Editorial

Citation

(2012), "Editorial", Asian Journal on Quality, Vol. 13 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/ajq.2012.48513aaa.001

Editorial

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Asian Journal on Quality, Volume 13, Issue 1.

Asian quality management practices

Welcome to our special issue featuring award-winning papers from the Asian Network for Quality 2011 (ANQ 2011) that had also been recommended by local quality committees.

Sustainable development of any enterprise over a long term in the context of changes in the environment, ecosystem and availability of resources has created new challenges. Many organizations have attempted various approaches in different parts of the world to address these issues with mixed results. The ANQ 2011 objectives were to learn from these approaches and plan for the future that is likely to be more turbulent. Each paper in this special issue presents valuable insights in various industries and academic fields, while serving the theme “Quality management as a key to sustainable development” for ANQ Congress, Ho Chi Minh, 2011.

The awarded papers were gathered by Professor Sang Chan Park at Kyung-hee University and Professor Sang Chul Lee at Korea Christian University. I should like to thank them and the supporting member committees of ANQ for providing a detailed picture of the stakeholder benefits, including society and the environment. On behalf of the contributors, we hope that you will enjoy reading the articles in this collection.

This issue also includes two papers that are regular submissions separate from the ANQ special issue. We trust our readers will enjoy: “An exploratory study of 5S: a multiple case study of multinational organizations in Mexico” by Suárez-Barraza and Ramis-Pujol and “Examining the implementation of Six Sigma training and its relationships with job satisfaction and employee morale” by Jung Lang Cheng.

Soo Wook KimChief Editor, AJOQ

How can quality management principles be applied to service, manufacturing industries

Quality management principles have been applied prosperously to the Manufacturing Industry domain. The focal points have shifted from product-oriented concepts to process-centered practices. Then, the application domain shift from Manufacturing to Service Industry becomes obvious. To investigate these practices, we invited researchers and practitioners from ANQ Asian Network for Quality organizations to participate in this theme issue. It is the theme editors’ opinion that quality management principles are fundamental enough to be applied to all aspects of Peoples’ Life not to mention their application to Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Industries.

The first two articles, contributed from Korea and China, provide examples of Service Industry applications in Gaming and Telecommunication area. The first article Fan et al. expands the concept of quality in service to “the intention for customers to choose the service” instead of measuring the satisfaction level of customer being served. The second article Lee et al. addresses quality in terms of performances and competitiveness especially in research and development stage of telecommunication technologies.

The next set of three articles, contributed from Japan and Taiwan, relate to the quality concept application to the manufacturing industry. The first article Kawamura et al. deals with the process control concept in semiconductor industry. The second article Kaneko et al. addresses a broader perspective of quality management systems for LED industry. The third article Cheng et al. is about Six Sigma application to the fluorescent lamp manufacturing industry.

We hope that these articles have enlightened some of the answers to the question “How can quality management principles be applied to the service, manufacturing industry” This theme issue will be useful to those wishing to unfold Quality principles locally to their own countries facing at different industrial development stages, and will also provide useful insights for Quality professionals around the world. On behalf of the contributors, we hope that you will enjoy reading articles in this collection.

Sang-Chan Park and Sang-Chul LeeGuest Editors

About the Guest Editors

Sang-Chan Park is a Professor in the Department of Healthcare Management, KyungHee University. He was formerly a Professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. He was formerly an Assistant Professor in the Department of Information Systems of the School of Business, University of Wisconsin in Madison. He received his Bachelor of Management degree from the Seoul National University, MBA degree from the University of Minneapolis, and his PhD degree in MIS from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. His research interest includes the application of artificial intelligence, especially machine learning methodologies, to the design of knowledge-based systems for various management principles. He has expanded his research domain into internet on things, healthcare management, management of technology, total quality management, quality information systems, e-commerce, e-learning, e-government, data mining, and educational technology for the gifted as well. He has published more than 50 SCI, SCIE journal articles. He was awarded a Fellow of SIM Society for Information Management, 1988, and a best paper award from Western Decision Science Institute, 2000. He also works as an editor for Information System and e-Business Journal.

Sang-Chul Lee is an Assistant Professor of Department of Management Information Systems at Korea Christian University, Korea. He holds B.S. from Asia United Theological University, and MBA and PhD in Management Information Systems from Kyung Hee University. His research interests include e-business strategies, e-commerce, data mining, customer relationship management, and MSEM Multi-group Structural Equation Modelling. He has published papers which have appeared in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, Expert Systems with Applications, Journal of MIS Research, Korean Management Review, Journal of the Korea Society for Quality Management, Information Systems Review, etc.