Search results

The purpose of this article is to examine the difficulties associated with quality costing and propose a solution based upon the use of knowledge management techniques.

A widely available software tool is used to create a quality costing ontology based upon the prevention appraisal failure classification of quality costs. This ontology is used for the collection, processing, sharing and use of quality cost‐related knowledge. The ontology was evaluated using case study data and compared with conventional approaches to quality costing.

The quality costing ontology is easier and more efficient than conventional quality costing methods. It has greater capability in terms of the analysis and use of quality costing knowledge and overcomes the barriers to quality costing due to poor understanding and awareness.

The quality costing ontology provides a platform for researchers to investigate quality cost behaviour within a well‐structured environment. The use of alternative classifications to prevention appraisal failure in the ontology need to be investigated further.

Traditionally, training and education have been used to rectify poor understanding and awareness of quality costs but with limited success. The quality cost ontology provides an alternative solution that uses knowledge management (KM) technology and is based on information systems.

The authors could find no research or published paper that has discussed the role of KM in quality costing.

The necessity for sustainable development and high building performance has led to the adoption of smart building technologies (SBTs) in the construction community. The SBTs adoption has been hindered in many different parts of the world due to several constraints underpinning the project management processes to help adopt SBTs. This paper presents a systematic review of relevant literature on barriers underpinning the project management processes on the adoption of SBTs.

This paper presents a systematic review of relevant literature on barriers to technology adoption published in academic peer-reviewed journals and conference papers. The study adopted a systematic review technique on 56 relevant articles and conference papers in relation to barriers to adoption of technology, and barrier frequency was employed to select the most reported barriers.

The study revealed the most reported barriers underpinning project management process towards SBTs adoption, which include lengthy approval process for new SBTs, structure and organization of the construction industry, higher cost for smart construction practices and materials, unfamiliarity with smart building technology and technical difficulty during construction process.

To both the industry practitioners and policymakers, this review provides a valuable reference during implementation. Also, to the academic scholars on embarking on further empirical studies, the developed checklist of SBTs barriers could be important and useful.

This study has contributed to the knowledge of barriers underpinning the project management processes on SBTs adoption by identifying the most reported barriers in literature.

Significant numbers of business process management (BPM) projects fail. Their failure is attributed toward many factors. Among them, low quality of BPM is one reason. Some of the tasks in BPM have their roots in business process reengineering (BPR). The literature has cited many different critical success and failure factors for quality BPM and BPR. Lack of software tools is one of the technology-oriented factors that results in poor BPM and BPR. This paper aims to build a generic feature set offered by software tools for process modeling their analysis implementation and management. It presents an objective analysis in identifying weaknesses and strengths of these tools, primarily for BPM.

A method is proposed to evaluate the quality of process reengineering and management delivered by software tools. It consists of four phases: feature extraction, tool selection, data extraction and tool evaluation.

The data gathered is quantified to test research hypotheses, the results are statistically significant and highlight multiple areas for future improvements. Moreover, the cluster visualizations created also help to understand the strengths and weaknesses of BPM/BPR tools.

Despite the research approach used, there is a chance of subjectivity when it comes to evaluating different tools.

The paper includes implications for practitioners and researchers for choosing appropriate software tool for process modeling, analysis, implementation and management, matching their requirements with BPM and BPR. It also identifies features that are missing in these tools.

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of BPM and supporting tools, relates them to key stages of BPM life cycle and BPR methodologies. It also identifies various areas for further development in these tools.