Title: Total company-wide management system: its components

Authors: Souraj Salah; Abdur Rahim; Juan A. Carretero

Addresses: Continuous Improvement Department, Johnson Controls Intl., Sheikh Zayed Rd., API World Tower, Suite 1304, P.O. Box 31065, Dubai, UAE ' Faculty of Business Administration, University of New Brunswick, P.O. Box 4400, Fredericton, NB E3B 5A3, Canada ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of New Brunswick, P.O. Box 4400, Fredericton, NB E3B 5A3, Canada

Abstract: For any enterprise, management systems (MSs) are essential for success. MSs are structured approaches to manage the areas of business in an organisation. Traditionally, various MSs are implemented without being properly integrated together leading to waste of resources. Recently, MSs have gained attention as they form a critical infrastructure for improving and controlling the operation systems. However, there is a gap in the form of a need, as indicated in the literature, for a comprehensive system that integrates them together. This integration constitutes the goal of the proposed system, which is ensuring the existence of an infrastructure for continuous improvement (CI) and the strategic alignment of all areas of a business and the people towards the objectives of business excellence. The proposed system is called the total company-wide management system (TCWMS). TCWMS's five main components are strategic, project, operation, process and performance MSs. This paper provides a comprehensive and precise study of these components in an attempt to add a new understanding for MSs to what is already known in the literature. A roadmap is provided for each of them, as well as a framework for the whole system and an auditing approach to clarify how it can be developed. The grouping and connection of these components is the novelty of the proposed TCWMS.

Keywords: total company-wide management systems; TCWMS; continuous improvement; quality control; QC; quality management systems; QMS; lean six sigma; total quality management; TQM.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBEX.2013.052478

International Journal of Business Excellence, 2013 Vol.6 No.2, pp.161 - 191

Published online: 30 Oct 2013 *

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