The ENBIS‐14 Quality and Reliability Engineering International Special Issue

Abstract

Special Issue highlights the application of statistical thinking and methods in several key areas of interest to the ENBIS community. One of them has traditionally been healthcare. In this area, Shuki Dror and Dina Margol 1 show an interesting application of the Pareto principle and quality function deployment by developing and critically evaluating a framework for analysing malpractice cases in healthcare with the ultimate goal of improving the healthcare system. Rosa Falotico et al., 2 on the other hand, strive to prevent malpractice cases by proposing the use of text mining as a tool for identifying oncological patient communication needs with the goal of improving e-health communication. Service improvement is also at the core of the paper written by Alex Kuiper and Michel Mandjes, 3 who discuss practical principles in appointment scheduling. Finally, occupational health and safety are dealt with by Aliye Ayca Supciller and Nilsu Abali 4 within the scope of risk analysis.Another key area is manufacturing. Manoj Dora and Xavier Gellynck 5 present an interesting case study in the SME framework: an application of Lean Six Sigma -an effective hybrid method that combines the variability elimination tools from Six Sigma with the waste elimination practices from lean manufacturing -to reduce variability and waste in the production process of a food processing company. The challenges of manufacturing are also dealt with by Alberto Pasanisi et al. 6 who present a discrete modelling formalism for describing the reliability of equipment for which the relevant information is the number of cycles or solicitations it can endure. The proposed approach is particularly useful for low (decelerated) ageing conditions.The third key area is transportation. Pasquale Erto et al. 7 outline a procedure for predicting and controlling the ship fuel consumption and, consequently, the ship energy efficiency. At the core of the procedure is a multiple linear regression model exploiting the navigation information, which is usually available on modern ships to support managerial decision-making.Design of experiments has always been a much discussed topic at ENBIS conferences. In her paper, Ulrike Grömping 8 first evaluates the existing methods for assessing the effect significance in half-normal effects plots from fractional factorial two-level experiments and then proposes a new one. Peter Zemroch, 9 in his contribution, deals with the computerized generation of fractional-replicate designs that allow for more freedom in the definition of the number of experiments to conduct.Two papers address the topic of process optimization in multiresponse contexts. Francesco Adamo et al. 10 explore a robust approach based on a mixed-response surface model and apply it to a smart grid infrastructure, while Nikolaus Rudak et al. 11 extend the joint optimization method -a method devoted to finding the process settings leading to pre-specified targets in the responsesto a case in which the quality characteristics are correlated and then apply it to a the...