Samia M. Siha

Business process improvement: empirical assessment and extensions

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to survey and analyze current process improvement (PI) approaches, their empirical results reported in the literature, and develop accordingly a conceptual framework and implementation guidelines.Design/methodology/approach – A literature review of the popular business database to search for case studies and empirical research on PI methods was conducted. The empirical evidence on success and failure factors were inferred and tabulated. Based on synthesis of the lessons learned from this empirical evidence along with concepts drawn from economics, and operations management, a conceptual framework is developed.Findings – It was found that the framework would serve as a diagnostic tool for identification of, and recovering from root causes of problems and inefficiencies faced in business environments. The framework proposed synthesizes and extends earlier PI tools and basic approaches used for mitigating disruptions faced in operations practice. The framework design co...

Telecommuting's Past and Future: A Literature Review and Research Agenda

Purpose – Telecommuting continues to be a topic of interest for practitioners and researchers alike. There are significant numbers of employees currently involved in telecommuting around the globe. Organizational implications, global workforce implications and the scarcity of scholarly publications make this research topic one that warrants our further investigation. The purpose of this paper is to explore the literature to identify the substantive work, examine the state of this phenomenon as of to date, particularly the failure and success factors, provide valuable insight to the practitioners and research directions to researchersDesign/methodology/approach – An extensive literature review was conducted in an effort to identify the significant, substantive work to date. We reviewed two major business data bases and limit our review to refereed journals because of the rigorous review process that these articles go through before publication.Findings – A schema was identified to help categorize topics fo...

Managing Quality: Critical Links and a Contingency Model

Addresses quality management issues of both conceptual and practical significance. The contribution is twofold: first, conceptual issues and critical relationships which have been overlooked in the current literature are discussed, as well as their policy implications. Second, a contingency approach for managing quality is proposed to guide implementation, and to help reduce the deviations between the desired and the actual outcomes of quality programs. The contingency model developed provides a basis for advancing both theory and practice.

JIT in services: a review of current practices and future directions for research

Maintains that, although service industries would benefit from research concerning the implementation of just‐in‐time (JIT) techniques, most research has focused on JIT only in manufacturing firms. A review of applied journals and articles, however, revealed JIT concepts migrating to non‐manufacturing environments. These articles describe JIT techniques successfully moving from the factory floor to other environments and suggest a potentially rich research opportunity. Summarizes these articles using Benson′s guidelines for applying JIT in service. Illustrates various JIT applications within each of the JIT categories.

Testing the accuracy of employee-reported data: An inexpensive alternative approach to traditional methods

Although Information Technology (IT) solutions improve the collection and validation of operational data, Operations Managers must often rely on self-reported data from workers to make decisions. The problem with this data is that they are subject to intentional manipulation, thus reducing their suitability for decision-making. A method of identifying manipulated data, digital analysis, addresses this problem at low cost. In this paper, we demonstrate how one uses this method in real-world companies to validate self-reported data from line workers. The results of our study suggest that digital analysis estimates the accuracy of employee reported data in operations management, within limited contexts. These findings lead to improved operating performance by providing a tool for practitioners to exclude inaccurate information.

Modeling the blocking phenomenon in JIT environment: an alternative scenario

Queueing networks with blocking have proven useful in modeling computer systems, telecommunication systems, production systems and public services. In this paper, an alternative scenario of the blocking mechanism is presented and its pertinence to JIT systems is explained. For comparison purposes, we apply the traditional scenario of blocking mechanism to the same class of queueing systems. Numerical results show that the values of the performance measures of the two scenarios are close within certain ranges of system parameters. The presented scenario is easier to solve and can be modeled more efficiently.

A Model for the Optimal Timing and Sizing of Capacity Increments for Single-Location Facilities

Abstract This paper develops and tests a mixed-integer programming model for finding the optimal timing and sizing of plant capacities, The object of the model is to minimize the total discounted costs over a planning horizon. The factors that are considered for this purpose are the current and future values of the following: discount rates, construction and setup costs, operating costs, subcontracting costs, idle costs of excess capacities, and growth rates of demand. Actual data from a set of electrical power generating facilities are utilized to test the model. Several variations in time paths of demand, and the cost factors are considered to assess the effects of each factor on the timing and sizing decisions

Physician Outcome Measurement: Review and Proposed Model

As health care moves from a free-for-service environment to a capitated arena, outcome measurements must change. ABC Childrens Medical Center is challenged with developing comprehensive outcome measures for an employed physician group. An extensive literature review validates that physician outcomes must move beyond revenue production and measure all aspects of care delivery. The proposed measurement model for this physician group is a trilogy model. It includes measures of cost, quality, and service. While these measures can be examined separately, it is imperative to understand their integration in determining an organizations competitive advantage. The recommended measurements for the physician group must be consistent with the overall organizational goals. The long-term impact will be better utilization of resources. This will result in the most cost effective, quality care for the health care consumer.

Do college faculty embrace Web 2.0 technology

ABSTRACT The authors sought to determine if Rogerss Innovation Decision Process model could analyze Web 2.0 usage within the collegiate environment. The key independent variables studied in relationship to this model were gender, faculty rank, course content delivery method, and age. Chi-square nonparametric tests on the independent variables across Rogerss typology revealed significant differences at p < .05. The two-way analysis of variance tests between gender across Rogerss typology disclosed main effects and a two-way interaction effect on the derived factor labeled effective delivery, at p < .01. Gender was significant in terms of Web 2.0 usage and adoption.