monitoring, controlling and planning of quality costs within busi- ness processes. .... integrated system of competitive engineering tools: QFD in 5 steps, 6H-TRIZ ...
Expert System for Quality Cost Planning, Monitoring and Control S. Brad, M. Fulea, B. Mocan Technical University of Cluj-Napoca 15 Ctin Daicoviciu Street Cluj-Napoca, 400020 Abstract- On the market, there are some commercial available software tools for quality cost management. However, these tools do not incorporate specialized agents for handling complex tasks related to the current needs in quality cost planning, like interpretation of the results over a horizon of time and automatic generation of reliable guidelines to prioritize resources in order to improve the quality of the business processes. This paper is going to introduce the results of some researches performed by the authors in designing and developing an expert system for comprehensive monitoring, controlling and planning of quality costs within business processes. Results are already successful implemented in a large enterprise from chemical industry.
I. INTRODUCTION
ate financial effect if investing in various quality-related projects. The use of a “quality tool” able to “speak” the “money language” is crucial for bringing the support and commitment of the top management within the continuous quality improvement initiatives [11], [12], [13]. Studies have shown that, when the continuous quality improvement projects, internal audits and the actions focused on improving partnerships are described in terms of ROI (return on investment), the involvement of the top management immediately occurs [14]. Figure 1 qualitatively shows the effort required in fixing business process-related problems by a company having an average quality performance.
Recent surveys revealed that approximately two thirds of the market value of a company is not accounted by the official value statement [1]. This means that most of the intangible assets in a company are not visible. In the current business environment, this aspect becomes more and more relevant, so it must be captured and revealed. An excellent approach in this respect is the quantification of all activities that bring value added within the business system of the company. A. About Quality Costs To minimize the losses within the business system, an important issue is the capability to monitor and control the costs related to all value-added activities within the organizational processes, as well as to optimise the management system of “quality-related costs” (costs for achieving good quality, poorquality costs and “hidden” quality costs). Studies and developments around the topic of quality-related costs are closed to the field of quality management [2]. From the analysis of the relevant literature in the field, like references [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8] et al., several directions of research & development related to quality cost management are highlighted: (a) optimization of quality cost models; (b) comprehensive approach of quality related costs; (c) identification of hidden quality costs; (d) affordable quality cost models; (e) effective programs to implement quality cost management systems; (f) benefits and risks of applying quality cost management systems; (g) increase the efficiency of monitoring and control of quality-related costs. B. Quality Improvement Through Quality Cost Management Practice proved that, the most important success factor in any initiative of continuous quality improvement is the leadership [9], [10], [11]. Usually, managers do not see the immedi-
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Figure 1. Coordination effort to fix problems in an organization with average performance levels of its business processes (adapted from [13]).
Figure 2. Coordination effort to fix problems in an organization with high performance levels of its business processes (adapted from [13]).
Figure 2 illustrates where an organization is positioned if it succeeds to control and improve at high levels the value added activities within its business system. In order to move from a state revealed in figure 1 to a state as the one illustrated in figure 2, a careful management of quality-related costs is required. However, to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the planning, monitoring and control process of quality-related costs it is required the development and implementation of specialized IT solutions. II. THE PROBLEM Several software packages dealing with quality cost management are currently commercialized onto the market. From ethical reasons, they will not be nominated in this paper. The current software packages cover the following core functionalities: (a) detailed record of the quality cost items; (b) distribution of the quality costs to specific codes within the accounting system; (c) structured comparison of the quality costs collected over different time intervals; (d) comprehensive analysis of the quality costs related to suppliers, inspections, etc. The evolution of the business environment determines companies to enhance the area of quality cost management from the core production processes to the whole business system (leadership, policy and strategy, human resource management, resource administration, production processes, customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, society satisfaction, business performances) [14]. To this challenge, another two new key requirements occur in connection to quality-related cost management, as follow: (a) customization of quality cost system to fit the specific needs of each company; (b) automatic support (quality cost expert system) to master the business process complexity [13], [14]. The current quality-cost software packages do not solve properly the above mentioned requirements. In addition, the limitations of the current software applications also include: (a) presentation of the results are more on the language of accountants rather than on the language and understanding of the managers; (b) inexistence of expert modules within the software applications for automatic generation of priority actions; (c) lack of specialized layers for data systematization to perform a reliable risk analysis and quality cost planning; (d) low flexibility to operate in the network, because of obsolete architectures and functionalities (re-designing and re-implementing them into new technologies require significant budgets); (e) reduced facilities for responsibility allocation, etc. More than this, the current software applications of quality cost management make the data “feeding” process accessible only to accountants, due to their solutions of structuring and coding the information (with no “help” for profanes in the field). And something more: the current IT solutions of quality cost management have one supplementary drawback, that is, the annual implementation expenses are quite high (surveys have shown that, in most of the cases, the result is doubling the number of staff in the accounting department [3]). With such drawbacks, the efficiency and effectiveness of implementing a quality cost management system are dramatically reduced and the results are visible – only few companies have really implemented
quality cost management systems. In this respect, the development of intelligent and adaptable software applications for quality cost planning, monitoring and control becomes a real challenge. III. NEW RESEARCHES & DEVELOPMENTS Considering the current limitations in research and technological development around the topic of quality cost management, the authors of this paper have run researches and developments of almost three years to set up a highly-reliable and customer-oriented software tool for quality cost planning, monitoring, control and optimization, which incorporates the following top level features: 1. Possibility to be used in distributed business structures via Intranet; 2. Controlled access to data and information; 3. Comprehensive and detailed consideration of all items related to quality costs (to cover all processes, as recommended by the business excellence models [15]); 4. Flexibility in handling the quality cost items (insertion, completion, deletion, adaptation, etc.); 5. Controlled allocation of responsibilities for feeding the system with data and information (who, what, how, when, etc.); 6. Systematization of the collected information on several levels of detailing and facile presentation for data analysis; 7. Expert module („intelligent agent”) to generate automatic recommendations for continuous improvement of quality performances; 8. Detailed help to make the system accessible to any person (for data introduction); 9. Customizable to business specificity; 10. Friendly and ergonomic GUI. To develop such software tool, 4 major challenges should be over-passed in the stage of fundamental research. The first challenge relates to quality planning of a new and innovative software application. The second one relates to extend the definition of the quality-related costs over the overall business processes of an organization (including hidden quality costs). The third major challenge concerns with the development of an “intelligent agent” for quality costs planning, monitoring, control and optimization. The fourth major challenge refers to the development of a special algorithm to allow the introduction / deletion of new activities (cost items) within the system and to allow customization without affecting the quality of the results provided by the expert module. With respect to technological development, the main challenge relates with designing a highly-ergonomic interface to fit properly the user behaviors (users want fast training and easy interaction with the system), as well as to be according with usual working and communication practices in a large organization. A. About quality planning of the software application Quality planning of innovative software applications requires a comprehensive analysis of the “problem domain”. For this case, the volume in this project means 25 pages of data
concerning to business analysis and scenario development. The actors (roles in the systems) are: (a) the system coordinator; (b) the member in the network; (c) other software platforms (i.e. ERP); (d) the manager; (e) the analyst; (f) the system administrator; (g) the internal engine; (h) the helper during the set up phase of the system. A comprehensive information related to a certain action that “actors” in the system perform, should cover the following issues: why the actor uses the system?; what results does it wish?; what it should happen to use the system now?; what actions must be performed to use the system?; what information must be delivered to the system?; what information want to receive?; where?; when; why?; how?; quality characteristics; target values; reliability; functions; interdictions; intentional generated failures; failure modes and detection mechanisms; solutions for robust system development. To carry out this task, the method called Software-VOCT/AFD has been considered in this project. Results are used to build the Use Cases for system design. Quality planning of the complex software application should consider reliable tools. The solution proposed in this work is an integrated system of competitive engineering tools: QFD in 5 steps, 6H-TRIZ, AHP, IDEF0, Mind-Map, etc. Details about this methodology are presented in the reference [16]. The main outputs of the quality planning process are the followings: (a) weighted metrics, against which the performance of the software has been tested after code implementation (43 in this project); (b) a set of key functions, against which value was engineered within the system (66 in this project); (c) guidelines to solve innovatively contradictions between technical characteristics of the software (20 in this project). B. About definition of the standard database of quality costs The process of defining a comprehensive standard database, with quality costs items, involves a hard work; both related to accurate documentation of the quality cost system and to the creative generation of new quality cost items to meet the current needs and orientations. In this project, the quality costs are structured around the core modules of a business excellence model. In this respect, the main guide for business process definition is the EFQM model [15]. The tree-structure of the quality cost model has 9 blocks in the top, as follows: (1) leadership; (2) strategies, policies and marketing; (3) personnel management; (4) resource management; (5) core processes; (6) employee satisfaction; (7) customer satisfaction; (8) society satisfaction; (9) business results. Each of the 9 main blocks (called main processes), includes several sub-processes. Each sub-process consists of activity-modules (called main activities) and each main activity comprises several basic activities (or elementary activities). All together, the “standard tree-structure” of the quality cost system of the new concept means: 92 sub-processes, 227 activity-modules and 512 elementary activities. Quality costs are collected to the level of elementary activities on three areas: human resource-related quality costs; material resource-related quality costs and other resource-related quality costs. To have a better image around the size of the database, a listing of elementary activities covers over 100 A4 pages. For an easy han-
dling of the quality costs, a simple and innovative way of cost calculation should be generated. In this case, the formulas were built considering data related to time, quantity, unitary costs, etc.). Each cost item is additionally assigned to one of the following affinity groups: (a) prevention costs, (b) appraisal costs, (c) internal failure costs, (d) external failure costs, as well as (e) hidden costs related to the categories before mentioned. On this way, the software application offers a high flexibility in designing the quality cost items related to each elementary activity. To enhance the flexibility, additionally features should be considered: adding, deleting, freezing/unfreezing main activities, elementary activities and quality cost items. Also, detailed help should be given for supporting the creation of elementary activities and quality cost items (see figure 3). C. About designing the expert module The design and implementation of the intelligent agent (automatic generation of recommendations for improving business system performances) is the highest-risk topic, but this represents one of the strongest selling points of this software application. For designing the intelligent agent, a special algorithm was applied. It is called I-TRIZ and helps the innovation process [17]. The intelligent agent includes rules for generating “tangible” information about sub-processes, module-activities and elementary activities, in terms of: value weights (impacts), intercorrelations, relative difficulties, assessment criteria, ways of structuring quality cost items, ways of adding and ranking new items that are introduced by the users (the customization process), etc. Also, the intelligent agent shows how to prioritize poorquality costs and how to relate them to the costs of good quality – this aspect is extremely important for the planning process of the quality cost system, as well as for setting up internal projects continuous quality improvement within the organization. To solve the above mentioned issues, Concurrent-QFD, IAM, PMM, AHP and fuzzy logic approaches were effectively applied.
Figure 3. Screenshot showing how quality costs are set-up within a given project template.
The expert system gives recommendations about the key priorities where company must act to reduce losses. Its algorithm is based on the following data: (a) the current results about quality costs, collected over the planned time-horizon; (b) the planned value of the total quality costs (as percentage from the company’s revenues over the considered period of time); (c) the weights, relative difficulties and correlations that describe the sub-processes and activities of the business system. To ensure the accuracy of the intelligent agent even when the system is customized by the user, the system is designed that all new activities are introduced and defined under a wellcontrolled environment, using special criteria (7 criteria for impact definition; 7 criteria for difficulty definition) and welltested ranking procedures (based on fuzzy logic approaches). In order to establish the overall performance of the business system, the software tool provides a very powerful feature, based on the Six Sigma model [10]. According to Six Sigma model, the business capability is related to 9 levels of performance. Just for the sick of exemplification, a good capability of the business system starts from the level where the total quality costs during the considered time-horizon do not exceed 25% from the company’s revenues. An excellent capability is when the total quality costs are below 10% of the revenues. Levels below 10% can be achieved only when the company has mature and well-controlled business processes and continuously applies radical innovation to increase process robustness. D. About software application architecture The software application has a “client-server” type architecture, allowing several users in the organization to work with the application at the same time and from different locations. A user accesses the application through a personal account; each user has specific rights, depending on his or her role in planning, monitoring or analyzing the quality costs.
Figure 4. The architecture of the software application.
The diagram describing the application layers is shown in figure 4. The main blocks of the system are further described. The “client connection” block: this block manages the connection of the client application to the software application’s server. Its common tasks include connection opening, as well as configuration and data flow management (command decoding, answer coding and sending). This block uses the TCP/IP functions provided by the operating system. The “command queue” block: this block manages the incoming commands via the client connection. It stores commands in a queue and manages queue processing and the command processing results (command result processing means logging, in case of error, or returning results to the upper block for sending, if command processing was successful). Command processing is done sequentially, according to the FIFO model. Each successfully processed command returns a data set which is returned to the client. The “command interpreter” block: this block processes commands from clients, that are received via the “command queue” block and returns a data set as a result for each command it processes. Possible commands include the ones directly posted by clients but also special commands issued by the EN (the internal engine), such as automating project activation and project milestone management. During command processing the database is accessed only through the “database controller” block. The “database controller” block: effective database access is done through this block. Data is posted or retrieved from the physical database using SQL queries. Because results are returned as character strings, the “database controller” block is the only one (in the entire system) that actually depends on the database driver. Switching to another database management system (DBMS) is as simple as adapting this block to the new DBMS; the client application is independent of the DBMS. The “user / EN actions (functions)” block: this block translates user actions (input) into a specific list of functions supported by the system. Some examples of functions are further described. The first example is related to functions directly called by the users: login into the application; quality cost structure management – adding new costs, editing or deleting existing ones; main activity search by specific keywords; user account management – adding new users, editing or deleting existing accounts; project management – adding new projects; project milestone management – milestone definition; report visualization. Examples of functions called by the internal engine of the application are: error log management – creation of new logs, appending data to existing ones; automatic event logging (user actions on project data trigger events automatically logged by the system for possible problem tracking); automatic project activation or deactivation; expert system-related functions. The “command (function) interpreter” block: this block processes the functions described above and translates them into a list of “commands” (server commands – operations to be executed by the server module of the application). These com-
mands are compatible with the ones of the “command interpreter” server block. The “command engine” block: this block manages commands received from the “command (function) interpreter” and returns resulting data (generated by command processing). This block uses services provided by the “server connection” block to post commands or to retrieve results received from the server (in a raw form). The “server connection” block: this block manages the client connection to the server using the TCP/IP functions provided by the operating system (connection establishing, connection management, data read, data write, connection error handling). Both the client and the server modules are developed using Borland Delphi version 7. The DBMS is the FireBird version 1.5 and it is directly accessed by Delphi through the built-in InterBase component suite. Network functionality is based on TCP/IP and was implemented using the INDY component suite version 9. E. More about the features of the software application The application allows a root user (the system administrator – usually the quality director), to perform tasks like: (a) Defining quality costs in templates of cost structures (cost structures; material, human and other involved resources; individuals within the organization, responsible with monitoring each defined cost). The application has a built-in template containing an exhaustive and well-structured database with activities linked to quality; (b) Generating and handling the application-related projects. A project in this software application means planning, monitoring and analyzing quality costs for a specific period of time. Its main characteristics are: the monitored period of time; the cost structure specific to the monitored period (chosen from the template list); the time interval during which the numeric values for all defined costs have to be entered by the users, together with optional milestones to be reached during this interval; an optional set of external documents (usually internal procedures, documentation related to the quality management system of the company, etc.). The reports generated by the software application may be added to this document-set, allowing a user to access them on any computer which runs the application (this document-set is automatically stored on the server; each document may be accessed by a user only based on specific rights, granted by the one who originally posted the document); (c) Goals to be reached, such as numeric value for the total quality costs, costs involved to ensure a good quality (assessment, control, prevention, etc.), poor-quality costs (internal and external failures) – information are used by the internal engine of the application for interpreting the results; (d) Goals to be reached in the project (target values for different types of costs); (e) Management of the list with the users, which are responsible for monitoring quality costs. Completing each project’s data (values corresponding to costs/resources) is done by several users, as specified by the system administrator.
A project can be analyzed by the top management and by analysts. For each project, several reports can be obtained, such as: (a) The technical report: it shows the progress of cost monitoring process. The completion level of the project at a given time is shown (global or for each involved user), together with information regarding to how milestone goals were reached; (b) Cost accounting: total/partial numeric values/sums for different types of costs or resources, goal status (what was obtained vs. what was planned), various graphic representations (e.g. balance of certain resource or cost types) and interpretation for the obtained values; (c) The expert system: it automatically generates, based on scientific methods, a list with activities to act upon, for reducing poor-quality costs. Screenshots with different characteristics of the software application are shown in figures 5, 6, 7 and 8: tree structure of the quality cost system, reports and automatic recommendations.
Figure 5. Screenshot with a tree structure of quality costs in a given project.
Figure 6. Screenshot with a bar-type result in a given project.
Figure 7. Screenshot with a pie-type result in a given project.
demonstrating the business advantages through the exploitation of the software tool; (c) training and simulation in the department of quality management (4 months); (d) generate the release 1.0 using the feedback from the quality management department (1 month); (e) setting up the project related to organizational aspects for implementing the software tool (organizing the team; generating the database with personal data, training the team) (4 months); (f) software tool installation and testing within the company’s network; (g) customization of the quality cost structure (3 months); (h) pilot phase implementation (6 months); (h) analysis of the results and improvements (1 month); (i) final implementation. The major challenges in the implementation phase were related to the customization process, definition of the quality cost articles, setting up of the IT infrastructure and organization of the team responsible for data collection. Currently, the second release of the application is under development. It will incorporate new features like: web interface, enhancement of the reporting tool, addition of a module for overall business excellence assessment and English translation. ACKNOWLEDGMENT Financial support from the Romanian Ministry of Education and Research, PNCDI-CALIST program, within the grant no. 5402/06.11.04/eQOST, is acknowledged with gratitude. REFERENCES [1] [2] [3] [4]
Figure 8. Screenshot showing the list of top priority activities automatically generated by the expert module.
Other characteristics of the software application are: detailed help; customization to any business type; designed to involve every employee (if necessary) in cost monitoring, not only the accounting department; built-in messaging system, through which users are automatically notified about new projects and project milestones (or they can just communicate with each other); automatically generated log, containing all operations performed in the system, so that the system administrator can easily track-down problems.
[5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12]
IV. CONCLUSIONS
[13]
Release 1.0 of this new software tool for quality costs management is available only in the Romanian language, being addressed to this specific market. It was successfully implemented in a very large enterprise from chemical industry. The implementation process involved several steps, as follow: (a) presentation of the beta version to the top management; (b) get the commitment of the top management for implementation by
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