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The purpose of this paper is intended to create a model to measure quality of service, using fuzzy linguistics to analyze the quality of service of medical tourism in Taiwan so as to find the direction for improvement of service quality in medical tourism.

The study developed fuzzy questionnaires based on the characteristics of medical tourism quality of service in Taiwan. Questionnaires were delivered and recovered from February to April 2014, using random sampling according to the proportion of medical tourism companies in each region, and 150 effective samples were obtained. The critical quality of service level is found through the fuzzy gap analysis using questionnaires examining expectations and perceptions of customers, as the direction for continuous improvement.

From the study, the primary five critical service items that improve the quality of service for medical tourism in Taiwan include, in order: the capability of the service provider to provide committed medical tourism services reliably and accurately, facility service providers in conjunction with the services provided, the cordial and polite attitude of the service provider eliciting a sense of trust from the customer, professional ability of medical (nursing) personnel in hospital and reliability of service provider.

The contribution of this study is to create a fuzzy gap analysis to assess the performance of medical tourism service quality, identify key quality characteristics and provide a direction for improvement and development for medical tourism service quality in Taiwan.

Electronics manufacturers use robots extensively in printed circuit board (PCB) assembly to attain high product quality at low production times. In robotic PCB assembly, fixed pick‐and‐place (FPP) causes unnecessary waste of time. A former paper explored the dynamic pick‐and‐place (DPP) approach to avoid robot waiting time and thus reduce robotic PCB assembly time. To further decrease robot moving or working space when the DPP approach is applied, this paper presents the rotary magazine‐based DPP approach. Experimental results show that the proposed approach not only reduces robot working space, but also reduces assembly time. The more insertions and component types, the more the assembly time is reduced.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the cause-and-effect relationship and the mutually influential level among information security control items, as well as to provide organizations with a method for analyzing and making systematic decisions for improvement.

This study utilized the Fuzzy DEMATEL to analyze cause-and-effect relationships and mutual influence of the 11 control items of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 27001 Information Security Management System (ISMS), which are discussed by seven experts in Taiwan to identify the core control items for developing the improvement strategies.

The study has found that the three core control items of the ISMS are security policy (SC1), access control (SC7) and human resource security (SC4). This study provides organizations with a direction to develop improvement strategies and effectively manage the ISMS of the organization.

The value of this study is for an organization to effectively dedicate resources to core control items, such that other control items are driven toward positive change by analyzing the cause-and-effect relation and the mutual influential level among information security control items, through a cause-and-effect matrix and a systematic diagram.

Notes that, until now, to route robotics travel, most investigations have utilized the fixed coordinate of placement points and magazine of the traveling salesman problem (TSP) method to sequence the placement points after the magazine has been arbitrarily assigned. Points out that, in fact, robotics travel routing should be based on a relative coordinate because the robotics, board and magazine simultaneously move at different speeds during assembly. Consequently, the coordinates of placement point and magazine are constantly changing. In this study, a novel tabu search (TS) based approach is presented. The proposed approach can arrange the placement sequence and assign the magazine slots to yield a performance better than the conventional one. Results presented herein also demonstrate that the larger the number of placement points and/or part numbers, the better the performance.

To build assembly machines to best suit the needs of anticipated production, machine builders need to spend much time deciding what type of machine system and control system to select and what kinds of devices to use in material handling. Especially when an expert builder leaves a company, knowledge goes with him and is lost to the company. Therefore, retention of valuable information in the form of a knowledge base is a very desirable resource. The purpose of this paper is to develop a computer‐based expert system that can be used as a consulting system by assembly machine builders to conquer the above difficulties. This expert system collects expert assembly machine knowledge and experience. Then, an evaluation is performed to ensure accuracy and reliability, and performance is evaluated by building a practical product. The expert system is found to be a valuable tool, providing significant information for machine builders.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a modified Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) model and calculates the performance of quality characteristic for the purpose of defining quality improvement strategy.

This study developed modified IPA by introducing the Mahalanobis Distance and multiple regression analysis to evaluate the performance gap and implicit importance of quality characteristics. This paper used a large air-conditioning manufacturer in Taiwan as the case analysis and study targets. It discussed and validated the modified IPA analytical results by studying case history and market analysis.

Through the case study, the quality characteristics of air-conditioning product and service needed to be improved immediately are Green product (Q3) and Repair service (Q10), and the Price (Q11) and Serviceability (Q2) could be kept or enhanced to win the market competitive advantages.

This study developed a modified IPA to help organization identifying key quality characteristics of product and service, and choosing its improvement strategies to win the market competitive advantages effectively.

To highlight the differences and common features of taboo search (TS) and genetic algorithms (GA) in solving the problem of board‐type sequencing on the assembly line simultaneously with the combined problem of feeder assignment and component placement sequencing in the printed circuit board (PCB) industry.

Two metaheuristics (search techniques) are used to solve three problems associated with the PCB assembly line: TS and GA. The implemented approach is used to solve the three problems on a single pick‐and‐place sequential machine with a stationary board table and stationary feeders, and with the use of the Euclidean metric.

The achieved results show a satisfactory reduction in assembly time, when TS and GA are compared with a random solution, with a slight superiority of TS over GA. However, the program running time is longer for TS.

The hypothetical case study used shows that in real life the savings could reach an average of 6 per cent when TS is used. Slightly lower savings are possible when GA is used.

This paper provides a clear insight into how some of the problems associated with the production of PCBs can be solved simultaneously using metaheuristics such as TS and GA.