Papers

Contract manufacturing firms face particular problems introducing new products because of the build to order way they do business. This article presents a case study of one such company's improvements to its product introduction process

The paper analyses the existing organisational quality models that go under the names of TQM, award models, excellence models, ISO 9000 standards, contingency models etc. and discusses their typical application areas.

First in a series of articles exploding myths about statistical process control and showing its value in manufacturing and service

This paper discusses the reasons why business education has not embraced analytical tools and techniques to monitor process variation. It concludes with a set of principles and an action plan for business eductation to produce management practitioners with the competence to use data analysis

Benchmarking enables the development of an integrated (business/quality) management system for the virtual European Medicines Agency, a network organisation of major importance in the enlarged European Union. Such system ensures harmonised Good Regulatory Practices to the benefit of the stakeholders, whether users of medicinal products, industry, interested parties, experts and staff.

Dr Walter Shewhart who invented the control chart, was one of the first people to apply statistical methods to mass-production. This paper uses the original work of Shewhart to show how in many respects it is a very practical thesis on prediction. It aims to put Shewhart's work back on the map as a practical thesis, which has been renamed 'management-by-prediction'.