Organizational Assessment Of Total Quality Management

Organizational Assessment of Total Quality Management

To adequately measure continuous improvement, organizations must use a set of assessment criteria that completes the following:

(1) Highlight the leader's role in setting organizational direction, goals, and reviewing results.

(2) Reveal the level to which all processes are linked and aligned toward achieving the results required for success.

(3) Ensure strategic plans and action plans are focused on customer and mission performance requirements that must be met for the organization's strategy to succeed.

(4) Consider customer satisfaction and expectations to anticipate requirements and link them as key input to strategic plans.

(5) Examine the collection, analyses, and use of performance metrics information to sustain a fact-based system for improving organizational performance excellence.

(6) Align human resource development efforts with the organization's strategy to maintain a work environment conducive to performance excellence.

(7) Challenge key operational and work process management efforts to achieve flexibility, cost reduction, and cycle time reduction.

(8) Focus on measured results that are linked to the strategic goals of the organization.

(9) Facilitate communication and sharing of best practices information.

(10) Serve as a working tool for understanding and managing performance, planning, and training.

Once completed, the assessment becomes the basis for refinements of the strategic plan and the supporting action plans. Three sectors have been selected and identify the methods of improvement. The US Army has been chosen in the government sector, Resurrection Life Church as a non-profit sector, and Veteran's Administration for the service sector.

The Army Performance Improvement Criteria (APIC) is used to improve upon processes and is based on the Malcolm Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence, a national quality award for private industry, and the President's Quality Award, a federal quality award. It provides a common framework for all Army organizations to measure how well they are meeting their stated goals and customer needs. It provides a systematic review that indicates the degree to which these processes are linked and aligned toward mission accomplishment and leads to informed management decisions. The APIC helps the manager at higher levels view the linkages between the various functional areas and multiple processes that comprise the organization. This assessment framework can be applied equally no matter which specific management discipline or philosophy is adopted by an organization. According to AR5-1 (March 2002), the application of APIC supports Total Army Quality in three ways:

(1) It provides a systematic, disciplined approach to deal with the dynamics of change by providing a working tool for strategic planning, conducting organizational assessments, analysis, and performance improvement planning.