Acceptance sampling is used by firms to monitor the quality of raw materials, components and finished products. Mostly, it is useful when testing is destructive, very expensive, time consuming or when product liability risks are significant. Addis Ababa Bottle and Glass Share Company is one of the oldest glass manufacturing plant in Ethiopia. The company controls the quality of the manufactured lots using partial inspection method. Samples of bottles are taken, inspected, tested, and the lots as a whole are accepted or rejected depending on whether few or many defective items are found in the sample respectively. This book focuses on the identification and monitoring of quality problems of Addis Ababa Bottle and Glass Share Company using the concepts and applications of Acceptance sampling.

Most leading economic countries have strong metal and engineering industries. However, the contribution of the basic metal and engineering industries in Ethiopia to the overall economy is minimal. This indicates that there is a great need from this industry if it has to position itself to a level where it can be a real contributor to the economy. The metal products account the highest value of the total import in the country. Ethiopia has advantages of low labor cost and abundant natural resource. These resources can be advantageous to be competitive to the global market if technological capability is built. Since the country suffers a shortage of foreign currency, currently there is an emphasis to substitute the imports of metal and engineering products manufacturing locally for the coming 5 years. Substituting the spare parts, equipment and machinery imported from abroad through reverse engineering is a significant and prior action to be taken. Therefore, reverse engineering is the most important tool for building technological capabilities in the country. The prior action has to be the metal and engineering industries through technological building and technology transfer.

Today competition is truly global. Higher product quality is required for a company to become more competitive both local and in international market, and quality is the ultimate weapon. With the increasing global pressure of quality requirements, the traditional concept of quality control must be expanded to the concept of Quality Management System (QMS). Quality management system relies on people and involves everyone. Most of the Textile industries in Ethiopia are suffering with quality related problems such as: poor quality of raw materials, poor performance of products, high rework and scrap, poor utilization of the resources, low productivity, and customer dissatisfaction. Therefore, this investigation has focused on how these problems could be removed with the help of QMS. Based on the survey of four textile industries and two case studies (Bahirdar and Akaki textile share companies), nine major components have been identified for QMS implementation in Ethiopian textile industries. QMS provides consistency and satisfaction in terms of methods, materials, equipment, and interacts with all activities of the companies.

In recent years, numerous approaches have been proposed to improve manufacturing plant operations performance. Among many others, supply chain management has received considerable attentions. Despite its benefits, structuring supply chain network is a complex decision making process. At strategic level companies have to decide where to locate new facilities, how to allocate resources to the various facilities, and how to manage the transportation of products through the chain in order to satisfy customer demands. At planning and operational level, companies must collect data and deal with SC decisions regarding to facility, transportation network, inventory, supplier, cost, customer and market, system wide and policy, and any connections among them. It is also stressed that "the chain is as strong as the weakest link." This work is helpful to analyses the existing practices and enable to develop some strategic methodologies to integrate the supply chains for manufacturing industry. The overall objective in the book is improving industrial performance which is the serious issue throughout the world.

Privatization has been embarked since the late 1970's in the belief that the private outperforms the government in handling and controlling enterprises. Since its introduction however there arose so many controversial feelings on its performance throughout the world. What enhances the public enterprises in developing countries for privatization is their economic incapability and governments of these countries expressed their successes in implementing it. Researchers and economists are hence very busy in identifying the successes or failures of privatization. Irrespective of the elucidations and conclusions given by the governments of developing countries which have enjoyed from the privatization platform, most research findings showed privatization in these countries are alarming. The main objective of this study is therefore to identify and analyze the challenges, limitations and other scenarios of privatization so as to evaluate the post-privatization performance of privatized industrial establishments in Ethiopia.

The investigation of productivity improvement method in manufacturing firms consists of two major aspects. The scientific approach is concerned with the development of a methodology for productivity improvement appropriate to the situation of manufacturing firms in Ethiopia. Two models, a productivity factor model and a productivity measurement model have been developed for use with productivity improvement method. Second, it is supported by practice-oriented work in the manufacturing firms, consisting of data acquisition activities in general, and of case studies in selected firms in order to assemble, analyze and evaluate specific data on productivity problems, and to test the results obtained. The productivity improvement method (PIM) is developed by considering both the theoretical and empirical study results. The PIM consists of four phases and nine steps having a number of major tasks. The tools, formats, and templates used in the productivity improvement method (PIM) have been designed so that they can be applied without detailed knowledge of the complex mechanisms of the productivity problems in manufacturing firms.

Quality is a determinant factor for the long term success of firms. It is also important in service industries as it is highly related with customer satisfaction at each step in the process. Quality in healthcare thus needs much attention as it is a work of life perpetuation. In Ethiopian healthcare sector, there is a responsiveness problem. Due to this, it is common to hear customer complaints in hospitals and the complaints regarding the delay and service quality are aggravating. This book examines service quality of Tikur Anbessa Hospital under the light of quality concepts and proposes solutions which are helpful in minimizing the core problems.

The basic metal and engineering industry is crucial to the development of any modern economy and is considered to be the backbone of human civilization. The Ethiopian basic metal and engineering industries lack the crucial component of producing basic metals from iron ore or other process route and are still in the infancy stage over the years. However, it's essential for the sector to transfer technology from foreign firms which play a major role in the current endeavor in Ethiopia to bring rapid and sustainable development of the sector. The contribution of FDI to the economy of one country will be effective if and only if there is a local capability to absorb the technology owned by the foreign company to other similar industries which potentially dictates a large scale participation of local personnel's in the FDI companies at a critical level. Though the number of foreign investors currently destined to our country might not be small, but there is less technological flow from foreign investors. This book concentrates on the role of FDI on technology transfer to basic metal and engineering industries to validate the methodology and to demonstrate the result of the study.