Proving the need

This paper examines the relationship between product architecture, supply-chain performance metrics, and supply-chain efficiency. We model the contracting relationship between a supplier and a buyer. The supplier is privately informed about the outcome of his design/production investment. The buyer both appraises the supplier's component and does further processing/component production of his own. If the final product produced by the buyer exhibits decoupling and no function sharing with respect to the components (termed separable architecture), the first-best outcome is attained if both internal and external failures are contractible. When only one type of failure can be contracted on, we derive conditions under which contracting on internal failure is superior to contracting on external failure, and vice versa. If the buyer's final product has a nonseparable architecture with respect to the components, first-best cannot be achieved even if both internal and external failures are contractible. The value of contracting on internal failure alone is unaffected by the architecture design, while that of external failure declines relative to the separable setting; the net result is often to make the former the uniformly dominant performance metric. Our results highlight the interaction between the performance metrics used for contracting within the supply chain, the architecture of the product produced by the supply chain, and the incentive efficiency of the chain.

Health care decision makers often have a limited understanding of the costs associated with quality improvement efforts. However, such information is vital for managers to make appropriate operational and financial decisions to ensure high quality health care services. We used the Cost of Quality (COQ) model to estimate the cost of quality-related activities at the Makerere University-Johns Hopkins University (MU-JHU) Laboratory in Uganda. Using data collected from January 1, 2007–December 31, 2007, we allocated the direct costs associated with quality-related activities in the laboratory across COQ’s cost categories: prevention, appraisal, internal failures, and external failures. We found that approximately 94% of total COQ was spent on costs of “good quality” (prevention and appraisal), while 6% was spent on costs of “poor quality” (internal and external failures). The high percentage of COQ spent on prevention and appraisal activities is consistent with efforts to ensure high quality laboratory results. Future studies should try to link COQ to health outcomes and quantify “hidden” failure costs. This CE update introduces the Cost of Quality (COQ) model and illustrates how it can be applied to a clinical laboratory setting to help managers and executives make more informed decisions about spending on quality-related activities. We begin with an overview of the COQ concept and its 4 main cost categories, followed by an illustration of how the model can be applied in a medical laboratory setting. We then discuss some of the advantages and limitations of this methodology and provide suggestions for future research. * COQ : Cost of Quality MU-JHU : Makerere University-Johns Hopkins University IOM : Institute of Medicine P-A-F : prevention-appraisal-failure CAP : College of American Pathology PCR : polymerase chain reaction QA : quality assurance LIS : laboratory Information System EQA : External Quality Assurance CSC : Customer Service Concern PM : preventive maintenance QC : Quality Control PIR : Process Improvements Reports GLP : good laboratory practices GAAP : generally accepted accounting principles

The first part of the paper deals with the FEM computation of deformations, stresses and strain in the surrounding area of internal and external circular artificial failures with a set of given geometrical dimensions in steel pipelines. For the investigation of this problem three groups of mechanical models are applied: multilayered elastic shell, 3D elastic solid and 3D elastic-plastic solid FEM models. The aim of this analysis is to clarify the case in which the pipeline fails. When a pipe fails and needs repair or reinforcement, this is called critical case. In the second part of the paper the repaired pipes are investigated. For repairing of the internal and external failures, internal or external multilayered textile composite reinforcements are applied by winding technology. The task is to determine the width of the reinforcement and the number of layers needed for repair. The different mechanical models (multilayered elastic shell, 3D elastic solid and 3D elasto-plastic solid) are compared on the basis of numerical results. The critical cases are determined and the questions of repair are answered also numerically.

Occupational accidents, whether they are work-related or not, are defined as unplanned and unforeseen incidents which cause one or more than one workers to get ill, injured or lose their lifes. The increase in occupational accidents in recent years, together with the decrease in productivity and production efficiency, has mooted direct and indirect costs for companies. Quality costs are the type of costs which arise due to the activities implemented in order to preclude possible flaws, to the planned quality tests,and to flaws that appear during the production or customer delivery processes. Quality costs are classified in British Standards 6143 as follows: (a) Prevention Costs (b) Appraisal Costs (c) Internal Failure Costs (d) External Failure Costs As regards quality costs, occupational accidents that may produce highly excessive costs can be prevented by executing a good number of prevention activities. With the analysis of workflow processes in the established or subsequently established engine park, quality costs of those processes can be measured and evaluated in terms of occupational accidents. Despite prevention costs and appraisal costs, occupational accidents may still continue to appear in companies owing to various reasons. Those accidents may cause cessation in the production flow, or effect defective products. All these costs combined may constitute a considerable amount of internal failure costs. A company, along with internal failure, may have to endure a good number of appraisal costs and indemnities owing to workers’ complaints. In this study the internal and external failure costs caused by a significant industrial accident which occurred during implementation will be appraised. Furthermore, costs of operating activities aimed at preventing this type of occupational accidents will be discussed and a number of proposals will be presented in respect to probable prevention costs.

Cross-browser incompatibilities (XBIs) are defined as inconsistencies that can be observed in Web applications when they are rendered in a specific browser compared to others. These inconsistencies are associated with differences in the way each browser implements its capabilities and renders Web applications. The inconsistencies range from minor layout differences to lack of core functionalities of Web applications when rendered in specific browsers. The state of the art proposes different approaches for detecting XBIs and many of them are based on classification models, using features extracted from the document object model (DOM) structure (DOM-based approaches) and screenshots (computer vision approaches) of Web applications. To the best of our knowledge, a comparison between DOM-based and computer vision classification models has not yet been reported in the literature, and a combination between both approaches could possibly lead to increased accuracy of classification models. In this article, we extend the use of these classification models for detecting layout XBIs in responsive design Web applications, rendered on different browser viewport widths and devices (iPhone 12 mini, iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Pro Max, and Pixel XL). We investigate the use of state-of-the-art classification models (Browserbite, CrossCheck, and our previous work) for detecting layout cross-browser failures, which consist of layout XBIs that negatively affect the layout of responsive design Web applications. Furthermore, we propose an enhanced classification model that combines features from different state-of-the-art classification models (DOM based and computer vision) using feature selection. We built two datasets for evaluating the efficacy of classification models in separately detecting external and internal layout failures using data from 72 responsive design Web applications. The proposed classification model reported the highest F1-score for detecting external layout failures (0.65) and internal layout failures (0.35), and these results reported significant differences compared to Browserbite and CrossCheck classification models. Nevertheless, the experiment showed a lower accuracy in the classification of internal layout failures and suggests the use of other image similarity metrics or deep learning models for increasing the efficacy of classification models.

One of the failures in starting a business is failure in poor operational management. Operational risk is caused by internal process failures, human errors, system failures or external problems that affect operational activities. This study aims to measure the operational risk of PT. Unilever Tbk. before and during the Covid 19 pandemic. The method used is qualitative, with data collection techniques used, namely observation and documentation techniques. The results of this study show that there are differences in the level of RPN on internal and external failures. If before the pandemic, operational risk – external was the lowest risk crisis, during the Covid 19 pandemic, operational risk – internal was the lowest risk crisis. Lack of working capital and increased spending caused by the pandemic. Investors are less interested in consumer stocks and the provision of a new normal kit increases the company's expenses without being accompanied by income. Operational-external risk also increases due to the risk of late arrival of raw materials and disruption to the supply chain network, especially at suppliers.

Quality cost of products is the important part of the total cost. Quality cost include the internal and external failure costs, and preventing and identifying cost. The reject and rework cost is the most important part of internal and external failure costs. concentrate Because of preventing and identifying cost can be quantification easily, traditional companies usually are used to control these costs and ignore internal and external failure costs which is brought about by the no value-added activities such as reject and rework in the manufacturing process. We analyzed reject and rework costs based on products dimension chain and established a cost model of internal failure. Then based on product features, considering cost models, we analyzed the impact of key process against the cost and proposed a stratified quality control idea. Finally a program was designed to simulate this process by using VB 6.0.

This paper presented a fault diagnosis method for key components of satellite, called Anomaly Monitoring Method (AMM), which is made up of state estimation based on Multivariate State Estimation Techniques (MSET) and anomaly detection based on Sequential Probability Ratio Test (SPRT). On the basis of analysis failure of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), we divided the failure of LIBs into internal failure, external failure, and thermal runaway and selected electrolyte resistance (Re) and the charge transfer resistance (Rct) as the key parameters of state estimation. Then, through the actual in-orbit telemetry data of the key parameters of LIBs, we obtained the actual residual value (RX) and healthy residual value (RL) of LIBs based on the state estimation of MSET, and then, through the residual values (RX and RL) of LIBs, we detected the anomaly states based on the anomaly detection of SPRT. Lastly, we conducted an example of AMM for LIBs, and, according to the results of AMM, we validated the feasibility and effectiveness of AMM by comparing it with the results of threshold detective method (TDM).

The purpose of the study is to determine the quality of products in the industrial competitiveness of rattan industry in South Lampung. The technical data used mostly resulted from the interview. To improve the credibility of research findings, the other methods of data collection were used, such as questionnaires, direct observation and document analysis and records. This study is descriptive verificative with the explanatory survey. The method of data analysis is the path of analysis. The object of the study is the cost of quality which consists of prevention costs, appraisal costs, internal failure costs, and external failure costs. The results showed that the cost of quality activities consisting of prevention activities, control activities, internal failure activities, and external failure activities had a significant effect on the performance of the rattan industry in southern Lampung.

The purpose of the study is to determine the quality of products in the industrial competitiveness of rattan industry in South Lampung. The technique data used mostly resulted from the interview. To improve the credibility of research findings, the other methods of data collection were used, such as questionnaires, direct observation and document analysis and records. This study is descriptive verificative with explanatory survey. The method of data analysis is path of analysis. The object of the study is the cost of quality which consists of prevention costs, appraisal costs, internal failure costs, and external failure costs. The results showed that the cost of quality activities consisting of prevention activities, control activities, internal failure activities, and external failure activities had a significant effect on the performance of the rattan industry in southern Lampung.

Quality c o s t s pl ay s v i t a l r ol e in improving productivity. These costs are typically categorized into costs of prevention, appraisal, internal and external failure. Like other activities of business, quality costs can be programmed, budgeted, measured and analyzed to attain the objective of better quality at lower cost. Quality costs is the basis by which investments in quality programs may be evaluated in terms of cost improvement , profit enhancement and other benefits for plants and companies from these programs. The cost of quality is an increasingly important issue in the debates over quality. There was a mistaken notion that achievement of better quality requires higher costs. It was the myth that prevented many Indian companies to invest more on quality cost related programs. In this article the authors made an attempt to identify the different types of quality costs in a medium scale industry because the small and medium scale industries pay very little attention towards finding and developing a system for knowing & optimizing the cost of achieving quality. A model is proposed to identify the different quality costs in a medium scale industry and is further implemented. It has been found some quality costs are more critical and require greater attention.

Reliability of a system under two types of failures using a Markovian arrival process

A maintenance model with failures and inspection following Markovian arrival processes and two repair modes

In a distributed computing environment, particularly grid, fault-tolerance is one of the core functionalities the system should provide. MPICH-GF is such a resilient system designed to resist external or internal failures, especially for message passing applications in the grid environment. But it does not stand the loss of a valuable resource: files. In a normal case, users open files and write data into them in an asynchronous manner, and checkpointing is initiated with no regard to the state of the context of the process. Therefore, the checkpointing system should automatically recognize the running process and protect the open files transparently. We have implemented a recoverable file system, named ReFS, which is incorporated into our fault-tolerant system MPICH-GF. ReFS is a versioning-like file system. ReFS provides middleware libraries with the system call interface to protect specific files at a given time. This prevents applications from processing their jobs with corrupted data and resulting in incorrect results in case of failures. We have focused not only on the reliability of the system but also on the reduction of inevitable overheads. This paper describes the design and implementation of ReFS and justifies the validity of the behavior of ReFS. We have developed ReFS on Linux, based on Ext2.

The paper presents statistical data on aviation accidents, according to which, 87% accidents are influenced by the human factor. Improving the flight safety of the aircraft should be based primarily on the introduction of decision support systems that can simulate the development of a dangerous situation. The advantages and disadvantages of intelligent decision support systems created in Russia and abroad are considered. Among the serious disadvantages there is a lack of forecasting changes in the values of variables that affect flight safety (psychophysical state of the crew, flight conditions in the aggregate of external and internal changes). A flight safety management system with a two-level approach to recognizing changes in aircraft operating conditions is proposed. The input data of the system is information on the status of the crew, a control object and flight conditions. The composition and description of the on-board equipment of the aircraft interacting with the safety management system of the flight has been given. The availability of information from this equipment allows you to identify and lift the threat of an accident. There have been considered the main types of failures of airborne equipment and of the aircraft flight safety management system. The analysis of the throughput capacity of the system communication line with the complex of on-board equipment has been performed, which allows to determine loading of digital communication lines on board the aircraft. Functioning the aircraft safety system under failures of interacting equipment has been studied. Particular attention is paid to determining the probability of failure of the functions of the aircraft flight safety management system under the influence of its internal and external failures.