TABLE OF CONTENTS This introductory chapter shows how organizational excellence may be integrated into the strategy of any business through an understanding of the core business processes and involvement of the people. This leads through process analysis, self-assessment and benchmarking, to identifying the improvement opportunities for the organization, including people development.
The identified processes should be prioritized into those that require continuous improvement, those which require re-engineering or redesign, and those which lead to a complete re-think or visioning of the business.
Performance-based measurement of all processes and people development activities is necessary to determine progress so that the vision, goals, mission, and critical success factors may be examined and reconstituted if necessary to meet new requirements for the organization and its customers, internal and external. This forms the basis of a new implementation framework for total organizational excellence which provides the structure of the book.
Total quality management (TQM) is dead, long live business process re-engineering (BPR)! ISO9000 is too costly/narrow focused, you should carry out self-assessment to the European Excellence or Baldrige Quality Award models. Statistical process control (SPC), failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) and benchmarking these are things you should be using. And what about measurement, culture change, teamwork, continuous improvement, etc., etc.? My goodness, no wonder people are confused and irritated by the conflicting messages (and combination of letters) they now receive from consultants, academics, business leaders and even politicians about what they should do to improve the performance of their organization.
