Review
How Ready Is Higher Education for Quality 4.0 Transformation
according to the LNS Research Framework?
Bandar Alzahrani
1,
*, Haitham Bahaitham
2
, Murad Andejany
2
and Ahmad Elshennawy
1
Citation: Alzahrani, B.; Bahaitham,
H.; Andejany, M.; Elshennawy, A.
How Ready Is Higher Education for
Quality 4.0 Transformation according
to the LNS Research Framework?
Sustainability 2021, 13, 5169.
https://doi.org/10.3390/su13095169
Academic Editor: João Carlos de
Oliveira Matias
Received: 30 March 2021
Accepted: 22 April 2021
Published: 6 May 2021
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4.0/).
1
Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, University of Central Florida (UCF),
Orlando, FL 32825, USA; ahmad.elshennawy@knights.ucf.edu
2
Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Jeddah,
Jeddah 21589, Saudi Arabia; hbahaitham@uj.edu.sa (H.B.); mbazzar@uj.edu.sa (M.A.)
* Correspondence: Rty_070@knights.ucf.edu; Tel.: +1-407-820-6563
Abstract:
The world is evolving, and it has transformed from the industrial age to the era of connected
and intelligent products in both organizations and competition. The advances in technology in the
last decade have led to the introduction of a new term called Industry 4.0 or the fourth industrial
revolution and that has led to the emergence of the term Quality 4.0. Quality 4.0 is the digitalization
of traditional quality approaches and the focus on the use of digital tools to improve an organization’s
ability to meet customers’ requirements with high quality. The purpose of this paper is to assess the
environments of higher education institutions (HEIs) against the 11 axes of LNS Research Quality 4.0
framework and provide insights about their readiness for Quality 4.0 transformation. The framework
helps the organizations digitalize their traditional quality practices and transform to Quality 4.0
through exploring the traditional quality—Quality 4.0 continuum of tools and/or concepts related to
each axis so they can assess their transformation efforts accordingly. This paper uses these continuums
to identify the quality implementation efforts conducted by HEIs through analyzing the continuums’
related practices adopted within their environments and find out what should be done to get to
the full transformation to Quality 4.0 within the higher education field. The study shows the HEIs
potential of adopting the Quality 4.0 tools and techniques of varies axes of the framework while
revealing a limited adoption of most of them in the current times. This is due to several challenges
the most impacting of which is having fragmented processes together with fragmented data systems
and sources. The study is concluded with a proposed roadmap to assist HEIs to get the best out their
efforts in the Quality 4.0 transformation process.
Keywords:
quality 4.0; digital transformation; higher education institutions; HEIs; LNS research;
11 axes; big data analytics; cloud computing scalability; blockchain collaboration; app development;
edge devises connectivity
1. Introduction
Quality has evolved from concepts into practices, techniques, and articulated proce-
dures [
1
]. Many researchers and practitioners agree that quality is important for long-term
performance of institutes even though quality can be defined in multiple ways [
2
,
3
]. For
instance, quality is defined as value [
4
], conformance to requirements [
5
], fitness for use [
6
],
and meeting and/or exceeding customer expectations. According to Al-Tarawneh andand
Mubaslat, [
7
], quality is a constant development process towards an anticipated degree of
perseverance and consistency. Not only does quality signify the product/service quality,
but also the quality management and the reputation of the organization. [8].
Implementing quality services in higher education institutions (HEIs) is key to distin-
guishing competitors as well as ensuring long-term sustainability [
8
]. A variety of quality
tools, techniques, and models have been adopted to improve the quality of service and
processes in higher education. These techniques include traditional quality methods such
as Total Quality Management (TQM) [
9
], Quality Function Deployment (QFD) [
10
], and
Sustainability 2021, 13, 5169. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13095169 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability
