• Industrial Engineering and Management Systems
• /
• v.7 no.3
• /
• pp.228-244
• /
• 2008

ISO9000 set of standards has been widely applied in Iranian Automotive manufacturing industry. Regarding the effects of TQM and ISO9000 set of standards various studies have been conducted and different quantitative conclusions have been made. Due to lack of quantitative information, in many of the cases, using qualitative information becomes the best option. The qualitative nature of data in such cases, requires qualitative analysis methods that might lead to some challenging computational issues. This paper examines the impact of ISO9000: 2000 certification and its perceived benefits for an automotive manufacturing company. Using an empirical approach, the paper seeks to ascertain if certification has indeed improved the performance of the company. Our null hypothesis rotates around the effect of ISO9000: 2000 on the 4W's of an enterprise. To carry out the research, first we developed a couple of questionnaires including all criteria of ISO9000 and 4W's. Second, the questionnaires were discussed with two researchers knowledgeable in the field, and then submitted to the quality practitioners and executives of Iran Khodro Enterprise-a leading company in Iranian automotive manufacturing industry. Finally the null hypothesis was tested and the technology improvement dimensions were ranked through nonparametric tests. The results illustrated a reasonable cause and effect relationship, suggesting that ISO9000: 2000 has positive effect on the 4W's of company result. In this work we investigate the effect as technology improvement viz., the improvement of techno-ware, human-ware, info-ware, and organ-ware.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Crop Science Conference
• /
• 2017.06a
• /
• pp.25-25
• /
• 2017

Inflorescence architecture mainly contributes to final grain yield in crops. Sorghum inflorescence is basically composed of one fertile sessile spikelet (SS) and two infertile pedicellate spikelets (PS). To identify regulatory factors involved in the inflorescence architecture, we screened an EMS mutagenesis population from the pedigreed sorghum mutant library. We found inflorescent architecture mutants, named as multi-seed mutants, msd, with gained fertile ability in PS and also an increased number of floral branches. In natural sorghum populations, it is not common that are fertile. A detailed dissection of developmental stages of wild type and msd1 mutant described that the PS in wild type do not have floral organs, including ovary, stigma, filament and anther, while the msd1 mutants generate intact floral organ in the sessile spikelet. We found MSD1 encoded a TCP transcription factor using bulk segregant analysis (BSA) of F2 population, and was a strongly enriched expression during inflorescence developmental stages. We proposed that MSD1 functions to suppress floral organ maintenance at PS during inflorescence development in Sorghum. To explore the regulatory network associated with PS fertility, whole genome expression profiling was performed at 4 different developmental stages in 6 various tissue types between wild type and msd1. Taken together, we demonstrated that MSD1 was involved in the plant hormone and maybe influenced program cell death in PS via the activation of plant hormonal pathway.