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Asian Network for Quality 2011
Edited by Sang-Chan Park & Sang-Chul Lee
1. Introduction
1.1 Background and research goal
These days, companies have expanded their spheres of activity on a worldwide basis and brave intense competition in new business environments that they are just entering into. They face this new situation, however, using conventional business models, or they find themselves unable to establish a new model that corresponds to this new environment. As a result, they experience sluggish growth. This phenomenon has an impact on their stakeholders, such as customers, employees, partners, investors and shareholders, and on society as a whole. Therefore, the immediate development of a solution to this problem is called for.
In Japan, two sets of guidelines for quality management systems (QMS) were issued in 2005 as Japanese Industrial Standards (JIS): the [1] JIS Q 9005 (2005) guideline for sustainable growth, and the [2] JIS Q 9006 (2005) guideline for self-assessment. The purpose of these guidelines is to enable companies to establish and re-design their own QMS that has the organizational capabilities they need to realize sustained success ([3] Iizuka, 2006). The target user is a company that operates in a highly competitive environment, especially small- and medium-sized companies that face many limitations in terms of management resources. In the process of implementing these guidelines, two key concepts are advocated: an "organizational capability profile (OCP)" and "self-assessment." The former is the aggregate of capabilities that a company should possess in order to realize and provide customers with values that are directly linked to the company's competitive advantage in a given business area. The OCP must be clarified from the viewpoint of gaining and maintaining a competitive advantage in the target business area; thus, the OCP that is needed will differ from company to company. For this reason, each company needs to implement the self-assessment of its present QMS in light of its individual OCP, based on the five basic steps shown in Figure 1 [Figure omitted. See Article Image.]. This approach is quite distinct from the conventional approach, as a company intentionally designs the kinds of organizational capabilities it needs for competitive success, self-assesses its QMS based on its unique OCP, and then redesigns that profile strategically.
Therefore, there is no...