Quality is a form of management that is composed of the double approach of driving an organization towards excellence, while conforming to established standards and laws. The objective of quality confers advantages to companies: it makes them more resilient to change that can be unexpected or even chaotic; it makes them more competitive by identifying those steps in processes that do not offer added value.
No longer the concern of a small community of experts, even scientists and engineers working in the private sector will find that they will have to confront questions related to quality management in their day-to-day professional lives. This volume offers such people an unique entry into the universe of quality management, providing not only a cartography of quality standards and their modes of application - with particular attention to the ISO standards - but also a broader cultural context, with chapters on the history, prizes, deontology and moral implications of systems of quality management. This book thus opens the door to all those eager to take the first steps to learning how the principles of quality are organized today, and how they can be applied to his or her own activity.
The logistician plays a critical role in the growth of his or her company - in this third edition of Essentials of Logistics, the conceptual framework in which all the stakes and themes of logistics is systematically analyzed, with a strong focus on the role of the supply chain.
Indeed, many elements are critical to the successful logistical strategy: customer relation management, interactive information support, production optimization and process development, vision, strategy and operations management, and human resources and resource allocation. Growing out of a successful course given by the International Institute for the Management of Logistics (IML) of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), in Lausanne, and by the Ecole des Ponts-ParisTech (ENPC), the purpose of this book is to present a methodology allowing the reader to understand and act based on the critical factors embedded in the design of strategy. Concepts are thus combined with practical examples. Transversal vision and detailed case studies highlight the main themes of modern logistics and daily preoccupations of logisticians.
The book is addressed to all professionals of logistics: managers, planners and engineers; as well as to graduate students specializing in the field.
