This paper presents a method for carrying out the calculus of the risk priority of failures in Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA). The novelty of the method consists of new management of data provided by the design team, normally given on qualitative scales, without necessitating an arbitrary and artificial numerical conversion. The practical effects of these issues are shown in an application example.

Outsourcing is a management approach by which an organization delegates some non‐core functions to specialized and efficient service providers. In the era of “global market” and “e‐economy”, outsourcing is one of the main pillars of the new way to conceive the relationships among companies. Despite outsourcing large diffusion, huge business cases and big deals of documentation available on network or press, there is no structured procedure able to support the govern of the evolution of a generic outsourcing process. In accordance with the principles of total quality management, this paper describes a proposal of a new approach for managing outsourcing processes. The model, which can be easily adapted to different application fields, has been conceived with the main aim of managing strategic decisions, economic factors and human resources. The approach is supported by different decision and analysis tools, such as benchmarking techniques, multiple criteria decision aiding (MCDA) methods, cost analysis, and other process‐planning methodologies. An application of the method to a real case is also provided.

ISO 9000 standards for quality system management are involving a higher and higher number of enterprises and organizations. This paper presents a detailed analysis of certification diffusion in Italy and in some European countries with similar economic structures. Benchmarking and evolution forecasts are based on the “logistic model”, traditionally used for studying biological growth phenomena. The presentation is supported by many empirical data, which show that, in many countries, the phenomenon is going to be close to saturation. Finally, some considerations about new developments, after the present “certification era”, are proposed.

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) typically consist of a large number of densely populated sensor nodes. Due to important advances in integrated circuits and radio technologies, the use of distributed sensor networks is becoming increasingly widespread for a variety of applications, e.g. indoor navigation, environmental monitoring, people and object tracking, logistics, industrial diagnostics, quality control, and other manufacturing activities. In many cases, such as in objects tracking, knowing the physical location of network nodes is essential. Locating elements of WSNs is not a trivial task. Manual methods are wearisome and may be inaccurate, especially for large-scale networks. Therefore, many self-locating methods – where nodes cooperate with each other without human involvement – have recently been studied and implemented. The purpose of this work is to analyse the most significant methods for automatic location of distributed WSNs. The first part of the paper provides a description of the most common criteria used to categorize existing network localization algorithms. A taxonomy is then suggested that may be a useful tool to help evaluate, compare and select such algorithms. Five of the most representative algorithms are explained and discussed in detail in order to identify their strong points and their limitations.

Purpose: One of the stated goals behind the formation of the International Organization for Standardization was to develop standards to facilitate international trade in goods and services. This goal has caused different country‐group trends in the diffusion of ISO certification. The purpose of this paper is to create a taxonomy of ISO 9000 certification diffusion in Europe.Design/methodology/approach: The diffusion of ISO certificates in Europe was analyzed using the single linkage clustering algorithm. Then the features of each cluster were highlighted.Findings: European nations were found to belong to three macro areas which differ for patterns of ISO 9000 certification diffusion: the constant growth area, the saturation area and the decline area.Research limitations/implications: The present study deals with European nations, focusing on ISO 9000 standards. Future research will be addressed toward the analysis of other standards in a wider geographical area in order to see if the results found for the European reality may be extended. In addition the outcomes of such analysis may be used to enhance the existing models for the diffusion of ISO 9000 certification.Practical implications: The analysis of the evolution of the certification market may arouse the interest of both companies and certification bodies that, from this study, may gain an insight into the future possible demand of certification. Furthermore, this study can be interesting from a legislature point of view, providing an answer to a more general question: “What is the general life cycle of standards or regulations?”Originality/value: The novelty of the paper is the clustering approach that allows the grouping of different nations according to similar diffusion dynamics.