This paper presents a definition of service systems that is simple, comprehensive, actionable, and, most of all, differentiates service from product systems. We propose as the defining characteristic of a service system the significant presence of human beings, either as individuals or as organizations, as part of the service system during the time of use. We hypothesize that the main implicati...

Improving the product reliability is the main concern in both manufacturing and service processes which is obtained by monitoring the reliability-related quality characteristics. Nowadays, products or services are the result of processes with dependent stages referred to as multistage processes. In these processes, the quality characteristic in each stage is affected by the quality characterist...

This paper demonstrates that, for large-scale tests, the match and non-match similarity scores have no specific underlying distribution function. The forms of these distribution functions require a nonparametric approach for the analysis of the fingerprint similarity scores. In this paper, we present an analysis of the discrete distribution functions of the match and non-match similarity scores...

Since the early 90's a number of papers on \robust" digital watermarking systems have been presented but none of them uses the same robustness criteria. This is not practical at all for comparison and slows down progress in this area. To address this issue, we present an evaluation procedure of image watermarking systems. First we identify all necessary parameters for proper benchmarking and in...