by Raymond Lim

Created on: May 25, 2008

A plethora of management concepts had emerged in the management field to boost organisations' performances and assist in realising their ambition. These led to various options available for organisations to employ in pursuing their target and enhancement of their performance.

Depending on the organisation's background; capability; and the environment in which the organisation operates in; not all management concepts are suitable to the organisation. The organisation needs to know the 4 W's. That is, what to improve or area to improve on; which strategy to adopt to improve; whom to improve; when or how long should be the improvement period? Proper management planning and strategies are paramount for an organisation's performance. Therefore it is vital for organisations to engage compatible management concepts and approaches. The risk factors need to be weighed against the advantages offered in the employment of various management concepts.

As quoted by Dr. James Harrington, Don't start an improvement process to improve customer satisfaction or employee morale. It will do that, but the real reason you need an improvement process is to increase the organization's performance (PROFITS).'

What then are the essence of improvement and the choice of compatible managerial concepts?

Based on Ernst & Young's survey report, "The American Competitiveness Study", four marketplace position factors were used to differentiate a winning organization from that of a loser.

RELATIVE PROFITABILITY

Marketplace position factors Loser Winners
Relative Quality Worse Better
Relative Cost Higher Lower
Relative Price Lower Higher
Relative Market Share Smaller Larger

The characteristics of the winning organization is that of having:

Better relative quality
Lower Relative Cost
Higher relative price that, combined with reduced cost, provides a very significant profit advantage
Larger relative market share.

Taking into account the above marketplace position factors, one can engage emerging
management concepts to address the woes of the loser organization.

A Total-Quality To Operations Improvement

The quality movement, with such approaches as small-scale continuous improvement process (KAIZEN) and the large-scale radical redesign of processes (BPR), is directly having a positive effect on productivity and measures of efficiency.

George Edwards the president of American Society for Quality Control (ASQC) in 1946 stated at that time,

Quality is going to assume a more and more important place alongside competition

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