Total Quality Management Implementation Failure Reasons in Healthcare Sector

Although TQM＇s advantages and benefits have been identified by the literature, the ways to achieve them continue to remain complex. Nevertheless, in many cases TQM failure is not due to vague and ambiguous procedures, hut for certain reasons. We conduct an in-depth literature review from peer reviewed journals regarding Total Quality Management （TQM） implementation failure reasons only for healthcare sector. A comparative analysis for TQM implementation failure reasons was conducted in order to identify the most common. The most common TQM implementation failure reasons in bealthcare sector are lack of management commitment, change of culture, quality tools and techniques not applied correctly, not adequate time for implementation, lack of resources and information, data validity, cost of investment, management＇s resistance to empower employees and professional＇s resistance. Most of studies in TQM concern successful implementation in hospitals, clinics and health organizations. Our literature review showed that very few studies in the literature focus on failure reasons of TQM implementation. This study can help healthcare managers to study each failure reason separately and proceed to appropriate actions in order to avoid possible TQM implementation failure. The novelty of this paper is that failure reasons of TQM implementation concern only healthcare sector.

Direct Regeneration of Spent Lithium-Ion Battery Cathodes:From Theoretical Study to Production Practice

Direct regeneration method has been widely concerned by researchers in the field of battery recycling because of its advantages of in situ regeneration,short process and less pollutant emission.In this review,we firstly analyze the primary causes for the failure of three representative battery cathodes(lithium iron phosphate,layered lithium transition metal oxide and lithium cobalt oxide),targeting at illustrating their underlying regeneration mecha-nism and applicability.Efficient stripping of material from the collector to obtain pure cathode material has become a first challenge in recycling,for which we report several pretreatment methods currently available for subsequent regeneration processes.We review and discuss emphatically the research progress of five direct regeneration methods,including solid-state sintering,hydrothermal,eutectic molten salt,electrochemical and chemical lithiation methods.Finally,the application of direct regeneration technology in production practice is introduced,the problems exposed at the early stage of the industrialization of direct regeneration technol-ogy are revealed,and the prospect of future large-scale commercial production is proposed.It is hoped that this review will give readers a comprehensive and basic understanding of direct regeneration methods for used lithium-ion batteries and promote the industrial application of direct regeneration technology.