University of Technology, Sydney. / This overall objective of this research was to identify factors that were important in forming middle managers' attitudes toward quality and quality programs in their organisations. An underlying assumption of the research, supported by the literature, was that a middle manager's attitude toward his/her quality program could be an important indicator of behaviour toward the program e.g. resistance, willingness to be involved. Reviews of the literature on middle management, quality, attitude measurement and research more specifically related to the research topic was undertaken. The work of Ajzen (1988) was particularly useful in devising an overall theoretical framework for the research . A number of hypotheses related to the overall research question were formulated. Twenty-one organisations agreed to participate in the research. These all had a quality program. Some of the organisations were quite advanced in quality, a number had won Australian Quality Awards, others were much less advanced. Organisations were drawn from manufacturing and services in both private and public sectors. Data was collected in two main ways. Firstly, a questionnaire was designed, piloted and distributed to approximately 1100 middle managers in participating organisations. The response rate was approximately 50%. Secondly, in depth interviews were carried out with middle managers, senior managers and quality managers in a number of the participating organisations. The results generally confirm the importance of the middle management group as key to the success of a quality program. Middle managers across all of the participating organisations generally believed that the TQM approach to management was an effective one. Their views on the effectiveness of IS09000 were less positive. Middle managers generally believed that the quality programs were more likely to benefit their organisations rather than to directly benefit themselves, although quality programs did provide some opportunities for some middle managers. Middle managers generally believed that their quality programs provided both operational and strategic benefit for their organisations. Paradoxically, a widely held belief among middle managers was that quality programs did not reduce short term thinking and over-reacting to short term goals. Positive attitudes to quality in the organisation were associated particularly with the values and beliefs that middle managers held regarding: a) program support from top management, from their direct boss and from their colleagues; b) a range of program outcomes for the organisation and c) a range of program outcomes related to the individual middle manager. For middle managers actively involved in their organisations quality program the clarity of their program role was positively related to program attitudes. Training/education in quality was also significantly related to some beliefs and attitudes towards quality and quality programs. Middle managers generally believed that quality programs involved a significant increase in paper work and bureaucracy. However this was not a significant influence on their attitudes toward quality in their organisations. An important finding was that for a wide range of beliefs and attitudes related to quality no significant differences were found between the types of jobs held by middle managers. An exception was the quality specialist group who generally had significantly more positive attitudes and beliefs about quality and their quality programs than did other job categories. Middle managers seemed relatively at ease with most of the changes that were taking place as part of their programs. In particular they had relatively positive views on devolution of responsibility to lower level employees. Middle managers also seemed relatively at ease with their own performance being more tightly monitored with program implementation. The research supported the more optimistic view of middle Management that has been reported recently (e.g. Fenton-O'Creevy 1998). The notion of the middle management still had currency in all of the organisations participating in the research despite the many structural changes that had taken place.

Thesis (M.S.) -- University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 2006. / Title from title page screen (viewed on Feb. 7, 2007). Thesis advisor: Ernest Bazen. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

The purpose of this study was to identify the critical factors for effective quality management in the Cooperative Extension System (CES) and develop an instrument that measured quality management performance in selected CES organizations as a means of identifying organizational training needs. Three procedures were applied in this study. First, critical factors of quality management were identified through a literature review and verified by an expert panel. Second, performance measures defining each critical factor were generated from the literature, approved by an iterative panel and assigned to scales. Finally, an instrument was developed and administered to a test population for purposes of establishing reliability and validity of the scales. Seven critical factors were identified that contributed to effective organization-wide quality management in the CES: (a) Administrative Support for Quality, (b) Strategic Quality Planning, (c) Continuous Quality Improvement, (d) Strategic Human Resources Management, (e) Quality Information and Analysis, (f) Clientele Satisfaction, and (g) Quality in Education and Training. Performance measures characterizing quality management were operationally defined from the literature, and approved by the iterative panel. An instrument, comprised of 69 performance measures, was designed and administered to a test population of Extension professionals, achieving a 91% response rate. Five of the critical factors including: (a) Administrative Support for Quality, (b) Strategic Quality Planning, (c) Strategic Human Resources Management, (d) Clientele Satisfaction, and (e) Quality in Education and Training, and seven of their corresponding scales, showed evidence of reliability and validity. The critical factors of Quality Information and Analysis and Clientele Satisfaction each had a scale that were reliable, but construct validity was not evident. The critical factors of Strategic Human Resources Management, and Quality in Education and Training each had a scale that did not show evidence of empirical utility. All three scales within the critical factor of Continuous Quality Improvement did not show evidence of empirical utility. This study offers a promising model for subsequent theory building and for more systematic research in assessing organization-wide training needs preceding the introduction of quality management technology in the Cooperative Extension System. / Graduation date: 1992

I dagens företagsklimat krävs det att medelstora tillverkande företag tillverkar produkter med hög kvalitet, för att vara i framkant vad gällande ledande kunskaper inom företagets verksamhetsområde. Ett sätt för företag att ständigt utvecklas och driva en vinstdrivande verksamhet är att fokusera på kvalitetsarbetet. Total Quality Management (TQM) är ett kvalitetsarbetssätt som utgår från företagets kunder, som likaså skapar förväntningar på företagets produkter. För företagsledningen innebär detta att förstå kundens förväntningar, tolka förväntningarna och förmedla dem till resten utav verksamheten. Företagsledningens ansvar är att organisera produktionsprocessen på ett vis som möjliggör ökad kontroll av kvaliteten och samtidigt bidrar med kvalitetssäkrad information för resten av verksamheten, medarbetarna. Informationsteknologiska stöd (IT-stöd) möjliggör för företagsledningen att applicera en TQM-strategi inom verksamheten, för att på så sätt försörja medarbetarna med kvalitetssäkrad information och ständigt förbättra kvalitetsarbetet. Syftet med studien är att skapa en helhetsförståelse och utveckla en modell för hur företagsledningen i svenska medelstora tillverkande företag kan stödja TQM med hjälp utav IT-stöd. Vi har valt att använda oss utav en kvalitativ ansats och med hjälp utav besöksintervjuer, telefonintervjuer och mailkorrespondens för att samla in data om hur IT-stöd stöjder företagsledningen i svenska medelstora tillverkande företag i arbete med TQM. Med vårt val av medelstora tillverkande företag är resursberoendeteorin (RBT) lämplig, eftersom medelstora företag oftast kännetecknas av bristande interna resurser, så som information. Studien kommer undersöka IT-stöd i form av Business Intelligence system och valet av respondenter i respektive företag ingår i företagsledningen med befattning kvalitetsansvarig och IT-chef. I analysen utreds klara samband hur TQM stöds utav IT-stöd och hur företagsledningen med hjälp utav IT-stöd kvalitetssäkrar informationen i respektive verksamhet. Resultatet av studien visar att Företag A och Företag B använder BI-system som stöd för att fatta realtidsbaserade beslut i produktionsprocessen, baserat på kvalitetsäkrad information för att harmonisera TQM-strategin och för att uppnå kvalitetsmålen. BI-system är ett IT-stöd som är användbart för företagsledningen i tillverkande medelstora företag när de önskar en kontrollerad uppföljning av TQM-strategin. BI-system ökar även kunskapen inom Företag A och Företag B för att förstå verksamhetens arbete med TQM.

The cloning of code is controversial as a development practice. Empirical studies on the long-term effects of cloning on software quality and maintainability have produced mixed results. Some studies have found that cloning has a negative impact on code readability, bug propagation, and the presence of cloning may indicate wider problems in software design and management. At the same time, other studies have found that cloned code is less likely to have defects, and thus is arguably more stable, better designed, and better maintained. These results suggest that the effect of cloning on software quality and maintainability may be determinable only on a case-by-case basis, and this only aggravates the challenge of establishing a principled framework of clone management and understanding. This thesis aims to improve the understanding and management of clones within software systems. There are two main contributions. First, we have conducted an empirical study on cloning in one of the major device drivers families of the Linux kernel. Different from many previous empirical studies on cloning, we incorporate the knowledge about the development style, and the architecture of the subject system into our study; our findings address the evolution of clones; we have also found that the presence of cloning is a strong predictor (87\% accuracy) of one aspect of underlying hardware similarity when compared to a vendor-based model (55\% accuracy) and a randomly chosen model (9\% accuracy). The effectiveness of using the presence of cloning to infer high-level similarity suggests a new perspective of using cloning information to assist program comprehension, aspect mining, and software product-line engineering. Second, we have devised a triage-oriented taxonomy of clones to aid developers in prioritizing which kinds of clones are most likely to be problematic and require attention; a preliminary validation of the utility of this taxonomy has been performed against a large open source system. The cloning-based software quality assurance (QA) framework based on our taxonomy adds a new dimension to traditional software QA processes; by exploiting the clone detection results within a guided framework, the developer is able to evaluate which instances of cloning are most likely to require urgent attention.

Abstract In recent years, organizational innovation is becoming increasingly important as a means of survival, not just for growth, but also in facing of intensifying competition and environmental uncertainty. Organizational innovation has been considered to be one of the key success factors. On the other hand, over the last two decades, many organizations around the world have adopted Total Quality Management (TQM). It is convinced that TQM is a management philosophy, which is a better way to conduct business and results in higher quality, lower cost products and services that respond faster to the needs of the customer. The relationship between organizational innovation, TQM and organizational effectiveness was studied. The China Steel Corporation (CSC) ,which is a leading steel making company in Taiwan, was chosen to be the research object. The aim of this research is to study following items: 1. To realize CSC employees¡¦ cognition and attitude about the Innovations and TQM activities which have been promoted and /or adopted by the company many years. 2. To analyze the relationship between Innovations, TQM and organizational effectiveness. By doing this study, some results are expected to be referenced by CSC and also for other companies. The results are follows¡G 1. Basically, CSC employees have good cognition toward TQM in CSC¡Aand also convince that it has a high correlation with organizational effectiveness . 2. Regarding Innovations practices, there exist high correlation coefficient between technological innovation and administrative innovation. 3. All the Critical Factors have high correlation with organizational effectiveness, especially ¡§ people management¡¨. 4. The correlation between organizational innovations, TQM and organizational effectiveness are confirmed to be significant. And the Adoption of TQM can intensify the Innovations practices and then increasing organizational effectiveness. Keywords¡Gorganizational innovation, total quality management, organizational effectiveness.

The philosophy of ¡uTotal Quality Management¡vis an innovative management of full directions, it represents a whole new cultures, and the TQM bas been applied as the universally managerial solution for countries, enterprises, governments and organizations to promote the innovation and product improvements, all members of the organization shall devote himself or herself and pay their all energies to focus on and achieve the goal -¡uTo create the most perfect products and services for customers¡v. IT department, a member of organization which executing TQM, in order to reach the purposes of total improvements, IT department shall participate and execute practically just like other departments. By exploring and analyzing the literature theories, the practical case of IT deparment which deploys the TQM activities, interviews, this research applies CASE STUDY method to research for the key issues of¡uIT department executes TQM¡vas below: A. The IMPORTANCES between IT department and TQM. B. Why shall IT department execute TQM. C. The needed conditions for IT department to execute TQM. D. The ROLEs for the LEADER and STAFFs of IT department to execute TQM. E. The MODULE for IT department to execute TQM. F. The defects of the initial execution. Wish the discoveries and suggestions of the research can be references to the IT department which is going to or already runs TQM.

The quality control of products during manufacturing before World War II was independent of the manufacturing process to assure the unique and best quality of goods. Of which characteristics is to control the quality of products after finishing. Due to the total quality management has initiated recently, the feedback of consumer¡¦s preference, raw materials¡¦ supply, design of products, manufacturing, check-up, selling strategy and after-sales service arose from the manufacturers. The crucial competition in enterprise management has become the essential debate i.e., innovative and high-grade products are needed concurrently. Innovation is the threshold of the sustained yield of an enterprise, but to meet and give rise to the requirements of clients through the market survey. Additionally, we should incorporate a new management system with innovation ¡V reduce the capital, develop up-to-date techniques, to attain the target of sustained yield. By using the new methods of enterprise management system and proposing novel recipes that can achieve an admirable target in business management in the twentieth-one century. Because of the specific needs in high-precision and great capital investment in semi-conductor industry, any rejects may lead to earnings loss. Thereafter, the increase in accepts is the main target to pursue for semi-conductor industry. Enhancing the accept percentage is synonymous with profit-based market. Reducing the reject percentage will lead to increasing the profit of business. ¡§Quality Control is the main trend in twentieth-one century¡¨ said Mr. J.M.Juran ¡V an American expert of quality control ¡V in American Society of Quality Control (ASQC). For instances, the reject rate of electronics has been reduced from 0.001 to ppm (parts per million), even to ppb (parts per billion). In view of the previous 3 £mdefect, the reject rate is 2.7 ¡Ñ10 -3 under the state in statistical control, but it has been dropped to 2 ppb (2 ¡Ñ10 -9 ) in a new 6 £mdefect. In other words, the new level of reject rate has been reduced to 1.35 million times that of the previous standards. We call this standard likewise ¡§Ultra severe quality requirements¡¨. Face the severe challenge of quality control and the strong competition, a novel quality control is beneficial to the sustained yield of semiconductor industry. The purpose of this study tries to investigate the feasibility of the application of ultra severe quality requirements to a semiconductor company. And describing the methodology of 6£mthat focuses on process improvement and variation reduction.

Abstract Six Sigma is a management philosophy that is widely accepted among global industries. This study reviews literature on the definitions of Six Sigma and business strategy. Also, the study constructs a preliminarily exploration model of integrating Six Sigma program with business strategy. The exploration model for business excellence includes independent dimensions of business strategy, Six Sigma implementation and the dependent dimension of quality performance. The dimensions of business strategy include the variables for organizational culture, organizational assessment, strategy formulation and improvement methodology. Meanwhile, the dimension of Six Sigma implementation includes steering organization of Six Sigma, skills of quality improvement, integrating orientation of quality improvement and performance bottom-line. The dependent dimension of quality performance is based on employees¡¦ motivation, customer satisfactory, increasing profit and deceasing cost. 1. For an exploration model integrating Six Sigma activities with business strategy, the organizational culture variable is the most important factor. The top management must have commitment towards the Six Sigma activities, involvement in the Six Sigma training and emphasis on customer satisfaction to enhance the integration of Six Sigma with business strategy. 2. The more integrated the dimension of business strategy, and then the variable of steering organization is more confirmed. The variable of skills of quality improvement will produce efficiently, performance bottom-line will be good outcome and integrating orientation of quality improvement is positively. 3. The 8 variables with the model of integrating Six Sigma activities with business strategy are positively related with the index of quality performance. The variable of strategy formulation within the dimension of business strategy and the variable of integrating orientation of quality improvement within the dimension of Six Sigma implementation are most highly related with the index of quality performance. It means that Six Sigma strategy must be confirmed and the business resource must be integrated to reach quality performance. 4. The key factors in the predicted model of quality performance by multiple regression methodology are as follows in sequential order: integrating orientation of quality improvement, performance bottom-line, organizational assessment, improvement methodology, organizational culture, skills of quality improvement, and steering organization. The best predictor is the variable of integrating orientation of quality improvement. It implies that the quality activities must be combined with management by objective, quality skills training must be implemented continuously and quality plans by executed by project for reach best quality performance. This study concludes that the firms do not necessarily have to adopt Six Sigma activity to reach excellent performance. Integrating the management activities of business strategy will help balance the technical elements of Six Sigma implementation for quality performance, and the business strategy dimensions that will make implementing Six Sigma more effective.