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Resource conservation, sustainability, quality, and cost control have been considered significant issues for the construction sector worldwide. Green Lean Six Sigma not only improves quality, process flow, resource conservation, and environmental performance but also minimizes cost, waste, and lead time. The construction sector in Pakistan is struggling to adopt sustainable and quality-oriented practices. In this context, this paper aims to identify Green Lean Six Sigma enablers from the perspective of Pakistan’s construction industry. Interpretive Structural Modelling consolidated with the Fuzzy Matrice d’Impacts Croises – Multipication Applique a classement technique, was employed to establish an ISM model and measure fuzzy indirect interactions, strengths, effectiveness and categorization of enablers. The findings signify that the most significant driving enablers are government support and incentives, availability of financial resources, top-management determination to enhance sustainability, and organizational capability and quality maturity level for GLS operations. These results could facilitate practitioners, policymakers, and government by providing insights to promote GLS methods for the sustainable growth of the construction sector. This study will assist practitioners and policymakers in developing appropriate strategies considering the intricate relationships and intensity of influence among Green, Lean and Six Sigma enablers during GLS adoption. Researchers can identify and analyze the elements related to their industries and country. Society will benefit in terms of health and the environmentally friendly built environment.

Monitoring time-between-events-and-amplitude (TBEA) data, including the time interval between two successive nonconforming events and the amplitude of an event, is significant in many applications,...

The conventional approach for optimizing multiresponse is fitting multiple response surface models and then analyzing them to obtain optimal settings for the input variables. However, it is difficu...

Asthma is associated with a T helper (Th)17/regulatory T (Treg) cells immune imbalance where the Notch signaling pathway contributes vitally. This study aimed to explore the role of Notch ligands Jagged1 and Delta4 in the Th17/Treg immune imbalance of chronic asthmatic mice.The experimental animals were randomly assigned to the Saline, ovalbumin (OVA), and OVA + γ-secretase inhibitor (GSI) groups. A mouse model of chronic asthma was induced by OVA sensitization and challenge. GSI was injected intraperitoneally before the OVA challenge in the OVA + GSI group. Lung function, lung histopathology and immunohistochemistry to assess airway inflammation, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay to measure cytokines levels, flow cytometry to measure the proportions of Th17 (Th17%) and Treg% in CD4Lung function and histopathology and IL-4, IL-13, and IFN-γ levels in the bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) of chronic asthmatic mice showed characteristic changes of asthma. The Th17%, Th17/Treg ratio, BALF and serum IL-17 levels, and IL-17/IL-10 ratio increased significantly in the OVA group, while the Treg% and IL-10 level significantly decreased. mRNA and protein expression levels of Jagged1 and Delta4 increased significantly. GSI could reduce the Th17%, Th17/Treg ratio, IL-17, IL-17/IL-10 ratio, and Jagged1 expression in chronic asthmatic mice. The mRNA and protein levels of Jagged1 and Delta4 were positively correlated with the Th17/Treg ratio in the OVA group, while only those of Jagged1 were positively correlated with the Th17/Treg ratio in the OVA + GSI group.In chronic asthmatic mice, the Th17/Treg ratio increased, and the Notch ligands Jagged1 and Delta4 were overactive and positively regulated the Th17/Treg imbalance. GSI partially inhibited Jagged1 and relieved the Th17/Treg imbalance.

Superhydrophobic surfaces – driven from natural biology – are being increasingly studied in many engineering fields. This study fabricated hydrophobic AAO/Ni coatings and superhydrophobic AAO/Ni/Ni...

This study aimed to examine the impact of organizational culture on quality management and innovation practices among manufacturing SMEs in Nigeria. Empirical data were collected from 570 manufactu...

Hospital service quality (HSQ) evaluation is seriously challenged due to the uncertainties of evaluators’ subjective perception and the choice of evaluation methods. A new HSQ evaluation framework ...

The effects of heat treatment on the properties of electrodeposited Co–P–TiO2 nanocomposite coatings were systematically investigated. The TiO2 nanoparticles-reinforced Co–P–TiO2 nanocomposites wer...

A series of Co–P–TiO2 nanocomposite coatings were prepared via pulsed electrodeposition technique. TiO2 nanoparticles were embedded into the coating matrix using TiO2 sol. The phase constituents of...

The widespread application of machine vision system promotes the development of image-based statistical process control methodologies to improve the utilization of image data. Previous research has...

Due to the complex outsourcing characteristics of aviation equipment development, one key issue is how to coordinate quality and cost decisions during development. This article focuses on the quali...

This study aims to construct a scale for measuring customer-perceived service quality in the context of omni-channel retailing. First, a multidimensional scale is empirically developed for assessin...

Numerous companies embrace Six Sigma but few persistently implement it. Employee buy-in and self-motivated involvement with the program play key roles in consistent implementation. However, researc...

In this study, Ni–P, Ni–W–P and Ni–B coatings were electrolessly plated on aluminium alloy substrates. All coatings were uniform and adherent with shiny metallic appearances. A systematic study was...

Since errors in factor levels affect the traditional statistical properties of response surface designs, an important question to consider is robustness of design to errors. However, when the actua...

Xiao-Wen Lan,1,2,* Ge Wen,3,* Zhen He,4 Jiang-Hua Huang,1,2Xue-Bin Zou,5 Xiao Lin,1,6Yu-Ting Tan,1,6Xiao-Bo Huang1–2,61Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Malignant Tumor Epigenetics and Gene Regulation, Medical Research Center, Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hospital, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou 510120, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Radiation Oncology, Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hospital, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou 510120, People’s Republic of China; 3Department of Radiation Oncology, The Third Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou 510150, People’s Republic of China; 4Department of Oncology, The First Affiliation Hospital of Guangdong Pharmaceutical University, Guangzhou 510062, People’s Republic of China; 5Department of Ultrasound, Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center, State Key Laboratory of Oncology in South China, Collaborative Innovation Center for Cancer Medicine, Guangdong 510060, People’s Republic of China; 6Department of Breast Tumor Center, Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hospital, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou 510120, People’s Republic of China*These authors contributed equally to this workPurpose: Postoperative radiotherapy (RT) can improve survival for T1-2N1 breast cancer. However, there exists a concern whether BCS plus RT has the same or a superior therapeutic effect as that of mastectomy. In this study, we aimed to compare the long-term results between RT after BCS and postmastectomy RT in stage T1-2N1M0 breast cancer.Patients and Methods: Totally 1816 pathological stage T1-2N1M0 breast cancer patients were analyzed. The propensity score matching (PSM) method was used to select 196 pairs of patients between BCS and mastectomy receiving postoperative RT. Five-year locoregional relapse (LRR), locoregional relapse-free survival (LRFS), distant metastasis (DM), distant metastasis-free survival (DMFS), disease-free survival (DFS), breast cancer-specific survival (BCSS) were analyzed as endpoints.Results: In the whole group, significant differences were observed in all endpoints (P

Functionalized benzothiophenes are important constructs found in molecules with wide ranging biological activity and in organic materials. An efficient, metal-free approach to C3 and C2 arylated an...

Process monitoring of multiple count data has recently received considerable attention in the statistical process control literature. Most existing methods on this topic are based on parametric mod...

In practice, engineers seek to find reasonable solutions for complex and unstructured problems, which are common in many areas. The workable solutions for these problems are never a one-shot experi...

Based on the difference-in-difference (DID) methodology, this paper empirically investigates the impact of the current anti-corruption campaign on the share of labour income in China. Using a firm-...

Many reliability experiments are not completely randomized. Instead they involve subsamples, blocks, split-plot structures, etc. A common analysis often uses random effects to account for the impac...

Six Sigma is a systematic methodology aiming at operational excellence. Under the general umbrella of Six Sigma, DMAIC and Design for Six Sigma are usually be implemented to improve product and process quality. Facing quality bottlenecks in traditional improvement projects, tools in Design for Six Sigma is an efficient way to achieve better results. In this paper, to meet the high-quality requirement of key clients, a telecom service system improvement project is illustrated by redesigning troubleshooting and service delivery processes in company Shanghai Telecom Co. Ltd. (ST) with the aid of some Design for Six Sigma tools. Company ST improved its service system performance and obtained significant economic benefits from this project implementation. Four key factors that affect the success of Design for Six Sigma tools application in improvement projects are discussed at last.

Modern and intelligent manufacturing systems have a prominent multistate feature. However, previous studies of reliability analysis of multistate manufacturing systems mostly focused on the basic r...

Studies have shown that the extended warranty takes a significant role in promoting products sales and improving customer satisfaction on after-sales service quality of products. This paper aims to...

Endophytic fungi strains (n = 81) were isolated from the leaves, barks, and fruits of Camellia oleifera from Hunan province (China) to delineate their species composition and potential as biological control agents of C. oleifera anthracnose. The fungi were identified by morphological and phylogenetic analyses. Fungal colonization rates of the leaves, barks, and fruits were 58.02, 27.16, and 14.81%, respectively. The isolates were identified as 14 genera, belonging to two subdivisions, Deuteromycotina and Ascomycotina; 87.65% of all isolates belonged to Deuteromycotina. The dominant species, occurring with a high relative frequency, were Pestalotiopsis sp. (14.81%), Penicillium sp. (14.81%), and Fusarium sp. (12.35%). The Simpson’s and Shannon’s diversity indices revealed the highest species diversity in the leaves, followed by the barks and fruits. The similarity index for the leaves versus barks comparison was the highest, indicating that the number of endophytic fungal species shared by the leaves and barks was higher than barks and fruits or leaves and fruits. Based on the results of dual culture experiments, only five strains exhibited antifungal activity against C. oleifera anthracnose pathogen, with isolate ty-64 (Oidium sp.) generating the broadest inhibition zones. Our results indicate that the endophytes associated with C. oleifera could be employed as natural agents controlling C. oleifera anthracnose.

Brand and warranty information have been always been accepted as signals of unknown product quality. Given this, offering an attractive warranty is suggested as an effective competitive strategy. H...

Two novel polygalacturonase (PG) genes, RsPG3 and RsPG4, were cloned from Rhizoctonia solani isolate YN-7, which is a member of anastomosis group (AG) subgroup 1A and causes rice sheath blight. The...

Warranties are prevalent in the market. The manufacturer of products sold with warranties often faces a problem of balancing a trade-off between warranty cost and boosted demand by warranties when ...

Warranty data can be used for estimating product reliability, identifying causes of failure and designing warranty policy. Based on two-dimensional warranty data, we utilize an accelerated failure time model to investigate the effect of usage rate on product degradation. The stochastic expectation-maximization algorithm is proposed to estimate parameters of the reliability model considering both censored data and field data. Extensive simulation studies are used to validate the proposed method and to compare it with the maximum likelihood method. The utilities of the results have been demonstrated through real warranty data collected from an automobile manufacturer in China.

Design of experiments has received much attention in the context of reliability improvement. Many engineers and researchers are considering how to use designed experiments to improve the reliability of products and processes. This work illustrates a 12-run Plackett-Burman design and its analysis to improve the reliability of a diamond drill bit. A detailed description and execution of the design are provided including how to choose the factors and determine the number of experimental factors. In addition, the results of the real-world experiment are presented and the predicted performance from statistical model fitting is verified by part of a confirmation experiment. The experimental data show that the recommended factor settings substantially improved the reliability of the diamond drill bits.

The extensive use of telematics system in the new generation of automobiles contributed to the rising trend of using automobiles as a channel to provide remote service. Yet the measurement of telematics service quality (TeleServQ) is not well established. This paper aims to identify the dimensions of TeleServQ. In-depth interviews are used to investigate the initial items in measuring telematics service. Conceptual framework of TeleServQ scale is proposed based on items sorting. Then the multidimensional scale is refined and validated with questionnaire survey. As a result, six dimensions including efficiency, system reliability, information quality, security, customisation and call centre service are identified. Some of the dimensions are consistent with the literature related to technology-based services, and others are specific in telematics context. Among six dimensions, efficiency and system reliability have the strongest relationship with customer satisfaction and loyalty intention. The scale demons...

Many practical situations have both a quality characteristic and a reliability characteristic with the goal to find an appropriate compromise for the optimum conditions. Standard analyses of quality and reliability characteristics in designed experiments usually assume a completely randomized design. However, many experiments involve restrictions on randomization, e.g., subsampling, blocking, split-plot.This article considers an experiment involving both a quality characteristic and a reliability characteristic (lifetime) within a subsampling protocol. The particular experiment uses Type I censoring for the lifetime. Previous work on analyzing reliability data within a subsampling protocol assumed Type II censoring. This article extends such an analysis for Type I censoring. The method then uses a desirability function approach combined with the Pareto front to obtain a trade-off between the quality and reliability characteristics. A case study illustrates the methodology.

Innovation and quality are essential for sustainable competitiveness in today’s business world. Despite extensive theoretical discussions about the relationship between innovation and quality, few studies explore the observable effects of technological innovation practices (TIPs) on product quality. This paper aims to empirically investigate the impact of TIP on product quality, considering the moderating effect of firm size. A conceptual model linking product innovation practice, process innovation practice, normal quality (NQ), attractive quality (AQ) and product market performance is proposed. The model is tested using survey data from 201 innovative Chinese manufacturing companies. The results reveal that TIP does indeed positively influence both AQ and NQ. Firm size moderates the relationship between TIP and AQ. The study contributes to a better understanding of how different-sized Chinese firms can utilise innovation practice to improve product quality and market performance.

The conforming run length (CRL) control charts based on Bernoulli data have been shown to be effective when monitoring the proportion nonconforming rate, especially for high-quality processes. Considering the usage simplicity in practice, the count of conforming chart, RL2 chart and the geometric cumulative sum (CUSUM) chart are subject matter of this paper. When implementing the CRL control charts, the in-control proportion nonconforming rate is seldom known and accurate estimation is needed. Thus, we investigate the effects of parameter estimation on the CRL control charts using the average number of observations to signal and the standard deviation of the average number of observations to signal with a Bayes estimator. The SDANOS values of the CRL control charts show that practitioners should rarely expect in-control performance close to that obtained under the assumption when the process parameters are known. By comparing in-control performance of the CRL control charts, the geometric CUSUM ch...

Machine vision systems are widely employed to provide data for analysis and interpretation in many industries, where measurement system analysis (MSA) is used to ensure the validity of these data. In a common MSA, each part is measured by each operator ..

The Bonferroni mean (BM) had been generalized for its capacity to capture the interrelationship between input arguments. In order to obtain much more information in the process of group decision making, especially in the cases that the relationships between the fused data are considered, this paper combines the power average operator with the intuitionistic fuzzy Bonferroni mean (IFBM) and develops the intuitionistic fuzzy power Bonferroni mean (IFPBM) and the weighted intuitionistic fuzzy power Bonferroni mean (WIFPBM). We investigate the desirable properties of these new extensions of BM and discuss their special cases. We give a comparison of the new extensions of BM with the corresponding existing IFBMs. Furthermore, the detailed steps of multiple attribute group decision making with the presented IFPBM or WIFPBM are given and numerical examples are illustrated to show the validity and feasibility of the new approaches.

Both Six Sigma and innovation play key roles in improving competitiveness. While there is abundant research on Six Sigma and innovation from many perspectives, rigorous empirical research investigating the impact of Six Sigma on organisational innovation has been limited. The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationships between Six Sigma practices and different types of organisational innovation including product innovation, process innovation, and administrative innovation. Empirical data were collected from 249 firms in China which had implemented Six Sigma as a formal programme in their organisation. Structural Equation Modelling was used to test the hypothesised relationship between Six Sigma practices and innovation. The results show that Six Sigma management, infrastructure, and core practices have a positive relationship with product, process, and administrative innovation. This study contributes to a better understanding of how firms can take advantage of the Six Sigma implementation to i...

Experimenters are often confronted with the problem that errors in setting factor levels cannot be measured. In the robust design scenario, the goal is to determine the design that minimizes the variability transmitted to the response from the variables’ errors. The prediction variance performance of response surface designs with errors is investigated using design efficiency and the maximum and minimum scaled prediction variance. The evaluation and comparison of response surface designs with and without errors in variables are developed for second order designs on spherical regions. The prediction variance and design efficiency results and recommendations for their use are provided.

Image-capturing systems are increasingly being used in manufacturing shop floors since they can reliably capture important aesthetic information pertaining to the quality of manufactured parts in real time. State-of-the-art image-monitoring applications have focused on the detection of a single fault; however, the number of fault clusters per image in industrial applications can be numerous. To address this issue, we propose the use of a multivariate generalized likelihood ratio (MGLR) control chart for monitoring industrial products whose quality is described by a specific pattern (e.g. uniform patterns in LED screens or decorative patterns in textile products). Our method is specifically designed for greyscale images that are typical outputs of real-time industrial image-capturing systems. Extensive computer simulations show that the proposed method can detect the occurrence of single and multiple faults. We also present an experimental study to highlight how practitioners can implement and make use of ...

Two 1-D homometallic coordination polymers 1 and 2 have been prepared by one-step hydrothermal reactions of carboxylate-functionalized salen ligands with Co(II) and Mn(II), respectively. Single-crystal X-ray diffraction analyses reveal that both the 1-D chains give 3-D supramolecular structures through intermolecular hydrogen bonds and ππ packing interactions. Magnetic investigation of 2 indicates the presence of antiferromagnetic interactions in 1-D chains.

In accelerated life tests (ALTs), test units may come from different groups (subsampling, blocking, and clustering) and the group effect is random and significant. The ALTs, in this case, are not completely randomized designs (CRDs). Previous studies on..