Productivity And Quality Through People

This book contains specific recommendations by world renowned experts for boosting productivity through quality and employee management techniques. It provides new understanding, backed by the experiences of close to two dozen major firms, of the day-to-day policies and practices that contribute to business success. The contributors, representing a broad cross-section of American and Japanese business and industry, provide guidelines for developing and implementing successful productivity improvement programs including creating awareness, measuring inputs and outputs, and follow-up. They show how companies have applied quality and productivity concepts to make profits and morale soar and how the successful implementation of quality circles improves quality and productivity, customer satisfaction, and employee morale. Introductory, integrative, and concluding chapters by coeditors Shetty and Buehler provide perspective and additional suggestions for combining theory and practice to create effective programs.

This second edition details all productivity and quality methodologies, principles and techniques, and demonstrates how they interact in the three phases of the productivity and quality management triangle (PQMT): measurement, control and evaluation; planning and analysis; and improvement and monitoring. This edition features material on practical strategies for implementing quality programmes, balancing productivity and quality results , resolving quality problems and empowering employees.

This book is the culmination of inter-firm comparisons done by the author of more than 4,000 companies in over 100 different industries. These productivity analyses and comparisons all show that virtually every organization, even the best, can learn from their competitors and counterparts, as well as from self-analysis, about how to achieve more and better through improved organization and utilization of their resources. Part I explains what productivity is and why it’s so important. Part II describes how productivity problems and opportunities can be identified through measurement and systematic analysis. While this is not a statistical textbook, it explains through simple and practical solutions how one can benefit from relevant measurement. Part III outlines how each individual person can improve their productivity and become significantly more efficient and effective. Part IV reviews how productivity can be enhanced through better planning, organization, use of time, knowledge, technology and resources. This basic and comprehensive book is intended for entrepreneurs, managers of local branches of large corporations, such as banks, business chains, as well as managers or aspiring managers in other private or public organizations. It is essential reading for students of business administration, economics, as well as managerial practices, and fills a hole in the training of students in all fields where they will manage people and resources. Professionals, other knowledge workers and technical people also benefit because their professional training usually concentrates on their specific expertise and not productivity improvement. Over the years it has become clear that even managers of the best organizations can benefit by learning from the experience of others.

The newest edition of an insightful and practical statistical approach to quality control and management In the newly revised and thoroughly updated Fifth Edition of Fundamentals of Quality Control and Improvement, accomplished academic, consultant, and author Dr. Amitava Mitra delivers a comprehensive and quantitative approach to quality management techniques. The book demonstrates how to integrate statistical concepts with quality assurance methods, incorporating modern ideas, strategies, and philosophies of quality management. You'll discover experimental design concepts and the use of the Taguchi method to incorporate customer needs, improve lead time, and reduce costs. The new edition also includes brand-new case studies at the end of several chapters, references to the statistical software Minitab 19, and chapter updates that add discussions of trending and exciting topics in quality control. The book includes access to supplementary material for instructors consisting of a new instructor's solutions manual and PowerPoint slides, as well as access to data sets for all readers. Readers will also benefit from the inclusion of: A thorough introduction to the evolution of quality and definitions of quality, quality control, quality assurance, quality circles, and quality improvement teams An exploration of customer needs and market share, as well as the benefits of quality control and the total quality system Practical discussions of quality and reliability, quality improvement, product and service costing, and quality costs A concise treatment of how to measure quality costs, the management of quality, and the interrelationship between quality and productivity Perfect for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students in quality control and improvement, the Fifth Edition of Fundamentals of Quality Control and Improvement will also earn a place in the libraries of business students and those undertaking training programs in Six Sigma.

Preface -- Introduction -- Integrating service quality and productivity strategies -- What is a service quality? -- Identifying and correcting service quality problems -- Measuring service quality -- Soft and hard service quality measures -- Learning from customer feedback -- Hard measures of service quality -- Tools to analyze and address service quality problems -- Return on quality -- Defining and measuring productivity -- Improving service productivity -- Conclusion -- Summary -- Endnotes

'Action is needed to fight poverty by sustaining the environment and the use of natural resources. Land Quality, Agricultural Productivity, and Food Security explores a range of factors driving food security. The book offers an assessment to link quality of the available land resources with productivity of land and the ability to ensure food security. It offers a mixture of broad-scale assessments across the globe, with detailed case studies, deepening our understanding of economics and decision-making mechanisms. It is recommended to researchers, as well as actors in the private and public domain, who are keen to improve their understanding of the appropriate actions that ensure food security in the decade to come.' - Floor Brouwer, Agricultural Economics Research Institute (LEI), The Hague, The Netherlands Land quality and land degradation affect agricultural productivity and food security, but quantifying these relationships has been difficult. Data are extremely limited and outcomes are sensitive to the choices that farmers make. The contributors to this book - including soil scientists, geographers, and economists - analyse data on soils, climate, land cover, agricultural inputs and outputs, and a variety of socio-economic factors to provide new insights into three key issues: * the extent to which differences in land quality generate differences in agricultural productivity across countries * how farmers' responses to differences or changes in land quality are influenced by economic, environmental, and institutional factors, and * whether land degradation over time threatens productivity growth and food security at local, regional, and global levels.

This book aims to provide an overview of the challenges and available technologies to improve rice and provide a response to the challenge posed by increasing world population and the resultant food shortages. Nutritional aspects of rice products and omics and the molecular technologies currently being used are covered in depth. As a staple food for over 50% of the world ́s population, an estimated 9 billion people will need to be fed by 2050, and healthy and uncontaminated foods need to reach consumers in developed and developing countries.This makes quality beyond productivity incredibly important and is one of the overriding themes of this work. The Future of Rice Demand: Quality Beyond Productivity offers researchers a better understanding of the nutritional aspects of rice. Omics technologies applied to cereal grain quality have been scarce in the literature published to date, making this text an excellent single source for researchers in regions where rice is a major crop. The first section of the book focuses on the major aspects of the industrial processing of all rice types. Further sections look at contamination prevention and biofortification, special rice types, and omics and other molecular tools used in the mass production and processing of healthy rice products.