The recent shifts in power, resources, influence and responsibility in primary care has increased the strain on general practice. This book is a comprehensive guide to the wide range of quality schemes available. It is unique in examining quality within the context of current practice, and it discusses future options based on new examples and research. It outlines the development of clinical governance, strategies for managing and assessing quality, continuing professional development, Department of Health policy initiatives and future trends.

Quality costs help to show the importance of quality-related activities to management; they demonstrate the cost of non-quality to an organization; they track the causes and effects of the problem, enabling the working out of solutions using quality improvement teams, and then monitoring progress. As a technique in the introduction and development of TQM, quality costing is a powerful tool for enhancing a company's effectiveness. Quality Costing provides pragmatic advice on how to set about introducing and developing a quality costing system and using the data that emerges. This third edition (strengthened by additional data from a range of organizations) provides sound practical guidance on how to define, identify, collect, measure, analyse, report and use quality costs. This established text has proved invaluable to managers and quality professionals, students and academics alike - the new edition ensures its continued position as the leading book in the field.

Benchmarking for Best Practice uses up-to-the-minute case-studies of individual companies and industry-wide quality schemes to show how and why implementation has succeeded. For any practitioner wanting to establish best practice in a wide variety of business areas, this book makes essential reading. It is also an ideal textbook on the applications of TQM since it describes concepts, covers definitions and illustrates the applications with first-hand examples. Professor Mohamed Zairi is an international expert and leading figure in the field of benchmarking. His pioneering work in this area led to the implementation of sixty comprehensive benchmarking projects in companies worldwide. He has written several books on this subject including 'Practical Benchmarking' in 1992.

Implementing e-business requires a dynamic approach that can respond to changes in technology, management direction, customer and supplier behavior, and competition. Many traditional project management methods don't work with e-business. This book presents proven real world management methods that are adaptive, dynamic, and flexible in an e-business environment. It tackles the central issues of e-business: the burgeoning market for "buy-side" extranet/Internet procurement and supply chain management/business-to-business, Web-based transactions.

Managing Quality will help you understand the role of TQM within your organization and how you can best implement it. The authors show you: *how to understand quality management systems, tools and techniques *how to use them *how to assess the cost of quality *how to promote quality amongst your team members *how to lead and motivate your team *how to measure progress towards total quality. It is based upon the Management Charter Initiative's Occupational Standards for Management NVQs and SVQs at Levels 4 & 5. It is particularly suitable also for managers on Certificate and Diploma in Management programmes, including those accredited by BTEC.

In his ground-breaking book, Reinventing Communication, Mark Phillips shows how even the most mature organization can fail to deliver successful projects - and worse, how this can lead to an organization's demise. With clear examples, Mark reveals the underlying principles at work and introduces a revolutionary new technique for harnessing the power of communication to ensure long term success. For organizations of all sizes, this book changes the way we think about management and leadership. Mark makes his case by looking at teams and individuals that set out to deliver ambitious achievements in complex and challenging environments. We meet the leadership team that built the F-18 Super Hornet fighter jet, one of the US Navy's most successful programs. We discover the untraditional approach to risk used in building a new terminal at London's Heathrow airport. We draw lessons on corporate survival from the cat and mouse fight against IED's in Afghanistan, and are introduced to a website where online video gamers solved a critical piece of the AIDS puzzle using their gaming prowess. Reinventing Communication is about creating the conditions for performance and attaining long term success. Whether a start-up, a global enterprise or a government agency, this book shows us how to deliver ambitious achievements by getting communication right. It is a book that no manager, leader or innovator should be without.

Global financial crisis and colossal sovereign debt has resulted in the need for radical cuts in public expenditure in many countries. Against this background, the contributions in Third Sector Performance acknowledge that, as a result, more imaginative ways of delivering public services are being sought. In countries like the UK, the new concept of The Big Society envisages third sector, or not-for-profit, or charitable organizations and social enterprises stepping in to mitigate the loss of vital public services. This development also gives rise to the likelihood that third sector financial institutions such as credit unions and a possible 'Big Society Bank' will grow in importance. The performance of all these enterprises looks set to become a much more critical issue than it has been in the past. The editors have gathered in this volume, chapters reflecting the fact that third sector organizations are not the same as conventional businesses and are also subtly different from the public sector. There is currently a dearth of knowledge and a lack of research into issues around performance in the Third Sector or Civil Society. This book begins to fill a void in the knowledge base. The internationally sourced contributions represent a balanced offering of academic research findings and practitioner accounts from the Third Sector, together with a section devoted specifically to third sector finance institutions. This book will appeal, internationally, to policy makers within the third sector or involved in the management of n-f-p and voluntary organisations, as well as to those with responsibility for wider public policy, scholars teaching or researching in this area, and students of business and management preparing for roles in social enterprises.

In 1987, Motorola developed Six Sigma out of a need for improvement in their pager manufacturing processes. Since then, Six Sigma has been implemented by a number of manufacturing companies, predominantly in the USA. In the late 1990s, however, Six Sigma gained wider and international popularity due to successful implementation at General Electric. Six Sigma has now become one of the integral aspects of manufacturing, as well as non-manufacturing businesses worldwide. In recent years, many books have been published on Six Sigma, mainly on its application in manufacturing and product development. This book, by contrast, focuses specifically on the application of Six Sigma in service and transactional environments. The book comprises two parts. Part One provides the necessary knowledge for understanding the Six Sigma methodology and its underlying concepts. Part Two consists of practical examples of Six Sigma application to transactional and service environments which have been provided in the form of real world case studies written by internationally successful companies, to complement the reader's knowledge of Six Sigma and to increase comprehension of issues surrounding Six Sigma implementations. It has been written for newcomers as well as for experienced practitioners who are interested in improving processes in everyday business operations. The focus is on the implementation of the Six Sigma methodology rather than on the statistical tools and techniques. The aim of this book is to provide the reader with some practical and useful guidelines for Six Sigma deployment and its application to transactional and service processes.

Lean and Six Sigma initiatives are designed to enable sustained improvements in your company or organization's efficiency and competitiveness. As with other improvement strategies they are dependent on two things, effective management and your ability to automate or digitize elements of your business process. Lean and Digitize provides you with a convincing picture of each of these elements (process improvement, digitization and the management of both) to help you eliminate waste, improve process and service, and better align your information and communications technology with your strategic objectives. Bernardo Nicoletti analyses and reviews the development of automation and telecommunications systems in the context of quality management and process improvement. He uses case examples to illustrate organizational and management approaches to implementation. These, along with his practical guidance, will help you make sense of the complexity, benefits and interrelations between these different elements. The text shows you on the one hand, how to integrate information and communication systems into your process improvement projects and, on the other, how to align information and communication projects with your quality strategy. Without a holistic approach to technology and quality improvement, your initiatives run the risk of being misdirected or simply running out of steam. Changes of this kind will never be easy but at least if you follow the advice in Lean and Digitize you will significantly increase your chances of success.

Another new book in the popular and original series of pictorial guides - John Oakland cuts through the complex concepts and confusing jargon associated with implementing Total Quality, and Peter Morris presents the information in his inimitable pictorial style. This book will show students and managers what they need to understand about TQM in the simplest, clearest and most memorable form. Professor John Oakland is undoubtedly the British guru of quality management. Following a successful industrial career in research and production management, he has developed a pragmatic approach to introducing TQM which he and his colleagues have used successfully in literally thousands of organizations. He is founder and Executive Chairman of OAKLAND Consulting Plc. and Head of the European Centre for TQM at the University of Bradford Management Centre. Also published by Butterworth-Heinemann are John Oakland's bestselling Total Quality Management (now in its second edition) and Cases in Total Quality Management. Peter Morris is the creative force behind the illustrations in all Butterworth-Heinemann's pictorial guides. Originally trained as an art teacher, he spent several years as an industrial designer in Canada before returning to England to design educational and training materials for the University of Sussex. His experience working on industrial contracts convinced him, quite rightly, that cartoons are frequently the best way to illustrate the abstractions of business life.

Revised and fully, ISO 9001:2015 Audit Procedures describes the methods for completing management reviews and quality audits and describes the changes made to the standards for 2015 and how they are likely to impact on your own audit procedures. Now in its fourth edition, this text includes essential material on process models, generic processes and detailed coverage of auditor questionnaires. Part II includes a series of useful checklists to assist auditors in compiling their own systems and individual audit check sheets. The whole text is also supported with a glossary of terms as well as explanations of acronyms and abbreviations used in quality. ISO 9001:2015 Audit Procedures is for auditors of small businesses looking to complete a quality audit review for the 2015 standards. This book will also prove invaluable to all professional auditors completing internal, external and third party audits.

Another new book in the popular and original series of pictorial guides - John Oakland cuts through the complex concepts and confusing jargon associated with implementing Total Quality, and Peter Morris presents the information in his inimitable pictorial style. This book will show students and managers what they need to understand about TQM in the simplest, clearest and most memorable form. Professor John Oakland is undoubtedly the British guru of quality management. Following a successful industrial career in research and production management, he has developed a pragmatic approach to introducing TQM which he and his colleagues have used successfully in literally thousands of organizations. He is founder and Executive Chairman of OAKLAND Consulting Plc. and Head of the European Centre for TQM at the University of Bradford Management Centre. Also published by Butterworth-Heinemann are John Oakland's bestselling Total Quality Management (now in its second edition) and Cases in Total Quality Management. Peter Morris is the creative force behind the illustrations in all Butterworth-Heinemann's pictorial guides. Originally trained as an art teacher, he spent several years as an industrial designer in Canada before returning to England to design educational and training materials for the University of Sussex. His experience working on industrial contracts convinced him, quite rightly, that cartoons are frequently the best way to illustrate the abstractions of business life.

Traceable calibration of test and measurement equipment is a requirement of the ISO 9000 series of standards. Basic Metrology for ISO 9000 Certification provides essential information for the growing number of firms registered for ISO 9000. Dr. G.M.S. de Silva who has a lifetime of experience in metrology and quality management fields condenses that knowledge in this valuable and practical workbook. The book provides a basic understanding of the principles of measurement and calibration of measuring instruments falling into the following fields; Length,Angle, Mass, Pressure, Force, Temperature and AC/DC Electrical quantities. Basic concepts and definitions, ISO 9001 requirements and uncertainty determinations are also included.

If you are in search of real-world practical scenarios of IT performance management practices, with a desire to obtain examples of strategic directives, accountabilities, outcomes, and performance measures for managing IT services, with an interest toward how performance management integrates with strategic and operational management, then Integrated IT Performance Management is the perfect book for you. Unlike theoretical books that focus on human resources performance management, this book presents a compilation of the author's extensive IT management, performance management, project management, enterprise architecture, and applications development knowledge and skills, and industry experiences gained over more than 35 years as an IT professional in the private, public, and academic sectors in Canada and the United States. It provides an Integrated IT Performance Management Framework (IPMF-IT) (TM) that integrates strategic, IT operational, and performance management components based on a results-driven performance measurement and accountability framework. It also demonstrates the applicability of this framework within the context of the entire IT services delivery life cycle, using a model-centric approach. A unique and innovative aspect of this model is the alignment of outcome measures with output measures, which focuses on the effectiveness and efficiencies of output measures to the management, measurement, and delivery of IT services, using integrated IT performance measurement dashboards.

In today's business world, competitiveness defines the industrial leading edge. Organizations and businesses of all sizes are adopting Lean manufacturing practices to increase efficiency and address worries about their bottom lines. In a detailed review of this staple of Lean manufacturing, Cellular Manufacturing: Mitigating Risk and Uncertainty outlines how cellular manufacturing can do just that. It demonstrates how this approach can help you and your teams build a variety of products with as little waste as possible. The book begins by presenting a survey of the current state of existing methods that can best be used in the handling of the bottleneck machines and parts problem, which results from the cellular manufacturing system design. It then explores how decision making under risk is used to help the designer select the best cell arrangement in case of probabilistic production volume and maximize the profit imposed by resource capacity constraints. The author then presents a method for the system design of a manufacturing cell that aims for profit maximization over a certain period of time. He also discusses robust design, illustrated with a real application. Put simply, cellular manufacturing integrates machinery and a small team of staff, directed by a team leader, so all the work on a product or part can be accomplished in the same cell eliminating resources that do not add value to the product. A concise yet unique reference, this book incorporates decision making under risk into cellular manufacturing. The text makes the link that ties cellular manufacturing to the bottom line. It helps you recognize savings opportunities from elimination of downtime between operations, decreased material handling costs, decreased work-in-progress inventory and associated costs, reduced opportunity for handling errors, decreased downtime spent waiting for supplies or materials, and reduced losses from defective or obsolete products.

There is often a deep disconnect between the project team's goals and those of the organization. Senior management wants "profitable" projects, but is only able to quantify its wishes in terms of the traditional project management elements: schedule and cost. To operate smoothly, the entire organization must be driven by the single goal of project profitability. Total Project Control presents valuable enhancements to the traditional project management approach, introducing new metrics and techniques for assessing the performance and profitability of projects. Demonstrating how to maximize the business value of a project, this book discusses new profitability-based data metrics, such as expected monetary value (EMV), expected project profit (EPP), Devaux's Index of Project Performance (DIPP), critical path drag, drag cost, and the cost of leveling with unresolved bottlenecks (CLUB). The impact of implementing these metrics can be far reaching. Not only will good management decisions, at both the project and executive levels, be supported by quantitative data, but bad decisions will become harder to justify. This book shows how to compute and use the new metrics to rightsize staffing levels for projects, programs, and organizations. It also explains what every project manager needs to know about earned value tracking: its uses, abuses, value, distortions, and potential fixes. The book then extends these metrics into techniques for indexing, tracking, progressing, and improving the business value of projects. See What's New in the Second Edition: Includes new diagrams and new ways of computing critical path drag in complex networks Introduces DIPP Performance Index tracking Offers new exercises in how to compute critical path drag and drag cost and use them to maximize project value Focuses on topics senior management needs to be assured the project team is using to maximize project profitability

Agile Readiness is designed to provide guidance to the manager or business leader in establishing a successful environment to enable fast moving agile and lean project methods focused on business systems transformation. Agile and lean offer huge potential as methods for reducing risk and costs, delivering early benefits and ensuring IT projects genuinely deliver the business transformation benefits that they promise at the outset. The conundrum for many organizations is that without a change of organizational culture, agile and lean methods are very unlikely to be adopted successfully in traditional organizations. Thus, the struggle that many (if not most) managers and executives face is not in how agile or lean development works, but in how to make agile and lean methods successful when working beyond software development. Thomas P. Wise and Reuben Daniel provide a clear view of the struggles and remedies. Their text uses simple ground floor experiences to illustrate the practices and behaviors necessary to create highly successful and effective agile and lean business systems transformation teams. In this book the reader will discover organizational strategies that build strong teams, an environment of trust, and project selection and planning strategies to create an environment of enablement in which agile and lean teams thrive.

Most banking institutions suffer from numerous inefficiencies, such as poor planning; inadequate coordination and communication; ineffective processes, tools, and workflow; and excessive bureaucracy. Lean for Banks describes in easy language how to use Lean and Six Sigma management practices to significantly improve the efficiency of bank operations. This book shows how to use Lean and Six Sigma management practices to improve the normal daily work in a bank, typically executed in the so-called "back offices." This work involves about 90 percent of bank employees and generates 90 percent of costs. Lean for Banks explains how to organize bank operations better, increase work productivity and quality by working smarter and not harder, make fewer mistakes and decrease rework, and elevate jobs from mundane and repetitive to creative and pleasantly challenging. Most importantly, it shows how to increase the satisfaction of bank customers and in turn enhance bank competitiveness and market share. Lean for Banks is intended for all levels of bank employees: back-office workers, first-level supervisors, middle- and higher-level managers, and corporate executives. It is also intended for all levels of students at schools that teach banking skills-short courses intended for tellers, college courses in advanced banking operations, and continuing education for bank managers and line employees. This book is an entry-level text on Lean and should give readers enough understanding to prepare them for active participation in Lean deployment activities.

Many organizations are looking for that magic tool or methodology that will suddenly transform them into outstanding organizations. Unfortunately, there is no one right answer for all organizations or even for a single organization. Successful organizations skillfully integrate the appropriate improvement approaches with honesty, commitment, and constancy of purpose across all levels of management. This book, part of The Little Big Book series, discusses the most common set of tools and methodologies used in managerial, strategic planning, project selection, and organizational improvement projects that are referred to throughout The Little Big Book series. It presents, in a concise no-nonsense format, the concepts and techniques that must be mastered by project managers and anyone tasked with managing an improvement project. The tools covered in this book include affinity diagrams, brainstorming, cause-and-effect diagrams, the Kano model, organizational process improvement, Pareto analysis, project management, risk management, root cause analysis, storyboarding, value propositions, and workflow diagrams. Because of the large number of tools and techniques covered, the book supplies concise operating guidance for each tool that is adequate to prepare readers to understand and use that tool. It also includes examples of how the tools are used. The book provides a basic understanding of the tools you need to improve the processes you are currently using to manage your organization and, ultimately, to improve the quality, productivity, and agility of the products or services you are delivering to your customers. The tools presented in this book are the essential tools that all organizations should be using. By understanding and using the tools covered in this book, you will possess a better overall understanding of the way your organization needs to function in today's increasingly competitive environment. This book is designed to supplement and provide additional direction in the use of the methodologies defined in the other books in The Little Big Book series

Competitive Innovation and Improvement: Statistical Design and Control explains how to combine two widely known statistical methods-statistical design and statistical control-in a manner that can solve any business, government, or research problem quickly with sustained results. Because the problem-solving strategy employed is pure scientific method, it makes integration into any existing problem-solving or research method quite simple. The material in the book is presented in a manner that anyone can read and immediately put to use, including executives, managers, statisticians, scientists, engineers, researchers, and all of their supervisors and employees. Organizations can apply the concepts discussed with existing staff to release latent energy rather than adding to their workload. Optional footnotes provide the opportunity for more advanced technical insight. Supplying readers with an understanding of orthogonal design, the book illustrates key ideas through large-scale case studies. The book's 12 case studies examine the coupling of statistical design with economic control across a range of industries and problem types. The book suggests the real world, rather than mathematics alone, to reveal how things work and how to make them work better. Innovation and improvement by design is explained, which will help readers open up left-brain analytics to more right-brain creativity. Although mathematics (as advanced as needed to solve the problem) is used throughout the text, it is translated into simple arithmetic without any mathematical notation. The book limits references to a few essential texts and papers that readers can refer to as they become more experienced in statistical design and control.

Every day human organisations fail. Building Anti-Fragile Organisations explores a powerful alternative framework for risk in the design and management of human systems. Anti-Fragility is a new way of thinking about mitigating risk that builds on earlier work on the characteristics of biological systems that, being more than just robust, actually improve their resilience through being stressed. Professor Bendell explains how applying this concept to the development and management of organisations, services and products, allows us to identify the characteristics that will not only mitigate against the realisation of hazards, but enable growth in protection, strength and anti-fragility over time. In this context, anti-fragility also encompasses flexibility, agility and the exploitation of opportunities. At the organisational level, anti-fragility (or its absence) is determined by the organisational strategy, structure and systems, its people, relationships and culture. The book focuses on establishing the Anti-Fragile concept of the firm, and explores its application in private and public sector organisations of all types. It identifies characteristics relevant to survival in a turbulent world, and how our approaches to risk and governance need to change in order to create and manage anti-fragile organisations. It provides practical insight into the concept of Anti-Fragility and its deployment within human organisations of all types, and give readers the opportunity to start to make sense to applying the concepts within their own worlds.

Patient Safety: Perspectives on Evidence, Information and Knowledge Transfer provides background on the patient safety movement, systems safety, human error and other key philosophies that support change and innovation in the reduction of medical error. The book draws from the multidisciplinary areas within the acute care environment to provide models that support proactive changes in how team-based improvement efforts can affect the knowledge provision necessary to support safe care delivery. The publication discusses how the tenets of safety (described in the beginning of the book) have been or can be actively applied in the field. Tools and case studies, in addition to a brief discussion of core resources, are included.The key objectives of the book: * To inform healthcare leadership, clinical directors, risk managers and information professionals of the intersection between key patient safety philosophies and information, evidence and knowledge delivery mechanisms that support medical error reduction.* To raise awareness of the potential for systemic and individual information and knowledge sharing failures that are latent in the health care delivery process. * To explore the application of systemic improvement processes and tools to identify opportunities to reduce risk and potential for failure.* To provide evidence-based recommendations for health care information professionals and, with the knowledge they need to position themselves as partners with healthcare providers and leadership* To illustrate how expertise from information and knowledge professionals folds into elements and language of the safety sciences* To submit innovative activities and measures that illustrate a tangible contribution to patient safety from the knowledge transfer field

Bikash Chatterjee emphasizes the criticality of applying the principles of Lean and Six Sigma within the paradigm of the drug development process. His guide to operational excellence in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries is a focused summary of the application of Lean Six Sigma theory to the regulated life sciences. From molecule discovery to the application of PAT Applying Lean Six Sigma in the Pharmaceutical Industry will highlight the importance of framing these initiatives within the key deliverables of drug development manufacturing and quality. Challenging conventional wisdom the author offers a quality and efficiency perspective as a foundation for the principles of Quality by Design, PAT and the new philosophies underlying Process Validation. Each chapter includes discussion around the considerations for applying Lean manufacturing and Six Sigma principles and their tools, culminating in a case study to illustrate the application. The book is organized to reflect the major work centers involved in the drug development lifecycle. Each chapter is stand-alone but together they illustrate the necessary synergy between Lean, Six Sigma and compliance sensibilities required to be successful in the pharmaceutical industry. These design, manufacturing and management techniques are not without their challenges. Bikash Chatterjee's book offers the roadmap for an industry that is struggling to reinvent many of its development and business processes.

In service societies, the tertiary sector has long become the primary sector in terms of GDP and employment. Quality research and testing means better service, and success in the service industries demands quality. Nonetheless, complaints about insufficient, inconsistent or bad service abound. Quality decides on success and failure. Where so much is at stake, management decisions call for systematic research and consumers look for relevant results that provide guidance in complex markets. Research into quality and customer satisfaction gets to the core of a business. However, many so-called studies hardly meet essential criteria of empirical research and deliver artefacts rather than facts. This book puts an end to common misconceptions of quality studies. Measuring Service Performance is an appeal for an approach to quality research that meets quality criteria itself. It is a compelling argument against widespread but rather dubious dealings with measurement, data and statistics. Ralf Lisch calls for a reconsideration of the research process, focussing on content instead of method and adding meaning to results. Because service excellence deserves research excellence. Written in a practical, accessible style, the book offers practitioners as well as market researchers, MBA students and others involved in the service sector a critical analysis and discussion of the essentials of 'Practical Research for Better Quality'.

Germany's economic miracle is a widely-known phenomenon, and the world-leading, innovative products and services associated with German companies are something that others seek to imitate. In The 'Made in Germany'A' Champion Brands, Ugesh A. Joseph provides an extensively researched, insightful look at over 200 of Germany's best brands to see what they stand for, what has made them what they are today, and what might be transferable. The way Germany is branded as a nation carries across into the branding of its companies and services, particularly the global superstar brands - truly world-class in size, performance and reputation. Just as important are the medium-sized and small enterprises, known as the 'Mittelstand'. These innovative and successful enterprises from a wide range of industries and product / service categories are amongst the World market leaders in their own niche and play a huge part in making Germany what it is today. The book also focuses on German industrial entrepreneurship and a selection of innovative and emergent stars. All these companies are supported and encouraged by a sophisticated infrastructure of facilitators, influencers and enhancers - the research, industry, trade and standards organizations, the fairs and exhibitions and all the social and cultural factors that influence, enhance and add positive value to the country's image. Professionals or academics interested in business; entrepreneurship; branding and marketing; product or service development; international trade and business development policy, will find fascinating insights in this book; while those with an interest in Germany from emerging industrial economies will learn something of the secrets of German success.