Managing for Quality and Performance Excellence

[WLOs: 1, 2, 3] [CLOs: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Prior to beginning work on this final paper, read Chapters 10, 11, and 12 in the course textbook. It is recommended to review Chapters 1, 2, and 3, too.

For this final paper, you will be reviewing and reflecting on the quality management concepts and knowledge gained throughout the course. You will be applying your critical thinking, drawing your own conclusions, and applying what you have learned to improve quality and performance excellence. Follow the prompts below and make sure to address each in sufficient depth to answer the questions and cover the associated concepts. This will serve as a good review of the content, methods, and principles learned of total quality management (TQM). 

As you work on your final paper, keep in mind the following bullet point observations on the role of quality.

• Six quality perspectives are listed below and explain how each quality perspective applies to the product or service:
  • Quality in manufacturing.
  • Quality in service organizations.
  • Quality in business support functions.
  • The role of the quality function.
  • Quality and competitive advantage (business results).
  • Quality and personal values.
• Modern day quality management practices represent the approaches that organizations use to achieve the quality management principles.
• Customer satisfaction is vital to keeping customers and growing a business.
  • Customer requirements, as expressed in the customer’s own terms, are called the voice of the customer.
• Organizations continue to learn that to satisfy customers, they must first satisfy the workforce. (Review Chapter 4, specifically Table 4.1: Key Workforce-Focused Practices for Quality, and the two Chapter 4 sections: High-Performance Work Cultures, and Principles of Workforce Engagement and Motivation.)
• Motivation theories can be applied to support high performance in any organization.

In your paper,

• Explain how your selected organization applies the six steps from key customer-focused practices for quality management in the customer focus to meet or exceed customer requirements.
• Identify which of the variety of methods, or “listening posts,” your selected organization uses to gather the voice of the customer, including their needs and expectations, their feeling of importance, and their satisfaction as a customer.
• Evaluate the principles of workforce engagement, and empowerment and motivation, and evaluate why these two items are important to quality, and which five of Deming’s 14 points relate directly to the notion of empowerment.
• Apply one content theory, one process theory, and one environmentally-based theory to your selected organization, detailing the context and situation.
• State if the selected organization has a high-performance work culture and describe why or why not.
• Summarize how your selected organization embodies the Baldrige Award Excellence Framework, core values, and processes.
• Assess the impact, if any, of the Baldrige Award Excellence Framework and the Deming philosophy on the organization.
• Select a product or service that your organization, or an organization of your choosing, purchases on a regular basis:
  • Explain why quality is important to that product or service.
  • Evaluate the competitive environment for the product or service selected.
  • Appraise how each quality perspective applies to the selected product or service and why.
  • Illustrate how each of the seven quality management principles pertain to your organization or an organization of your choosing using three approaches per principle.
  • Appraise how the Deming philosophy and Deming’s 14 points may apply to the product or service selected.

The Managing for Quality and Performance Excellence paper

• Must be six to eight double-spaced pages in length (not including title and references pages) and formatted according to APA Style (Links to an external site.) as outlined in the Writing Center’s APA Formatting for Microsoft Word (Links to an external site.) resource.
• Must include a separate title page with the following:
  • Title of paper in bold font
    • Space should be between title and the rest of the information on the title page.
  • Student’s name
  • Name of institution (University of Arizona Global Campus)
  • Course name and number
  • Instructor’s name
  • Due date
• Must utilize academic voice. See the Academic Voice (Links to an external site.) resource for additional guidance.
• Must include an introduction and conclusion paragraph. Your introduction paragraph needs to end with a clear thesis statement that indicates the purpose of your paper.
  • For assistance on writing Introductions & Conclusions (Links to an external site.) as well as Writing a Thesis Statement (Links to an external site.), refer to the Writing Center resources.
• Your textbook is the main resource for this course. To complete the week 4 assignment, please use your textbook and 4 other resources for a total of 5 resources.

Prior to beginning work on this discussion forum, read Chapter 11 from the textbook, the webpage article What is a Balanced Scorecard? A Quick Overview (Links to an external site.) , and the weekly lecture.

In your discussion post,

• Explain the importance of performance measurement in organizations.
• Explain what the balanced scorecard is. Describe its four components.
  • Select an organization that applies the balance scorecard. Access the UAGC Library online database, which offers company financials, descriptions, history, property, subsidiaries, officers, and directors, and the Business Insights database. For assistance, view the Mergent Online (Links to an external site.) and Business Insights: Global (Links to an external site.) tip sheets for suggested methods of searching UAGC Library databases generally, as well as specific advice for searching these two databases.
• Search and select an article of an organization that has successfully implemented the balanced scorecard, and provide a brief summary of how the components of the scorecard have added value, improved quality, and increased performance.