Customer Reviews

Process Assessment and Improvement: A Practical Guide for Managers, Quality Professionals and Assessors (The Springer International Series in Engineering and Computer Science)

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This author has written two books about process assessment; this one looks at how process assessment can be used - in other words the practical aspects. It is written in a way that should appeal to businessmen and managers, as well as quality specialists and assessors.

The author starts by looking at the cost of poor quality - billions per year and writes 3 business cases for the use of process assessment - a good way to convince management to invest in quality activities such as process assessment. The author obviously has worked in highly capable organizations and provides the reader with some very thought provoking facts and questions. The first half of the book should appeal to any technical or management trained reader (e.g. MBAs) - explaining in a clear way how to use assessment results for determining the capability of your suppliers, or how to improve your own business. The author has provided various ways to improve the organization, both based upon the standard and upon methods he developed, including agile improvement methods and team-based methods. He addresses people aspects in several sections, including some cultural aspects in order to help readers who face organizational politics (and who doesn't sometime run into that!). He describes how various industries are using the standard - which throws light on how much the standard is being used in Europe. The book also has some very detailed help for process assessors in 3 chapters on planning, running and performing assessments.

The book presents information, using lots of illustrations and tables to ease the reader's understanding. Overall I found the approach very readable and the advice practical and very useful. It makes a good complement to the Reference book written by the same author.

I highly recommend this book to readers looking for help in improving their business.