Cost Of Assurance Research Articles

Построение систем управления затратами по обеспечению качества на российских оборонных предприятиях

The article examines the issues of system management of quality assurance costs at Russian defense enterprises. The relevance of the work is determined by the increased requirements for saving resources that are currently imposed on enterprises of the military-industrial complex. The purpose of the work is to develop recommendations for building a quality cost management system at Russian defense enterprises based on a process approach. This work is based on the results of research by Russian and foreign scientists in the field of quality cost management, reflected in scientific articles, monographs, textbooks. In addition, publications of practitioners in the field of quality management in industry journals and on specialized Internet portals were used. The author offers a generalized model of the system of formation of costs for ensuring the quality of products. When managing quality costs, it is proposed to initially start from the prices of the designed products. On their basis, the optimal (taking into account existing conditions) production cost of products is calculated. Cost data is used as a guideline for R&D. Special attention is paid to the formation of responsibility centers in the quality cost management system.

Non-Intrusive Protection for Legacy SCADA Systems

While security has become increasingly crucial to SCADA systems due to changing threat landscape and increasing connectivity with relatively more open systems, most legacy SCADA systems are susceptible to false command injection by compromised or intruding devices since message authentication is not in-built in their protocols. It is also practically infeasible to patch these systems with cryptographic defence due to resource constraints of the old-generation devices used. Hence, protection of legacy SCADA systems has to be purely add-on, without requiring protocol- or devicelevel modifications. The state-of-the-art of non-intrusive defence strategies for legacy SCADA systems against false command injection is discussed, comparing the strengths and limitations of the bump-in-the-wire, data diode, protocol-compliant authentication and detectand- respond approach while discussing their applicable scenarios, costs of deployment and security assurance. In particular, the design principles of the detect-andrespond approach, namely, false command detection and neutralization, are elaborated with reference to its implementation on two legacy SCADA protocols.

Data Science to Determine Mechanical Properties of Low Carbon Steel During In-Process Inspections

Carbon steel is a widely used category of engineering metal, mainly due to its attractive mechanical and fabrication properties and low cost. The chemical composition, physical parameters, and mechanical properties of carbon steel are maintained as per the specified standards, and local steel should be complied with Sri Lankan Standard 375: 2009. Generally, the chemical composition is tested during melt stages, and mechanical properties are tested for finished products. Since it is necessary to ensure products comply with the standard, mechanical properties are tested during in-process inspections as well. When the results are not within the acceptable range, a considerable amount of production has to be rejected, causing a loss to the manufacturers. If the results of the in-process inspection are instant, it will help make suitable adjustments to process conditions and thereby prevent rejection of products, while reducing quality assurance costs, as well. Therefore, the objective of this study is to predict tensile properties with chemical composition, as input variables, to be used for in-process inspections. Forty mechanical test reports were collected from a steel manufacturing factory for 12 mm diameter, thermo-mechanically treated (TMT) steel bars. Each test report is of 15 samples from the respective batch, and consists of corresponding chemical composition and physical parameters. Multiple linear regression analysis was applied to each batch, using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software, to predict yield strength (YS), ultimate tensile strength (UTS), elongation at break (EB) with carbon equivalent value (CEQ) and percentage of Sulphur as inputs. Relationships between variables were not significant, even though those relationships can be used to predict tensile properties. The predictions may not be reliable, due to the limited conditions of the study and assumptions made. It is therefore recommended to apply multivariate regression analysis or Artificial Neural Network (ANN) techniques, with other chemical elements, process temperature and water flow rate etc. also as input variables. KEYWORDS: Chemical composition, In-process inspection, Low carbon steel, Multiple linear regression analysis, Tensile properties

Ethereum Application for Product Anti-Counterfeiting

The project's goal is to create an application that assures consumers don't have to rely solely on merchants to determine whether or not products are authentic. It also assures that producer may use this system to supply genuine products without having to run direct operated outlets, lowering product quality assurance costs dramatically. The trade in counterfeit goods is expanding, hurting the sales and earnings of businesses who are affected. This project proposes a fully-functional blockchain system to prevent product counterfeiting to ensure the identification and traceability of real products throughout the supply chain. Establishments only need to pay minimal transaction fees, and they no longer need to be concerned about the probability of obtaining counterfeit products. This project utilizes Ethereum blockchain and Remix to develop the application code in the form of a Smart Contract. For testing and implementation, Ganache and MetaMask are used, which simulates the blockchain environment and user account respectively. The Client-Side application leverages with Reactjs and Web3js to interact with smart contract and provide its functionalities to the users, maintaining the integrity of the system. Key Words: Ethereum, Anti-Counterfeit, Solidity, Web3js, Reactjs, Ganache

Different fears, same alliance: Multilateralism, assurance and the origins of the 1951 United States–New Zealand–Australia alliance

How do power, interests and threats influence the creation of military alliances? Under what conditions do multilateral and bilateral alliances emerge? Are shared threat perceptions necessary for alliance creation? This article addresses these longstanding questions through developing and refining theories of alliance creation and design and tests them using new archival data from Australia and the United States. The theory and empirics refine balance of threat theory through developing and/or testing other theories regarding the balance of power, threat perception, assurance, signalling and control. Empirically, the article shows that although after the 1950 Korean War the United States wanted Japan to be capable of withstanding Soviet and Chinese challenges, Australia, New Zealand and the Philippines feared that this would allow future Japanese naval militarism. Truman sought to secure regional buy-in to his Japanese settlement through one multilateral alliance, given bilateralism’s costs of assuring multiple allies, but had to settle for several bilateral alliances given regional refusal to ally with Japan. The findings show that bilateral alliances incur previously neglected ‘assurance costs’ and that alliances are possible between states with divergent threat perceptions.

CRFormer: Complementary Reliability Perspective Transformer for Automotive Components Reliability Prediction Based on Claim Data

Reliability prediction has been studied in many industries for managing stocks and reducing quality assurance costs and production costs. Particularly, in the automotive industry, reliability prediction is performed based on two automobile reliability perspectives, time and mileage. To maximize cost savings, researchers attempted reliability prediction with short-term inputs. However, limited information on short-term inputs resulted in unsatisfactory prediction results for the long warranty periods. Additionally, the overall evaluation metrics could not reflect the pattern-wise performance, such as the increasing failure patterns. This study proposes Complementary Reliability perspective Transformer (CRFormer) based on Transformer encoder to achieve enriched representations from a short-term input sequence. CRFormer fuses different automobile reliability perspective information and automobile features to compensate for the limited information on short-term input. The performance of CRFormer is evaluated based on automobile claim data accumulated over 16 years. Results showed that compared to previous methods in terms of overall, pattern-wise, and pattern similarity evaluation metrics, CRFormer achieved outstanding performance in time and mileage reliability prediction. Lastly, visualization results and survival analysis based on accurate model prediction can be used to support decision-making to reduce quality assurance costs and production costs.

Automobile parts reliability prediction based on claim data: The comparison of predictive effects with deep learning

An automobile company provides quality assurance service based on warranty period, which includes duration and distance driven. The concerned automobile company provides a warranty that begets quality assurance costs in case an accident occurs during this time. If the probability of failure can be ascertained based on the quality assurance area, it will be convenient to manage each part, and it will reduce the cost of quality assurance. It has been reported that failure data is required to predict reliability, thus, claim data containing information about the cause of failure, parts involved, number of days of use, mileage was used in this study. Because these claim data depend on unpredictable accidents, they can be intermittent and irregular. However, the recent accumulation of claim data has provided further opportunities to improve our ability to predict reliability. We collected up to 305,965 claims for a given automobile model over a period of 6–14 years. Using these data, we devise various deep learning model to predict the number of failures and estimate reliability in the presence of these number of failures using the following deep learning methods: 1D convolutional neural network, recurrent neural network (RNN), and sequence to sequence(Seq2Seq). Further, various approaches were used to compare the effectiveness of the proposed models: parametric methods, including Weibull distribution assumption; time-series methods including ARIMA model; and machine learning methods including support vector machine and random forest. Of all the models we tested, the proposed RNN model in this work produces superior performance in failure and reliability prediction. Using this method, an automobile company can significantly reduce costs by predicting the problems of new vehicle models in advance by securing reliability, as well as an accurate prediction of the number of future failures of each automobile part.

Utilization of diagnostic resources and costs in patients with suspected cardiac chest pain.

AimsNon-acute chest pain is a common complaint and can be caused by various conditions. With the rising healthcare expenditures of today, it is necessary to use our healthcare resources effectively. This study aims to give insight into the diagnostic effort and costs for patients with non-acute chest pain.Methods and resultsFinancial data of patients without a cardiac history from four hospitals (January 2012–October 2018), who were registered with the national diagnostic code ‘no cardiac pathology’ (ICD-10 Z13.6), ‘chest wall syndrome’ (ICD-10 R07.4), or ‘stable angina pectoris’ (ICD-10 I20.9) were extracted. In total, 74 091 patients were included for analysis and divided into the following final diagnosis groups: no cardiac pathology: N = 19 688 (age 53 ± 18), 46% male; chest wall syndrome: N = 40 858 (age 56 ± 15), 45% male; and stable angina pectoris (AP): N = 13 545 (age 67 ± 11), 61% male. A total of approximately €142.7 million was spent during diagnostic work-up. The total expenditure during diagnostic effort was €1.97, €8.13, and €10.7 million, respectively for no cardiac pathology, chest wall syndrome, and stable AP per year. After 8 years of follow-up, ≥95% of the patients diagnosed with no cardiac pathology or chest wall syndrome had an (cardiac) ischaemic-free survival.ConclusionThe diagnostic expenditure and clinical effort to ascertain non-cardiac chest pain are high. We should define what we as society find acceptable as ‘assurance costs’ with an increasing pressure on the healthcare system and costs.

Rural water service delivery: addressing the hidden development crisis

This paper discusses a financial and institutional solution to the ongoing crisis of poor functionality of rural water sources in less-developed countries in Africa and elsewhere. It describes the outcomes of a learning journey undertaken since 2011 by Whave Solutions, a Ugandan rural water maintenance provider and advocacy body operating in several hundred rural communities working in close partnership with communities, local governments, and the Ministry of Water and Environment. The paper describes the root causes of failed rural water delivery, and describes how these have been addressed through collective action on the ground. The aim is to fulfil Uganda’s national development goals and Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6.1, building a comprehensive system for rural water functionality. This paper presents evidence of the cost of full functionality assurance, and discusses which tariff modalities and institutional structures are best suited for stable and sustained reliable water supply in future years nationwide. Weak regulation and weak governance are found to be among the barriers preventing these modalities and structures from being established. However, the dominant constraint to progress is found to be the failure of the aid sector to recognize its contribution to weak governance and its failure to take coordinated action to correct this. The paper concludes with specific recommendations for investors in water infrastructure, donors, and aid practitioners.

A survey on automatically constructed universal knowledge bases

A universal knowledge base can be defined as a domain-independent ontology containing instances. Ontologies define the concepts and relations among these concepts and are used to represent a domain of interest. These universal knowledge bases are the elementary units for automated reasoning on the Semantic Web. The Semantic Web is an extension of the World Wide Web which facilitates software agents to share content beyond the limitations of applications and websites. This survey focuses on the most prominent automatically constructed universal knowledge bases including KnowItAll, DBpedia, YAGO, NELL, Probase, BabelNet and Knowledge Vault. We take a closer look at how these knowledge bases are built, in particular at the information extraction and taxonomy generation process and investigate how they are used in practical applications. Due to quality concerns, the most successful and widely employed knowledge bases are manually constructed to maintain high quality, but they suffer from low coverage, high assembly and quality assurance cost. On the contrary, automatic approaches for building knowledge bases try to overcome these drawbacks. Although it is strenuous to achieve the same level of quality as for manual knowledge bases, we found that the surveyed automatically constructed knowledge bases have shown promising results and are useful for many real-world applications.

A risk management perspective on CSR and the marginal cost of debt: empirical evidence from Europe

This article investigates the association between CSR and marginal credit costs of European companies. We provide instance for a negative association based on a variety of model specifications and fine-grained measures for CSR. These results can be explained in light of the increasing relevance of socially responsible investors for financing costs of companies. We further apply the risk management perspective on CSR to the credit market and show that the insurance-like property of CSR is especially relevant for companies in relative financial distress as measured by the interest coverage ratio. This study also examines the association between CSR assurance and credit costs and provides evidence that creditors reward non-financial insurance by reduced required rate of returns. Finally, we contribute to the corporate governance literature by modelling the association between different board characteristics and credit costs.

Blockchain and Internet of Things for Modern Business Process in Digital Economy—the State of the Art

In addition to functionalities, business process management (BPM) involves several key indicators such as openness, security, flexibility, and scalability. Optimizing system performance is becoming a great challenge for an ever-increasing large-scale distributed application system in the digital economy on the Internet of Things (IoT) era. In a centralized BPM, many indicators, such as security and openness, or cost and flexibility, are conflicting with each other. For example, inviting new partners across enterprises, domains, and regions to form a service workflow exposes new risks and needs additional security mechanisms for scrutiny; enhancing the flexibility of business workflow compositions increases the cost of security assurance. Blockchain technology (BCT) has thrown the light on the development of vital solutions to various BPM problems. BCT has to be integrated with other BPM system components that often involve IoT devices to implement specified functionalities related to the application. Currently, the potentials of using BCT have been explored although still at an early stage. In this paper, the states of the art are presented to identify emerging research topics, challenges, and promising applications in integrating BCT into the development of BPM.

Optimization of Clutch Drum Heat Treatment Processing Condition for Automobile AT using "Robust Design" ~ Reduction of variation in teeth deformation amount by optimizing clutch drum welding process condition ~

A lot of parts for transmitting power are built in the inside of the automatic transmission of the automobile. Clutch pack parts having important functions related to speed change adopt machining and heat treatment processes as the main manufacturing method from the viewpoint of high productivity and demanding dimensional accuracy requirement. In the welding and heat treatment process, quality defects such as variation in dimensional accuracy due to thermal deformation of the drum teeth portion occur. In solving this quality problem, we optimized processing conditions by using quality engineering method (Taguchi method), realized quality assurance and low cost by reducing variation in teeth deformation amount.

A Hybrid Approach for Test Case Prioritization using PSO Based on Software Quality Metrics

Effective functionality checking of any software application is the crucial event that determines the quality of outcome obtained. Generally, checking scenarios that involves multiple test cases in mixture with multiple components is time consuming and also increases the quality assurance cost. Selection of suitable method/approach for optimization and prioritization of test cases as well as appropriate evaluation of the application would result in reduction of fault detection effort without appreciable information loss and further would also significantly decrease the clearing up cost. In the proposed method, test cases are optimized and then prioritized by Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm (PSO) and Improved Cuckoo Search algorithm (ICSA), respectively. Finally, the result will be evaluated for software quality measures.

A Study on Course Management System Implementation in Indonesian Higher Education Institutions

Information technology development nowadays has brought new colors in the higher education learning process. In Indonesia, the current trend showed a higher use of CMS to support the existing conventional learning method in the classrooms. This paper attempts to understand the characteristics of CMS implementation based on a survey at several higher education institutions in Indonesia. There were 9 selected higher education institutions observed in this study. The objectives were to find out the CMS implementation in terms of: 1) the management of CMS implementation, 2) the evaluation, 3) originality of materials, platform, and feature; and 4) participation level. The result showed that the use of CMS in these institutions, in general, was to support the classroom conventional learning method by providing a repository of lecture notes and communication forum/media outside the classroom. The management task mostly was taken care by a specific unit. A Moodle (freeware) was found as a typical platform in use, and none of the institutions chose to use paid platform i.e. Blackboard. The accessibility of CMS used was kept closed for limited group of people due to high cost of material originality assurance. Observation also found that there was not much attempts in evaluating the success of CMS implementation in each institution, whereas the success measurement was limited to the users’ satisfaction level. The majority of institutions claimed a good internal participation level (with lecturers and students as the main users), but in general we found that lecturer participation in most institutions were low or even very low.

ANALISIS PENGENDALIAN KUALITAS PROSES PRODUKSI PIE SUSU PADA PERUSAHAAN PIE SUSU BARONG DI KOTA DENPASAR

Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui apakah pengendalian kualitas yang dilakukan oleh Perusahaan Pie Susu Barong sudah optimal. Penelitian dilakukan di Perusahaan Pie Susu Barong di Kota Denpasar. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode penelitian deskriptif. Metode pengambilan sampel menggunakan random sampling. Data yang digunakan adalah jumlah kerusakan produk pada periode Oktober sampai dengan November 2017. Teknik analisis data menggunakan alat statistical quality control, yaitu diagram peta kendali p dan diagram sebab akibat serta analisis biaya kualitas. Hasil analisis biaya kualitas menunjukkan pengendalian kualitas belum optimal, karena tingkat kerusakan aktual 7884 biji pie susu total biaya kualitas (TQC) sebesar Rp 45.130.510 yang terdiri dari biaya pengawasan kualitas (QCC) sebesar Rp 35.669.710 dan biaya jaminan kualitas (QAC) sebesar Rp 9.460.800 lebih besar dibandingkan tingkat kerusakan 15.308 biji pie susu dengan total biaya kualitas optimum (TQC*) sebesar Rp 36.740.386 yang terdiri dari biaya pengawasan kualitas (QCC*) sebesar Rp 18.370.786 dan biaya jaminan kualitas (QAC*) sebesar Rp 18.369.600.
 Kata Kunci: Biaya Kualitas, Kualitas, Pengendalian Kualitas, Statistical Quality Control

Cost Effectiveness of Software Defect Prediction in an Industrial Project

AbstractSoftware defect prediction is a promising approach aiming to increase software quality and, as a result, development pace. Unfortunately, the cost effectiveness of software defect prediction in industrial settings is not eagerly shared by the pioneering companies. In particular, this is the first attempt to investigate the cost effectiveness of using the DePress open source software measurement framework (jointly developed by Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, and Capgemini software development company) for defect prediction in commercial software projects. We explore whether defect prediction can positively impact an industrial software development project by generating profits. To meet this goal, we conducted a defect prediction and simulated potential quality assurance costs based on the best possible prediction results when using a default, non-tweaked DePress configuration, as well as the proposed Quality Assurance (QA) strategy. Results of our investigation are optimistic: we estimated that quality assurance costs can be reduced by almost 30% when the proposed approach will be used, while estimated DePress usage Return on Investment (ROI) is fully 73 (7300%), and Benefits Cost Ratio (BCR) is 74. Such promising results, being the outcome of the presented research, have caused the acceptance of continued usage of the DePress-based software defect prediction for actual industrial projects run by Volvo Group.

PELAKSANAAN PELAYANAN PRIMA DALAM MENINGKATKAN KEPUASAN MASYARAKAT (Studi kasus Pelayanan Pengurusan Kartu Keluarga di Kecamatan Menganti, Gresik)

IMPLEMENTATION OF PRIMA SERVICE IN IMPROVING COMMUNITY SATISFACTION (Case Study of Family Card Handling Service in Kecamatan Menganti, Gresik)This research is meant to find out the implementation of excellent service to increased people satisfaction where the focus of the proposed research is trying to understand about the public service excellence in improving people's satisfaction at maintenance services of the Kartu Keluarga (KK). This research is associative descriptive research with quantitative approach. Survey method is done by issuing interviews and distributing questionnaires. Indicators that used in the service excellence are simplicity, clarity, certainty of time, accuracy, security, responsibility, completeness of facilities and infrastructure, ease of access, discipline, courtesy and friendliness and comfort. Indicators in the people satisfaction it can be done by measuring Indeks Kepuasan Masyarakat (IKM) i.e. the procedures, conditions of service, the clarity of service personnel, disciplinary care workers, the responsibility of service personnel, the ability of service personnel, speed of service, justice to get service, courtesy and friendliness of the clerk, reasonableness of fees service, cost of service assurance, service schedule certainty, convenience and security environment ministry. The subjects were employees of the service and the people who perform the maintenance services of Kartu Keluarga 150 respondents using quota sampling method is sampling. Based on interviews and distributed questionnaires showed that the excellent service performed by employees, especially service management to increasing People Satisfaction in District Menganti, Gresik is good and the people are satisfied with the services provided by employees. Keywords: Excellence Service, People Satisfaction

Atomic Leverage: Compellence with Nuclear Latency

ABSTRACTNuclear proliferation is not a binary outcome with uniform consequences, but instead spans a continuum of latent capacity to produce nuclear weapons. At various thresholds of technical development, some countries leverage nuclear latency to practice coercive diplomacy. How and when does nuclear technology provide a challenger with the most effective means to extract concessions in world politics? This article claims that compellence with nuclear latency puts a challenger on the horns of a credibility dilemma between demonstrating resolve and signaling restraint, and identifies a sweet spot for reaching an optimal bargain where the proliferation threat is credible while the assurance costs of revealing intent are low. Historical studies of South Korea, Japan, and North Korea validate this Goldilocks principle and find that it consistently reflects the ability to produce fissile material. Contrary to conventional wisdom about proliferation, nuclear technology generates political effects long before a country acquires nuclear weapons.

The Comparative Governance of Collective Action

We adopt a comparative institutional approach to examine the most efficient way of dealing with market failure. We develop a typology of market failures based on the extent of externalities and information asymmetries and define the distinct transaction costs associated with each type. We then consider the relative efficacy of alternate governance forms in dealing with these costs, arguing that enforcement costs are lowest under the state, assurance costs under collectives, and fiduciary costs under non-profits. Further, we argue that for-profits can help address problems of market failure that require either co-specialized business capabilities or the development of new solutions. These arguments combine to produce a mapping between different market failure situations and the optimal arrangement to deal with them, including various hybrid arrangements. Our study thus contributes to work in both public economics and business strategy by developing a holistic theory of how public-private interactions are best governed.