Quality-oriented design of business processes

Changing markets and innovative competitors force each company to study and improve its organization, its business processes and its technologies constantly. Whoever drops behind in these times loses market shares and endangers the long-term existence of the company. It is necessary to realign the entire corporate planning and design along the value added chain to speed up the business processes. All relevant user views, such as quality, organization, information systems, costs (controlling) and affected departments, have to be incorporated and should be studied regarding their interaction. When designing and executing processes to accept and employ a quality concept the decisive aspects are determined by the kind of information and by the active integration of all affected departments, divisions and staff members. On the other hand, the staff members must have a good knowledge of important business processes. The employees of quality planning should be "process advisors", i.e., quality management should be incorporated into the business process. The quality-oriented design of business processes described in this book supports this integration. The book is based on the results of the KCIM project "Scientific Basis and Contribution to the Standardization of CIM Interfaces" that was funded by the German Federal Ministry for Research and Technology. On this basis, we developed the concept.