Vikas Kumar

In the current age of manufacturing revival in the U. S. and other developed countries, companies are looking for ways to maintain or gain advantage over competitors from low-cost countries. This book presents a firsthand account of actual projects in three different industries to help leaders and middle managers structure their own turnaround or improvement projects. The book uses a case-based approach for Lean implementation and presents a summary of lessons learned and insights on change management. It includes examples of Robotic Process Automation concepts used in manufacturing and offers several examples of analytical tools used to solve operations management problems. The first-person, story-based approach makes this book an engaging read for operations leaders and middle management in the areas of quality management, engineering management, business management, and manufacturing, as well as postgraduate students.

This book analyses the quality of statistics such as geographic area, census population and sample survey statistics in a developing country. Using field interviews, archival sources, and secondary data covering the last seven decades, it explores the shifting relations between various kinds of statistics over their lifecycles and charts their cradle-to-grave political career. It uncovers a mutually constitutive relationship between data, development, and democracy and offers an exciting account of how government statistics are social artefacts dynamically shaped by political and economic factors. The book also quantifies the impact of data quality on the statistics of interest to policy makers such as household consumption expenditure and federal transfers. Numbers in India's Periphery makes a major contribution to the growing literature on the political economy of statistics in developing countries through a novel analysis of the shifting determinants of the nature of data in North East India.

This book presents both qualitative and quantitative approaches to cloud reliability measurements, together with specific case studies to reflect the real-time reliability applications. Traditional software reliability models cannot be used for cloud reliability evaluation due to the changes in the development architecture and delivery designs. The customer–vendor relationship mostly comes to a close with traditional software installations, whereas a SaaS subscription is just a start of the customer–vendor relationship. Reliability of cloud services is normally presented in terms of percentage, such as 99.9% or 99.99%. However, this type of reliability measurement provides confidence only in the service availability feature and may cover all the quality attributes of the product. The book offers a comprehensive review of the reliability models suitable for different services and deployments to help readers identify the appropriate cloud products for individual business needs. It also helps developers understand customer expectations and, most importantly, helps vendors to improve their service and support. As such it is a valuable resource for cloud customers, developers, vendors and the researchers.

Quality has quickly become one of the most important decision-making factors for consumers. And although organizations invest considerable resources into building the right quality management systems (QMSs), in many instances, the adoption of such quality improvement tools are just not enough. Building Quality Management Systems: Selecting the Right Methods and Tools explains exactly what directors, practitioners, consultants, and researchers must do to make better choices in the design, implementation, and improvement of their QMSs. Based on the authors decades of industrial experience working on business improvement projects for multinationals looking to design or improve their QMSs, the book discusses building QMSs based on two important organizational elements: needs and resources. It begins with an overview of QMSs and systems thinking and the impact of QMSs on financial performance. Illustrating the process management approach, it reviews the most well-known business and quality improvement models, methods, and tools that support a major QMS. The authors introduce their own time-tested methodology for designing, implementing, and enhancing your own QMS. Using their proven method, you will learn how to: Implement a strategic quality plan based on your specific needs, capabilities, cost benefits, policies, and business strategies Select the right models, methods, and tools to be adopted as part of your QMS Understand the critical success factors and implementation challenges Evaluate the level of maturity of your QMS and your implementation efforts Highlighting the importance of quality as a way of life, this book supplies the understanding you‘ll need to make the right choices in the development and deployment of your QMS. With a clear focus on business performance and process management, it provides the basis for creating the quality management culture require

This book is for directors, consultants, practitioners, and professionals aspiring to effectively manage operations, but is targeted at applying innovation to the management of operations, including supply chains. It is appropriate for those establishing a career in innovation and operations management. This book will: Equip readers with understanding of the nature of innovation, operations management concepts, business models, methods and tools; Explore best practices and most commonly used operations and innovation business models, methods, and tools used by successful organisations; Consider particular operational issues directly impact the competitiveness of organisations