How Ready Is Higher Education for Quality 4.0 Transformation according to the LNS Research Framework?

Bandar Alzahrani, Haitham Bahaitham, Murad Andejany and Ahmad Elshennawy
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Bandar Alzahrani: Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, University of Central Florida (UCF), Orlando, FL 32825, USA
Haitham Bahaitham: Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Jeddah, Jeddah 21589, Saudi Arabia
Murad Andejany: Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Jeddah, Jeddah 21589, Saudi Arabia
Ahmad Elshennawy: Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, University of Central Florida (UCF), Orlando, FL 32825, USA

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 9, 1-29

Abstract: The world is evolving, and it has transformed from the industrial age to the era of connected and intelligent products in both organizations and competition. The advances in technology in the last decade have led to the introduction of a new term called Industry 4.0 or the fourth industrial revolution and that has led to the emergence of the term Quality 4.0. Quality 4.0 is the digitalization of traditional quality approaches and the focus on the use of digital tools to improve an organization’s ability to meet customers’ requirements with high quality. The purpose of this paper is to assess the environments of higher education institutions (HEIs) against the 11 axes of LNS Research Quality 4.0 framework and provide insights about their readiness for Quality 4.0 transformation. The framework helps the organizations digitalize their traditional quality practices and transform to Quality 4.0 through exploring the traditional quality—Quality 4.0 continuum of tools and/or concepts related to each axis so they can assess their transformation efforts accordingly. This paper uses these continuums to identify the quality implementation efforts conducted by HEIs through analyzing the continuums’ related practices adopted within their environments and find out what should be done to get to the full transformation to Quality 4.0 within the higher education field. The study shows the HEIs potential of adopting the Quality 4.0 tools and techniques of varies axes of the framework while revealing a limited adoption of most of them in the current times. This is due to several challenges the most impacting of which is having fragmented processes together with fragmented data systems and sources. The study is concluded with a proposed roadmap to assist HEIs to get the best out their efforts in the Quality 4.0 transformation process.

Keywords: quality 4.0; digital transformation; higher education institutions; HEIs; LNS research; 11 axes; big data analytics; cloud computing scalability; blockchain collaboration; app development; edge devises connectivity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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