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Case study: Quality improvement model in a car seat assembly line

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DOI: 10.1080/09537280500249223

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Production Planning & Control,
Vol. 16, No. 7, October 2005, 681–690

Case study: quality improvement model in a

car seat assembly line
J.-C. TSOU*y and J.-M. CHENz
yDepartment of Business Administration, China University of Technology No. 530,
Sec. 3, Juengshan Road, Hukou Township, Hsinchu County, Taiwan 303
zInstitute of Industrial Management, National Central University No. 300, Jung-da Road,
Jung-Li City, Taoyuan, Taiwan 32054

In this paper, we develop a quality improvement model based on the structure of classical
economic production quantity (EPQ) model. The asymmetrical truncated loss function is used
to evaluate the cost of poor quality in a production system. A practical quality improvement
case which follows the 6-sigma DMAIC method in a car seat assembly line is discussed to
verify the proposed model. Our model provides a fundamental structure for studying the cost
of quality improvement in a production system. Based on this model, the management
can evaluate the affect of quality investment to generate significant financial return in their
production line.

Keywords: Economics of production; Asymmetrical truncated loss function; 6-sigma

1. Introduction and restoration made earlier. Tapiero (1987) linked

optimal quality inspection policies and the resulting
Quality is one of the major topics in current research improvements in manufacturing costs. Fine (1988)
on production systems. Poor quality products decrease used a stochastic dynamic programming model to
customer satisfaction, reduce efficiency and increase the characterise optimal inspection policies, and added
cost of business operations. Thus there have been many quality-based learning effects to the model. Fine and
studies on the relationship between quality and econom- Porteus (1989) refined Porteus’ original work to allow
ics of production over the past two decades. Porteus smaller investments over time with potential process
(1986) initiated research in this field by incorporating improvement of random magnitude. Chand (1989)
the effect of defective items into the classical economic validated Porteus’ model when learning effect is present
order quantity (EOQ) model. The assumption was made in setups and process quality. In a series of papers,
that there is a probability q that the process would go Cheng (1989, 1991) included the production process
out of control while producing one unit of the product; reliability into a classical economic order quantity
and when q is close to zero, the optimal lot size and the model. Goyal and Gunasekaran (1990) studied the
cost rate can be derived approximately. Rosenblatt and implication of dynamic process quality control on lot
Lee (1986) formulated and analysed a similar model that sizing in a multi-stage production inventory system.
considers investment in process improvements. In a sub- Goyal et al. (1993) reviewed a series of studies in
sequent paper, Lee and Rosenblatt (1987) considered production and quality control. Hong et al. (1993)
the use of process inspection during a production run established the relationship between process quality
so that the shift to out-of-control state can be detected and investment. Ng and Hui (1996) developed a cost
model to determine the optimal number of learning
actions to be taken and the optimal action limit. That
*Corresponding author. Email: jtsou.tw@yahoo.com.tw model offers insight into the trade-off of the cost of
Production Planning & Control
ISSN 0953–7287 print/ISSN 1366–5871 online # 2005 Taylor & Francis
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080/09537280500249223
682 J.-C. Tsou and J.-M. Chen

quality and the cost of prevention. Banker et al. (1998) production quantity (EPQ) model. The total cost,
developed formal models of oligopolistic competition TC(Qi, I), can be written as:
to investigate whether equilibrium level of quality
increases as competition intensifies. Krishnan et al. TCðQi, I Þ ¼ production cost þ holding cost
(2000) examined the relationship between life-cycle þ setup cost þ poor quality cost
productivity and conformance quality in software pro- þ cost on quality investment.
ducts. Salameh and Jaber (2000) considered a special
production/inventory situation where items, received The notation in our model is summarised as follows.
or produced, are of imperfect quality. Ganeshan et al.
P: production cost of unit product.
(2001) analysed the interaction between the economics
I: investment on quality improvement during
of production and process quality with Taguchi’s
the N period planning horizon.
perspective of poor quality. Chen and Tsou (2003)
CU: rejection cost as the quality character above
developed a static financial model on quality investment
the upper specification limit/unit.
with Taguchi’s perspective of poor quality in a produc-
CL: rejection cost as the quality character below
tion system. Lloréns-Montes et al. (2004) investigated
the lower specification limit/unit.
the impact that implementing quality improvement
S: setup cost per period.
processes has on manufacturing flexibility. In this
Qi: production lot size in period i.
paper, based on the study of Chen and Tsou (2003),
h: holding cost per unit per period.
we propose a quality improvement model with asymme-
Gi
1: inventory carried from period i to i þ 1.
trical truncated loss function to analyse the cost on
di : demand in period i.
quality improvement in a production system. A practical
N: production period.
case of a car seat assembly line is used to verify this
D(X,I ): quality distribution function.
model.

(I ): population mean of quality characteristic.
This paper makes three significant contributions.
(I ): population standard deviation of quality
First, a quality improvement model is developed that
characteristic.
can be used to evaluate the total cost in a poor quality
L(X ): loss function of poor quality per unit product.
production system. In this model, we focus on the
K1, K2: Taguchi loss parameter.
financial return of quality improvement, but not the
USL: upper specification limits.
lot-size optimisation. This task is very difficult for a
LSL: lower specification limits.
traditional production-quality model. Second, the
X: value of the quality characteristic.
asymmetrical truncated loss function has been incorpo-
rated into our model, increasing the generality of this Each term in our objective function is defined as below:
model. Third, a practical case in a car seat assembly XN
line, which obeys the 6-sigma DMAIC methodology, Production cost ¼ Qi  P ð1Þ
is discussed to verify the proposed model. i¼1
In the next section, we introduce the model of this The first term in our model is the production cost.
paper. Then, a quality improvement case in a car seat The production cost is the cost to produce the product
assembly line is used to verify this model, following and includes both the material cost and manufacturing
the 6-sigma DMAIC methodology in the process of cost. The production cost during the N period can be
problem solving. Then, we use this case to verify written as the summation of the lot size multiplied by
the proposed model and compare the change after production cost of unit product in every period.
quality improvement. The last section is the conclusion XN
of this paper. Holding cost ¼ h½Gi
1 þ Qi
di  ð2Þ
i¼1
The second term in this equation is the holding cost,
2. The model which is the cost to store the product in the warehouse.
This includes the cost to rent the warehouse, salary pay
We assume a production line over N periods. The to the storekeeper and other management cost. The
primary goal of this model is to find the total cost of holding cost on the production line is the summation
a production system. The total cost, TC(Qi, I), is the of the holding cost of the inventory in the N period.
combination of the production cost, the holding cost, In equation (2), Gi
1 is the inventory carried from
the setup cost, the poor quality cost and the money previous period, Qi is the production lot size in period
spent on improving quality. This cost structure is i, and di is the demand in period i. [Gi
1 þ Qi
di] is the
based on the hypothesis of the classical economic inventory in period i and h[Gi
1 þ Qi
di] is the holding
 Case study: quality improvement model in a car seat assembly line
cost in period i. Hence, the total holding cost is equal
to the summation of the holding cost from period 1 to N.
X
N
Setup cost ¼ ðQi Þ  S ð3Þ
i¼1
The third term in our objective function is the setup
cost, which includes the cost to change the mould, the
cost to prepare material, the cost to adjust machines, etc.
In our model, the setup cost is equal to the summation
of the setup cost in every period. In equation (3), (Qi)
is a function of lot size. (Qi) is equal to zero when lot
size is zero and (Qi) is equal to one when lot size is
larger than zero.
XN Z1
Poor quality cost ¼ Qi  LðXÞ  DðX,IÞ dX ð4Þ
i¼1
1
The fourth term is the cost of poor quality, which
includes all the reject cost, rework cost and cost of
poor quality. This term is the summation of the product
of lot size and the poor quality cost of unit product in
every period.
In equation (4), D(X, I) is the quality characteristic
distribution function. We assume that the distribution
of items produced follows a normal distribution
function. Under this hypothesis, we can write the quality
distributive function as:
1 2 2 as the process moves away. A picture of the asymmet-
DðX, I Þ ¼ pffiffiffiffiffiffi e
ðX

ðI ÞÞ =2ðI Þ
ðI Þ 2
where (I) and
(I) are the standard deviation and
the mean of quality characteristic distribution function.
The value of (I) has an initial value and a positive
lower bound. The boundary is limited by the nature of
production system or the limitation of production
equipment. It is noted as 02 , the initial level of the
variance and L2 , the minimum level of the variance.
There is an initial mean of the population of quality
characteristic,
0.
t is the target value of quality
characteristic. Based on the study of Hong et al.
(1993) both (I) and
(I) can be written as functions
of quality investment, I. The functions of (I) and
(I)
can be written as (Hong et al. 1993, Ganeshan 2001):

2 ðI Þ ¼
2t þ ð
20

2t Þeð
I Þ ,  > 0
 2 ðI Þ ¼ L2 þ ð02
L2 Þeð
bI Þ , b > 0
Taguchi (Taguchi and Wu 1980) has provided a
quadratic function to link the costs of poor quality
and quality performance. He defines quality as,
‘The quality of a product is the (minimum) loss
imparted by the product to the society from the
time product is shipped’ (Bryne and Taguchi 1986).
683
Figure 1. Asymmetrical truncated loss function.
Taguchi’s function directly links the quality character-
istic to the internal error cost and the external error cost.
In the past decade, many researchers have tried to
improve the weakness of Taguchi’s model. In this
paper, we use the asymmetrical truncated loss function
proposed by Maghsoodloo and Li (2000) as the quality
loss function in our model. In the asymmetrical
truncated loss function, the poor quality cost reduces
to zero when the output quality characteristic exactly
matches the target value, and it increases quadratically
rical truncated loss function is shown in figure 1.
Basically, the asymmetrical truncated loss function
follows the ideas of Taguchi’s quadratic function.
It only considers the quality costs. The asymmetrical
truncated loss function does not deal with the non-
quality aspect. This function amends the weakness of
the Taguchi’s quadratic function that assumes the sym-
metry of quality characteristic. This improvement means
the asymmetrical truncated loss function can evaluate
the quality cost of product with asymmetric quality
characteristic.
If X is the value of the quality characteristic, the
asymmetrical truncated loss function, L(X), can be
written as:
8
>
> CU USL < X
>
>
>
< K1 ðX

t Þ 2
if
t  X  USL
LðXÞ ¼ ð5Þ
>
> K ðX

Þ 2
if LSL  X 

>
> 2 t t
>
:
CL X < LSL
where K1(X

t)2 and K2(X

t)2 are the poor quality
cost as quality characteristic between the specifications
limits; CU and CL are the poor quality cost as the quality
characteristic above or below the upper or the lower
684 J.-C. Tsou and J.-M. Chen

specification limits, which include all the rejection cost,

rework cost and poor quality cost.
Quality investment cost ¼ I ð6Þ
The fifth term in the objective function is the cost of
quality investment. We define the cost invested in
improving the product quality to ensure that only
customer-acceptable products and services are delivered
to the customer as the cost of quality investment, I. It is
believed that the total quality investment, I, will affect
the population mean and standard deviation of product
quality distribution.
Using the definition above, we can develop the quality Figure 2. 6-sigma DMAIC methodology.
improvement model for the total cost of a defective
production system. This is the objective function of
our model.
Minimise
X
N X
N
TCðQi , I Þ ¼ Qi  P þ h½Gi
1 þ Qi
di 
i¼1 i¼1
X
N
þ ðQi Þ  S
i¼1
X
N Z 1
þ Qi  LðXÞ  DðX, IÞ dX þ I
i¼1
1

Subject to
Qi , I, P  0
G0 ¼ 0
and (
0 if Qi ¼ 0
ðQi Þ ¼
1 if Qi > 0
3. Quality improvement case in a car seat assembly line
In this section, we consider a quality improvement case
in a car seat assembly line to verify the proposed model.
The 6-sigma DMAIC methodology has been applied
on this quality improvement case, and its roadmap is
shown in figure 2.
3.1. Define
In the define phase things which are critical to con-
sumers (CTC) are defined such as: What are the most
important things to your consumer? What do they care
about? The purpose and goal of our 6-sigma project also
are clarified in this phase.
Rica Auto Parts Co. Ltd is a local supplier of car
seats. This company produces seat units of premium
Figure 3. The seat assembly line in Rica Auto Parts Co. Ltd.
ð7Þ quality for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs)
and aftermarket vehicles. According to market feed-
back, customers complain about the operating noise of
their power seats. In order to decrease warranty cost and
increase customer satisfaction, the production manager
has been instructed to reduce warranty claims and
evaluate the production cost of their car seat assembly
line. The 6-sigma DMAIC method has been used in this
assignment. Rica Auto Parts has its own seat assembly
line and its quality operation system has obtained the
TS16949 certification. The appearance of Rica’s seat
assembly line is shown in figure 3.
To give a clear picture, figure 4 is the flow chart of
the manufacturing process of the power seat. There are
seven major steps in the manufacturing process. These
include:
. wrapping cushion,
. assembling sliding tracks,
. assembling seat back,
. wrapping seat back,
. functional testing,
. packing and delivering to the warehouse.
 Case study: quality improvement model in a car seat assembly line 685

Figure 4. Flow chart of the manufacturing process of power seat.

All factors that will affect the result of each step have
also been listed in figure 4.
In order to find the root causes of warranty claims,
all the warranty parts were recalled for analysis. After
study, it was found that 87% of the warranty claims
were caused by operating noise, 10% were due to
customer abnormal use and 2% were from other issues.
Based on the 80/20 rule, the operating noise problem
was recognized as the major sources of quality issues.

3.2. Measure
Figure 5. Measuring the distance between the front edges of
In the measure phase, the performance standard of the the right and left seat frame.
process is verified and the measurement system is estab-
lished to obtain a baseline for future improvements.
The production manager gathered a group of Table 1. Distance between the front edges of the right and left
experts to determine the root causes of operating seat slide before improvement.
noise. The C&E matrix and production/design failure No. No. No.
mode and effects analysis (P/D FMEA) was used to
analyse the problem. After analysis, it was found that 1 402.9 11 402.4 21 402.8
the root cause of the operating noise problem was 2 403.4 12 403.2 22 403.6
3 403.1 13 402.4 23 402.9
caused by the lack of parallel alignment between right 4 401.8 14 401.8 24 403.4
and left seat slides. To control the alignment, the 5 402.3 15 402.7 25 401.8
distance between the front edges of the right and left 6 402.3 16 402.9 26 403.2
seat slide was measured, as shown in figure 5. Based 7 402.8 17 403.5 27 402.9
on this figure, the upper specification limit (USL) and 8 402.9 18 402.0 28 403.1
9 402.1 19 402.8 29 402.4
the lower specification limit (LSL), of this distance is 10 402.9 20 403.5 30 402.9
404 mm and 400 mm respectively. When the distance SPEC 402  2 mm
exceeds the specification limits and operating noise
is too large, the inspector will adjust the slides to control
the alignment. The rework cost is $1 per unit.
We measured the distance between the front edges of The computer software, Minitab, was used to analyze
the right and left seat slide for a 30 unit sampling from the collected data, and the results are shown in figure 6.
the production line to evaluate the process capability The mean of these sampling data is 402.757 mm and
of seat slides assembly. The data are shown in table 1. standard deviation is 0.599 mm. In addition, the process
686 J.-C. Tsou and J.-M. Chen

Figure 6. Process capability of seat frame assembly before improvement.

capability (Cpk) is 0.69, which can be converted to a

2.08 sigma process.

3.3. Analyse

In the analyse phase, the performance objective is

defined and the key variation sources are identified.
The relationship between variation sources and per-
formance objectives also is established in this stage.
According to the process failure mode and effects
analysis (PFMEA) of the power seat assembly line,
the alignment of the seat frame is controlled in the
assembly process in station 1. We further checked
the assembly process, and found that the assembly
fixture cannot completely fix the seat slides when they
are being assembled. This finding further supports our
conclusion. The picture of the seat slides assembly
fixture is shown in figure 7. We also arranged a series
of tests to verify our conclusions.
3.4. Improve
In the improve phase, all the potential causes are
screened and possible solutions are verified. So that
improvement activities can be proposed in this phase.
The process capability after improvement also is
confirmed in this phase.
Based on the conclusions of the analyse phase,
we decide to add a clamp on each pin of the assembly
Figure 7. Picture of seat frame assembly fixture before
improvement.
fixture. The cost to modify the fixture is $200. After
adding clamps, the slides can be completely fixed on
the fixture. When the seat frames were located on the
fixture, the clamp can clip four edges of the seat frame
and stabilise the assembly process. The improved
fixture is shown in figure 8.
After modifying the fixture, we recollected 30 units of
seat frames to measure the distance between the front
edges of the right and left seat slide and evaluate the
process capability after improvement. The results are
shown in table 2.
Minitab was used to analyse the data, with results as
shown in figure 9, indicating that after adding clamps to
 Case study: quality improvement model in a car seat assembly line 687

the fixture, the mean of the distance between the front
edges have been centred to be consistent with the
target, and the standard deviation has been decreased.
The mean and standard deviation after improvement
are 402.103 mm and 0.43 mm. The process capability
has been improved from 0.69 Cpk value to 1.47 Cpk
value and the operating noise also clearly improved.
Our process has been improved to a 4.38 sigma process.
3.5. Control
In the control phase, the control plan to maintain
progress and verify the measurement system in the
future is also done. All corrective actions are feedback
to the quality operation system.
After this improvement, we identified the parallelism
between right and left seat slide as the high impact
characteristic (HIC) and decide to drew the X-bar R
chart to control the stability of this key dimension.
All these actions were fed back to the quality control

Table 2. Distance between the front edges of the right to the

left seat slide after improvement.
No. No. No.
1 402.6 11 401.9 21 402.0
2 402.1 12 402.2 22 402.4
3 402.0 13 401.6 23 401.5
4 402.3 14 401.2 24 402.1
5 401.5 15 402.8 25 401.4
6 402.5 16 401.9 26 403.0
7 402.4 17 402.1 27 403.1
8 402.1 18 402.3 28 402.5
9 402.0 19 401.7 29 402.2
10 402.0 20 402.0 30 401.7
Figure 8. Picture of assembly fixture after improvement; four SPEC 402  2 mm
clamps have been added to the pin of fixture.

Figure 9. Process capability of seat frame assembly after improvement.

688 J.-C. Tsou and J.-M. Chen

plan of car seat assembly line. We also fed back these To compare the change in production line after
improving activities to the PFMEA of the car seat improvement, we use Mathematica again to find the
manufacturing process. To sustain the benefit of quality total cost of the production line after improvement.
improvement over the long run, we have set a control The results are listed in table 5. The total cost for
plan to track all correcting activities in the future. these ten production periods after improving activities
is $62 075.8, which is lower than the cost before quality
improvement. This is because improving quality can
reduce the cost of poor quality and the saving is the
3.6. Analysing the total cost in the car seat assembly
line before and after improvement
Cost of poor quality
In this section, we use the quality improvement case 1
of the car seat assembly line to verify the quality
improvement model we proposed. We assume that 0.8
there are 10 production periods and inventory in the
beginning is 0. The production cost is $12 for each 0.6
car seat, and the setup cost per production run is
0.4
$100. The holding cost is $0.05 per unit per period.
The supply and demand condition in the ten production 0.2
periods are listed in table 3. From the data, it can be
seen that the volume is different in every period. Distance
400 402 404 406
In business practice, production lot sizing is affected
by the size of the order. Figure 10. Cost of poor quality of the car seats.
The poor quality cost of the car seat is a special case
of the asymmetrical truncated loss function, L(X). In
the car seat, CU and CL are the rework cost to adjust
Table 4. Inventory and cost change with time before
the parallelism of seat slides which is $1 per unit. Based improvement.
on this, the L(X) can be written as:
( Period Supply Demand Inventory Cost
$1 404 mm < X; X < 400 mm
LðXÞ ¼ 2
if 1 500 450 50 6218.98
0:25  ðX
402Þ 400 mm  X  404 mm 2 510 520 40 6340.81
3 490 510 20 6095.15
The drawing of L(X) is shown in figure 10. 4 510 480 50 6341.31
With the above information, we can find the total 5 490 470 70 6097.65
cost of the production line before quality improvement. 6 500 510 60 6219.48
To calculate the total cost, the computer software 7 550 530 80 6832.13
8 490 510 60 6097.15
Mathematica is used to do the calculation. The results
9 500 490 70 6219.98
are listed in table 4. It should be noted that the inventory 10 510 500 80 6342.81
in every period is different and it is affect by the Total 5050 4970 80 62805.5
supply and demand status in every period. The total
cost for these 10 production periods is $62 805.5.
Table 5. Inventory and cost change with time after
improvement.
Table 3. Supply and demand during ten periods.
Period Supply Demand Inventory Cost
Period Supply Demand
1 500 450 50 6326.94
1 500 450 2 510 520 40 6246.93
2 510 520 3 490 510 20 6004.95
3 490 510 4 510 480 50 6247.43
4 510 480 5 490 470 70 6007.45
5 490 470 6 500 510 60 6127.44
6 500 510 7 550 530 80 6730.88
7 550 530 8 490 510 60 6006.95
8 490 510 9 500 490 70 6127.94
9 500 490 10 510 500 80 6248.93
10 510 500 Total 5050 4970 80 62075.8
 Case study: quality improvement model in a car seat assembly line
Before improvement vs After improvement
7000
6800
6600
Total Cost ($)
6400
6200
6000
5800
5600
5400
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Period
Figure 11. Behaviour of the total cost of production line
before improvement to the total cost after improvement in
every period.
cost on quality investment (modifying the fixture). From
the data, we also can notice the inventory in every per-
iod is the same as the inventory in the production line
before improvement. This is because quality improve-
ment will not affect the supply and demand status in
every period, only affecting the cost of poor quality.
To compare the total cost in every period, figure 11
shows a trend chart to trace the change of the total cost
of production line before and after improvement.
We notice in the first period that the total cost of the
production line after improvement is higher than the
total cost before improvement. This is because the cost
to modify the fixture occurs in the first period, and this
quality investment increases the total cost for the
improved production line. After that, the cost of poor
quality will be reduced. The reduction in the cost of
poor quality will decrease the total cost in the last nine
periods after quality improvement. This is why only
in the first period is the total cost in the improved
production line higher than the original production line.
3.7. Sensitivity analysis of the model
In this section, we use the information in the previous
case to do the sensitivity analysis of our model to the
cost of quality investment, I. We use Mathematica to
write a loop to simulate the total cost of the production
line with different cost on quality investment.
According to a previous case, we can write the
function of the standard deviation and the mean of
quality function as below:

2 ðI Þ ¼
2t þ ð
20

2t Þeð
I Þ ,  > 0
 2 ðI Þ ¼ L2 þ ð02
L2 Þeð
bI Þ , b > 0
689
Before
After
9 10
Figure 12. Behaviour of the total cost to the quality
investment.
The initial value of the variance 02 is 0.36 mm2 and
the initial mean
0 is 402.757 mm. These numbers are
taken from the previous case before quality improve-
ment. The target value of the mean and the variance
are 402 mm and 0 mm2. According to the previous
case, the mean and the variance after we invest $200
on quality improvement are 402.103 mm and
0.185 mm2. Hence, we can find  ¼ 0:00998 and
b ¼ 0.00333.
The supply and demand condition in the 10
production periods is the same as the condition in
previous case. Then we achieve the relationship between
quality investment and the total cost. The behaviour of
quality investment to the total cost of the production
line is drawn in figure 12.
From figure 12, there is a minimal total cost, $62 075,
as we invest $205 on quality improvement. After that,
the total cost increases with quality investment. This
result verifies the assumption that there is an optimal
balance between quality investment and production
cost.
4. Summary and conclusion
In this paper, we present a quality improvement model
based on the hypothesis of a classical economic
production quantity model. The asymmetrical truncated
loss function is used to evaluate the cost of poor quality
in the production system. The practical case of a car seat
assembly line is used to verify this model. According to
our analysis, the total cost will be increased in the first
period after quality investment. This is because the cost
of quality investment occurs in the initial stage, and
after that the total cost will decrease by decreasing the
cost of poor quality. Our model provides a fundamental
structure for the future study of the cost of quality
improvement in a production system. This model can
also be widely applied in different kinds of quality
improvement.
 690 J.-C. Tsou and J.-M. Chen

Further study in this field could focus on the quality
investment model of a stochastic dynamic production
system. Researchers may include more financial factors
or different quality evaluation models into their study.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the editor and the two
anonymous referees for their valuable and constructive
comments which have led to a significant improvement
in this paper.
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Jia-Chi Tsou is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Business Administration at the

China University of Technology, Taiwan. He received his PhD degree in Industrial
Management from the National Central University, Taiwan, and graduated with an MBA in
Entrepreneurship from the University of Liverpool, UK. He also gained an MS and a BS in
Mechanical Engineering at the National Central University, Taiwan. His articles have appeared
in Journal of the Operational Research Society, Production Planning & Control, Foundations of
Computing and Decision Science, the Journal of Information & Optimization Sciences, the
International Journal of Information and Management Sciences, etc. Dr. Tsou has worked as
6-Sigma Master Black Belt at the Ford Motor Company. He is also an IRCA (International
Register of Certificated Auditors) registered QMS 2000 Lead Assessor.

Jen-Ming Chen is a professor at the Institute of Industrial Management at the National Central
University (Taiwan). He received a BS in Industrial Management Science from the National
Cheng Kung University (Taiwan) in 1983, an MS in Industrial Engineering from the
University of Arizona in 1988, and a PhD in Industrial Engineering from the Pennsylvania
State University in 1992. His research interests include inventory and supply chain management,
and pricing and yield management. He is an active member of several professional organisations,
including Informs, DSI, and IIE. Dr. Chen is the recipient of the George B. Dantzig Dissertation
Award from Informs and recipient of the IIE Doctorial Dissertation Award, both in 1994.

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