Browsing by Author "Girma, Woldemariam"

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    Operational Productivity of Equipment Maintenance System Enhancement through Total Quality Management: A Case of Ethiopian Construction Works Corporation
    (Addis Ababa University, 2021-09) Girma, Woldemariam; Kassu, Jilcha
    Equipment maintenance system has been given great consideration to any industry to make any equipment available. To avail equipment in productive operation, among the techniques from which are known is that total quality management (TQM) implementation system. Most of the time; equipment or machineries are seen down due to part failure, process failure, improper handling etc. In the case company there are also similar problems that have been detected such as maintenance quality problem, spare part supplying delay, equipment down time, and maintenance reworks. Due to these, the maintenance department faces challenges of quality maintenance and customer satisfaction. In fact, the corporation is actually performing total quality management activities in which it is not in continuous approach. In Ethiopian construction Works Corporation (ECWC) maintenance department is implementing top-down approach in which the TQM linkage with maintenance is weak. Therefore, this study purpose is to improve these problems hindering the operational productivity of equipment maintenance system using the total quality management technique. The objective is met through a research method of qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis. The data sources were from primary and secondary data. The primary data obtained are from interview, questionnaires, field visit, process mapping and simulation. The secondary data were obtained from ECWC reports, literature review and other data bases. The approaches used was TQM process mapping tool method and arena simulation software to validate the improved process mapping to seek an improvement of equipment maintenance productivity. The study finding indicated that there are long maintenance time, high failure rate, weak process management system, and weak interdepartmental linkage. This study also found that shifting from practice of quality control towards preventive actions into work reduction of Spare part supplying delay, down time, maintenance reworks and increase the level of the commitment of management/leaders. The data are also analyzed using different software mentioned here and model developed by triangulating Business Process Mapping (BPM) and Quality Business mapping Process (QBMP). Operational productivity of equipment maintenance with total quality management (TQM) helped to improve 80% of process path of operational productivity of equipment maintenance system. It has also helped to increase the feeling of empowerment among employees and to involve the people closest to the process mapped and the quality efforts in other departments of the ECWC. This research implication is to improve the maintenance system of the ECWC which also implies to improve any similar industries maintenance system. The research has a contribution to the body of knowledge from perspective of integrating the maintenance system to TQM which is effective in reducing the maintenance operational time. In general, this research has identified problems and reduced those problems integrating TQM into maintenance system.
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    Risk Factors for Maternal Nutritional Status: Southern Nations, Nationalites and Peoples Region, Ethiopia
    (Addis Abeba university, 2001-06) Girma, Woldemariam; Deshpande, A.P(PhD)
    This study focuses on risk factors for maternal under nutrition and utilized data from the large scale Community and Family Survey (CFS) undertaken in the five densely populated zones (Sidama, Gurage, KA T. North-Omo and Hadiya) of Southern Nations & Nationalities Peoples Regioll (SNNPR). The survey was cross sectional by design and conducted between early May and early June 1997. This study is based on 935 lactating and pregnant women aged 15-49 years during the survey. Uni-variate analysis of the data has shown that there exists considerable level of maternal under nutrition. In this study 18.5 % of the women in the region were found out to be moderately and severely under nourished. The problem of under nutrition is higher in rural area (21.0%) than in urban area (6.7%). The level of under nutrition was also higher for women in the age group 15 to 19 years as compared with the remaining age groups. Maternal under nutrition was also found out to be high for women residing in food insecure / inadequate annual income / households, infected by malaria and never used family planning. Data analysis using the logistic regression model has also shown that a number of variables in the bi-variate model were significantly related to maternal under nutrition; while, few of these variables were significant in the multi-variate mode. As a matter of fact the multi-variate model showed the existence of significant variation in the risk of maternal under nutrition by locational (place of residence and zone) variables. The risk of maternal under nutrition in rural area was 1.64 times higher as compared to the urban area and the risk was higher for Hadiya zone as compared with the remaining zones. It was also identified that women from inadequate food stock / annual income/ households, infected by malaria, in the adolescent age group (15 to 19 years) and those who never used family planning were significantly at higher risk of under nutrition. The end results of this study indicated that, integrated efforts by various sectors are required to alleviate the overall maternal under nutrition in the study region. Strong involvement of the health sectors to address the health problem and the agricultural sector to increase agricultural productivity could be a long term solution to the problem. Priority attention should be given to the adolescent reproductive age group. Prevention and early treattnent of malaria infection as well as promotion of family planning services among the adolescent age group, lactating & pregnant women is also crucial.