We study the impact of product recovery on a firm’s product quality choice, where quality is defined as an observable performance measure that increases a consumer’s valuation for the product. We consider three general forms of product recovery: (i) when product recovery reuses (after reprocessing) quality inducing components or material (e.g., remanufacturing), (ii) when product recovery does ...

A data-based methodology for improving product quality is proposed. Referred to as Data-Driven Quality Improvement (DDQI), the proposed method can cope with qualitative as well as quantitative variables, determine the operating conditions that can achieve the desired product quality, optimize operating condition under various constraints, and thus can provide useful information to improve produ...

Defect prediction is relatively a new research area of software quality assurance. A project team always aims to produce a quality product with zero or few defects. Quality of a product is correlated with the number of defects as well as it is limited by time and by money. So, defect prediction is very important in the field of software quality and software reliability. This paper gives you a v...

A firm has to make consumers aware of a new product introduction. It also has to convince them that the product is of high quality. In this paper, we consider the interplay between directly and indirectly informative advertising in a monopoly model with repeat purchase. When consumers observe the advertising expenditure, the firm may excessively advertise high quality. However, when consumers o...

The value of management decisions, the security of our nation, and the very foundations of our business integrity are all dependent on the quality of data and information. However, the quality of the data and information is dependent on how that data or information will be used. This paper proposes a theory of data quality based on the five principles defined by J. M. Juran for product and serv...

In this paper, we consider the problem of refactoring related software products specified in UML into annotative product line representations. Our approach relies on identifying commonalities and variabilities in existing products and further merging those into product line representations which reduce duplications and facilitate reuse. Varying merge strategies can lead to producing several sem...

This paper describes a previously unreported application of virtual environments – the prediction of product aesthetic quality. Successful prediction of aesthetic quality without the production of a physical prototype requires the integration of a number of ‘software’ models: an assembly model representing the manner in which the product is put together; an environment model providing a real wo...

A striking characteristic of high-tech products is the rapid decrease of their quality-adjusted prices. Empirical studies show that the rate of decrease of QAPs is typically not constant over time; QAPs decrease rapidly at early stages of the product and then the rate of decrease tapers o®. Studies also suggest that the QAP is positively correlated with the rate of product introductions: The fa...

In this paper, we describe an approach of software product line testing which is based on formal specifications of the desired properties. In a software product line, common behaviours are maintained at subsequent levels of the product development. Commonalities among products arise from the reuse of parts of the software. It is unclear, however, in which way test cases for one product can be r...