Quality Quandaries: Cost and Quality in Postal Service

摘要

In 2011, the European Union (EU) started to liberalize the internal markets for postal service. The objective of the EU postal policy is to accomplish a single market for postal services and to ensure a high-quality universal postal service as part of the Lisbon Agenda. Over the last few years, The Netherlands has gradually opened up the postal sector to competition for both business and consumer products. In this period the mail volumes of letters are steadily decreasing due to Internet-related communication. Opposite this development the use of parcel services is growing fast. Due to the competition, the providers of postal services are encouraged to improve their quality of service and to reduce their costs; that is, to become more effective and efficient (see Juran [1989] and Kotler [1984]). As a result, providers are more or less forced to organize and to adopt improvement programs such as theory of constraints, business process redesign, lean thinking, and Six Sigma.