Discusses the need to include studies of reliability and maintainability during the design of any system. Topic areas addressed include availability calculations, complex systems and standby redundancy, availability and malfunction levels, design techniques, fault trees, functional maintenance, and others. (DH)

Discussion of abstracting systems focuses on the paradigm concept and identifies and explains four paradigms: communicational, or information theory; physical, including information retrieval; cognitive, including information processing and artificial intelligence; and systemic, including quality management. Emphasizes multidimensionality and…

This article focuses on the impact of research and education evaluation on two universities: Trento State University (Italy) and the University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands). The article adopts a system approach to evaluation and proposes a model to describe and analyse evaluation systems. The analysis has been carried out by means of in-depth…

Observations on general Japanese culture, business culture, specific business missions and strategies, characteristics of individual workers, and business operations emphasize production processes and policies, organization structure, performance support systems, general management practices, and attention to quality. A table comparing the human…

A procedural guide for developing personnel training programs, the document presents a model system which is an integration of a training process outline by the Kentucky Department of Child Welfare and the HumRRO systems approach training model. The first chapter, The Systems Approach to Training, provides background information. Chapter 2,…

Purpose: This paper aims to explore the quality profession's fascination with various models to depict complex interactive systems. Building on these and the outcome of a four-year action research programme, it provides a model which has potential for use by other professions. It has been tailored here to suit training and learning systems.…

Continuous quality improvement (CQI) models, which were first applied in business, are critical to making new technology-based learning paradigms and flexible learning environments a reality. The following are among the factors that have facilitated CQI's application in education: increased operating costs; increased competition from private…

This document synthesizes reports on quality issues and trends in vocational education and training (VET) in Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain. Discussed in the report's five sections are the following topics: quality concepts and their application to VET (VET in Europe, quality concepts and their application…