Quality has quickly become one of the most important decision-making factors for consumers. And although organizations invest considerable resources into building the right quality management systems (QMSs), in many instances, the adoption of such quality improvement tools are just not enough. Building Quality Management Systems: Selecting the Right Methods and Tools explains exactly what directors, practitioners, consultants, and researchers must do to make better choices in the design, implementation, and improvement of their QMSs.Based on the authors decades of industrial experience working on business improvement projects for multinationals looking to design or improve their QMSs, the book discusses building QMSs based on two important organizational elements: needs and resources. It begins with an overview of QMSs and systems thinking and the impact of QMSs on financial performance. Illustrating the process management approach, it reviews the most well-known business and quality improvement models, methods, and tools that support a major QMS.The authors introduce their own time-tested methodology for designing, implementing, and enhancing your own QMS. Using their proven method, you will learn how to: Implement a strategic quality plan based on your specific needs, capabilities, cost benefits, policies, and business strategies Select the right models, methods, and tools to be adopted as part of your QMS Understand the critical success factors and implementation challenges Evaluate the level of maturity of your QMS and your implementation efforts Highlighting the importance of quality as a way of life, this book supplies the understanding you'll need to make the right choices in the development and deployment of your QMS. With a clear focus on business performance and process management, it provides the basis for creating the quality management culture require

When the lights dim in a movie theatre and the projector begins to click and whir, the light and sounds of the motion picture become the gateway to a multisensory experience. Moving beyond the oft-discussed perceptual elements of vision and hearing, The Multisensory Film Experience analyses temperature, pain and balance in order to argue that it is the experience of film that's inherently multisensory, not the medium. Luis Rocha Antunes here explores the work of well-loved filmmakers Erik Jensen, Gus Van Sant and Ki-Duk Kim to offer new insights into how viewers experience films and understand their stories. This is an original contribution to an emerging field of research and will become essential reading for film scholars.

Quality has quickly become one of the most important decision-making factors for consumers. And although organizations invest considerable resources into building the right quality management systems (QMSs), in many instances, the adoption of such quality improvement tools are just not enough. Building Quality Management Systems: Selecting the Right Methods and Tools explains exactly what directors, practitioners, consultants, and researchers must do to make better choices in the design, implementation, and improvement of their QMSs. Based on the authors' decades of industrial experience working on business improvement projects for multinationals looking to design or improve their QMSs, the book discusses building QMSs based on two important organizational elements: needs and resources. It begins with an overview of QMSs and systems thinking and the impact of QMSs on financial performance. Illustrating the process management approach, it reviews the most well-known business and quality improvement models, methods, and tools that support a major QMS. The authors introduce their own time-tested methodology for designing, implementing, and enhancing your own QMS. Using their proven method, you will learn how to: Implement a strategic quality plan based on your specific needs, capabilities, cost-benefits, policies, and business strategies Select the right models, methods, and tools to be adopted as part of your QMS Understand the critical success factors and implementation challenges Evaluate the level of maturity of your QMS and your implementation efforts Highlighting the importance of quality as a way of life, this book supplies the understanding you'll need to make the right choices in the development and deployment of your QMS. With a clear focus on business performance and process management, it provides the basis for creating the quality management culture required to become a world-class organization.

In fast and competitive markets, organizations look to comply and produce high-quality products and services that excel customers' expectations and needs. In this context, organizations have deployed all sorts of strategies supported by business excellence models (BEM), quality management systems, process management, and performance measurement systems. Thus, BEM have played a major role in supporting organizations' business strategy and performance in the long run. Business Excellence Models and Strategic Planning provides to industrialist, managers, practitioners, consultants, researchers and all kind of professionals a robust research-framework with practical insights, and deep knowledge about the integration of BEM with Strategic Planning. Based on a five-year project, the book provides a critical review of the most well-known excellence models, methods and tools that support Quality Management Systems(QMS). Thus, Business Excellence Models and Strategic Planning focuses on business performance and process management, integrating BEM with Strategic Planning, and providing the basis to create/foster a quality management-culture to succeed in becoming a world-class organization

This book is about the life lessons learned and experienced by the author during a pilgrimage to Mount Athos in Greece, one of the oldest surviving monastic communities in the world; an exclusive domain of monks and other holy men; a place molded in tradition, history, legend, and miracles. Known as the Holy Mountain, it remains fundamentally unchanged since the eighth century.

The author visits a number of monasteries and learns from the monks, hermits, and other people he meets about the historical differences between the Christian religion in the East and West, the symbolism of the faith, the influence of paganism on Christianity, and the Byzantine Empire's art and iconography. Most importantly, immersed in this environment, he is confronted with some of the fundamental questions that we deal with on our lives' journeys over and over again. He is also introduced to the mystic side of an unfamiliar spiritual practice called "hesychia," a technique combining concentration with inward tranquility. The book merges elements of research, memoir, art, history, philosophy, and spirituality into a single story. What emerges is a fascinating and insightful account of a world that is entirely new to many Western readers.