Financially Focused Quality

The author introduces Financially Focused Quality (FFQ) to the business world. The FFQ management strategy has been evolving over the years at Lockheed Martin and has been documented as having saved them millions of dollars. FFQ takes TQM and Full-Cycle Corrective Action (FCCA) a critical step further by including a financial viewpoint at the beginning of process improvement activity, and integrating recognition of cost in each step of the process. In the 21st century, technical expertise alone will not be enough. This book offers valuable financial concepts and insights that will greatly improve your worth to your companies. Equipped with FFQ concepts and methodologies, you will be able to observe your workplace from a financial viewpoint, enhancing your value as a decision maker and leader. The book presents the methodology for insuring a company-wide education on key financial issues. With an understanding of basic concepts, the book explains FFQ elements and their use in making and implementing business decisions. The final chapters contain case studies showing successful FFQ applications. Financially Focused Quality: TQM in the 21st Century gives you the skills necessary to implement FFQ in work environments, offering the prospect of improving the translation of quality and cost-cutting measures to the bottom line. It is an important professional reference and provides the financial education that all employees should receive to become leaders in the 21st century.

Financially Focused Project Management is a comprehensive reference covering almost every aspect of effective project management and providing breakthrough proven financial methods to ensure profitability.

Focused Quality: Managing for Results is a book about using quality improvement as a means to enhance bottom line results. Written for managers in industry, services, healthcare and government, this important new book provides a focused approach on how to target critical improvement initiatives and insure their success. Prepare - Plan - Deploy - Transition are the steps in the improvement process that are covered in detail. Included are examples of how organizations have successfully accomplished each step. Practical lessons on how to and how not to implement quality and process improvement initiatives are given. Process assessment is crucial to identifying the importance of a process and defining the scope of what is involved in order to improve it. Before deciding to refine, redesign or reengineer an assessment is needed. Focused Quality: Managing for Results not only shows you how to do an assessment but also how to apply the results to improve the bottom line. Application is emphasized throughout the book with the focus on the managers role in leading the change effort. The authors have provided a set of questions that management should answer to determine if their organization is ready to effectively implement the improvement process. Realizing that even the best plans can go astray there is also a diagnostic check sheet to pinpoint the causes of and solutions for process improvement failures.

Improve the delivery of library services by implementing total quality management (TQM), a system of continuous improvement employing participative management and centered on the needs of customers. Although TQM was originally designed for and successfully applied in business and manufacturing settings, this groundbreaking volume introduces strategies for translating TQM principles from the profit-based manufacturing sector to the library setting. Integrating Total Quality Management in a Library Setting shows librarians how to improve library services by implementing strategies such as employee involvement and training, problem-solving teams, statistical methods, long-term goals and thinking, and an overall recognition that the system (not the staff) is responsible for most inefficiencies. Total Quality Management in a Library Setting describes the principles of TQM, its origins, and the potential benefits and barriers to be expected when adopting quality management approaches in libraries. Chapters provide guidelines for planning and implementation to help libraries use total quality management to break down interdepartmental barriers and work on continuously improving library services. The contributors, who have begun to think about using or who are already using TQM in a library setting, present specific planning and implementation issues that can be put to immediate use in libraries. With this innovative book, library managers will learn that by working together on problem solving teams to address specific operational questions, and by developing a shared knowledge of problem-solving tools and techniques, staff members grow personally and gain a larger sense of organizational purpose. Other TQM methods introduced in this book include the concept of the internal customer, which teaches staff to recognize how other staff members use the results of their work, and the principle of continuous improvement, which enables libraries to set measurable goals based on quantitative performance indicators, and to monitor progress toward those goals.

The careful management of costs and operations are two of the most essential elements of operating any successful organization, public or private. While the private sector is driven by profit-maximizing incentives to keep costs to a minimum, the public sector’s mission and goals are guided by a different set of objectives: to provide a wide range of essential goods and services to maintain social order, improve public health, revitalize the economy, and, most importantly, to improve the quality of life for its citizens. Although the objectives are different, it is just as important for public decision makers to make the best use of available resources by keeping the cost of operation to a minimum. This book demonstrates that with a careful emphasis on cost accounting, operations management, and quality control, all organizations and governments can increase efficiency, improve performance, and prepare to weather hard times. This book is divided into three parts: Part I offers thorough coverage of cost fundamentals, with an emphasis on basic cost concepts, cost behavior, cost analysis, cost accounting, and cost control. Part II examines optimization in costs and operations in government including traditional or classical optimization with applications in inventory management and queuing, followed by mathematical programming and network analysis. Finally, Part III explores special topics in cost and optimization, in particular those related to games and decisions, productivity measurement, and quality control. Simple, accessible language and explanations are integrated throughout, and examples have been drawn from government so that readers can easily relate to them. Cost and Optimization in Government is required reading for practicing public managers and students of public administration in need of a clear, concise guide to maximizing public resource efficiency.

Meeting the Challenges of Data Quality Management outlines the foundational concepts of data quality management and its challenges. The book enables data management professionals to help their organizations get more value from data by addressing the five challenges of data quality management: the meaning challenge (recognizing how data represents reality), the process/quality challenge (creating high-quality data by design), the people challenge (building data literacy), the technical challenge (enabling organizational data to be accessed and used, as well as protected), and the accountability challenge (ensuring organizational leadership treats data as an asset). Organizations that fail to meet these challenges get less value from their data than organizations that address them directly. The book describes core data quality management capabilities and introduces new and experienced DQ practitioners to practical techniques for getting value from activities such as data profiling, DQ monitoring and DQ reporting. It extends these ideas to the management of data quality within big data environments. This book will appeal to data quality and data management professionals, especially those involved with data governance, across a wide range of industries, as well as academic and government organizations. Readership extends to people higher up the organizational ladder (chief data officers, data strategists, analytics leaders) and in different parts of the organization (finance professionals, operations managers, IT leaders) who want to leverage their data and their organizational capabilities (people, processes, technology) to drive value and gain competitive advantage. This will be a key reference for graduate students in computer science programs which normally have a limited focus on the data itself and where data quality management is an often-overlooked aspect of data management courses. Describes the importance of high-quality data to organizations wanting to leverage their data and, more generally, to people living in today’s digitally interconnected world Explores the five challenges in relation to organizational data, including "Big Data," and proposes approaches to meeting them Clarifies how to apply the core capabilities required for an effective data quality management program (data standards definition, data quality assessment, monitoring and reporting, issue management, and improvement) as both stand-alone processes and as integral components of projects and operations Provides Data Quality practitioners with ways to communicate consistently with stakeholders

This title was first published in 2001. Enhancing the quality of health services remains a key challenge for all health systems, whatever their stage of development. This collection of leading-edge research from Europe and America explores both quantitative and qualitative approaches to identifying and remedying deficiencies in health care.

Here is a practical guide to the essentials of business. This book provides everything you need to know about the key concepts and terms, from accountability to zero-sum game. Everything from management, economics and finance to marketing, organizational behaviour and operations is covered in just the right amount of detail to make things clear and intelligible. Business: The Key Concepts: * is detailed yet approachable * considers new developments in business, notably eBusiness and contemporary business ethics * covers established subjects, taking an international and strategic perspective that balances theory and practice * suggests specific further reading for many concepts and also includes an extensive bibliography. Whether you're already in business and could do with a handy reference guide, or you're a student needing an introduction to the fundamentals, Business: The Key Concepts is the perfect companion.