Implementing and Sustaining Quality Improvements: Management Methodology for Managing Change

摘要

There is total agreement that the greatest problems facing American business today are the decline in productivity growth combined with the inability of some industries to meet their customer's quality and reliability expectations. Two statements describe the response of managers attempting to deal with today's productivity challenges. An increasing number of managers in more organizations than ever before are expending serious, substantive effort on the implementation of quality improvement programs. More managers now view quality as the foundation of strategic importance, rather than as an abstraction to be pulled out of platitude files and given lip service at the annual meetings. Both of these statements are good. What is not so good is that while such improvement programs may lead to some quality improvements, what progress is made tends to be less substantial and the improvements are not sustained over long periods of time to reflect overall productivity improvement. 4 figs. (ERA citation 13:050262)