The TQM Magazine: Volume 13 Issue 5

Heroic medicine and business downsizing: management’s dark ages

Ed Chung

Examines the current trend towards downsizing using the metaphor of heroic medicine, an old medical practice which entailed bleeding the patient (often to death). The passion that…

QS 9000: an overview and comparison with ISO 9000

Jeffrey Lo Chi Fong, Jiju Antony

QS 9000 is a quality system standard for the automotive industry, developed in the USA in 1994 by Ford, General Motors, Daimler‐Chrysler and the US truck manufacturers. It was…

Value and value chains in healthcare: a quality management perspective

David Walters, Peter Jones

Quality and value are currently convergent concepts in healthcare. The importance of patients as customers has increased the focus on quality management and value delivery. The…

Towards TQM – integrating Japanese 5‐S principles with ISO 9001:2000 requirements

Low Sui Pheng

5‐S is the acronym for five Japanese words: seiri, seiton, seiso, seiketsu and shitsuke which, when translated, mean organisation, neatness, cleanliness, standardization and…

75 painful questions about your customer satisfaction

Hubert Rampersad

Customer satisfaction is a key issue for all organizations in both the private and public sectors. To survive, you must understand and provide what the customer wants. It is…

Strengthening the weakest link of TQM – from customer focus to customer understanding

Stefan Lagrosen

Contains a discussion of how the TQM concept can be further developed so as to give more room for innovations grounded in a profound understanding of the customers and their…

Empirical evidence about managerial issues of ISO certification

Pilar González Torre, Belarmino Adenso‐Díaz, Beatriz A. González

Nowadays, there are a growing number of companies that for a variety of reasons seek the ISO 9000 certificate in order to continue being competitive. This certification process…

Evaluation of health services organisations – German experiences with the EFQM excellence approach in healthcare

Johannes Moeller, Anne Katharina Sonntag

Expands on previous reports by illustrating experiences of German health services organisations made in their assessment against the European Foundation for Quality Management…