point of view and provides an organizational element, which assists in meeting the demand for informational transparency. This element, the quality backward chain, which is responsible for providing the needed information, is then introduced. By means of a modular conception on the operative and the adaptive levels, the backward chain acts as a quick and flexible organizational controller for entrepreneurial quality.

Selbstoptimierende Produktionssysteme: Eine neue Dimension von Flexibilität, Transparenz und Qualität

Kurzfassung Unter dem Begriff „Selbstoptimierende Produktionssysteme“ wird ein Konzept verstanden, das wertstromorientierte Maßnahmen bei gleichzeitig steigender Planungseffizienz umsetzt und dabei die Qualität von Prozessen und Produkten verbessert. Dabei wird bereits erworbenes Wissen wieder verwendet und auf ähnliche, neue Produktionsfälle übertragen. Selbstoptimierung bietet neue Sichten auf Fertigungs- und Montagesysteme, indem sowohl in technologischen als auch in organisatorischen Bereichen eine dynamische Anpassung des Systemverhaltens an veränderliche Ziele ermöglicht wird. Eine ganzheitlich gesteigerte Qualität des Produktionssystems ist damit ein Ansatz, der nachhaltig die Produktion in Hochlohnländern sichert und verbessert.

Critical incidents of quality orientation in lower and middle management

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present research about identifying critical management behaviour regarding quality orientation in organisations. Design/methodology/approach – In order to describe how quality orientation is manifested in management behaviour, the critical incident technique was chosen. First, quality orientation was defined based on an extensive literature review. Then, critical incidents that represent a behavioural manifestation of each dimension were derived through a deductive approach. Lastly, an expert group consisting of scientists and practitioners were asked to categorise the critical incidents and evaluate their practical relevance and completeness. Findings – The results show that the construct quality orientation is related to the five variables internal customer focus, external customer focus, continuous improvement orientation, systems-thinking perspective, and data-driven. For each variable four critical incidents were developed and evaluated by the expert group. A...

Aid for the User-Centered Evaluation of Human Machine Interfaces During Ramp-up of Socio-Cyber-Physical Production Systems

Aim of the present research is the introduction of a self-assessment instrument fostering the user-centered development and evaluation of human machine interfaces during ramp-ups of socio-cyber-physical production systems. This objective is addressed by first outlining the concept of socio-cyber-physical production systems and their specific design restrictions. Then existing user-centered design approaches are analyzed and guiding questions from a user-centered perspective are deduced. The questions are structured under consideration of the agile framework scrum. Applicability of the instrument is tested by conducting a self-assessment with “oculavis”, a software environment for smart glasses and other wearable technologies. Results show that the integration of agile and user-centered development remains a challenge in practice and seems to be approached more intuitively than methodical.