The purpose of the study was to evaluate the continuous improvement process of the Tennessee Center for Performance Excellence (TNCP). Results of surveys conducted annually by the TNCPE from postapplicants provided data from the state award applicants. Their responses offered indicators of satisfaction among different industry sectors (education, government, healthcare, manufacturing, nonprofit, and service) with the TNCPE services (criteria booklet, feedback report, site visit policy, TNCPE staff, and team of examiners). The survey data were obtained from the TNCPE office in Nashville, Tennessee in which award applicants were provided a series of survey questions. These questions involved the overall award program and the site visit experiences. Within the program award, data included 26 applicant responses while the site visit surveys included 107 applicant responses. In addition, an alpha level of .05 was used for all statistical tests. The major conclusions were: (1) there are differences in the industry sectors with the length of the site visit, team of examiners' team leader's leadership, and the clarity of the feedback report (control vs. influence). Other tests were not statistically significant.

I dagens ständigt föränderliga och alltmer komplexa verklighet ställs företag inför utmaningen att tillgodose sina kunders behov innan deras preferenser hinner förändras. För ett företag ska vara tillräckligt flexibelt för att hantera denna situation krävs en sund strategi för kontinuerligt förbättrings-arbete (Kaye & Andersson, 1999). Kvalitetsledning och användandet av ett certifierat kvalitets-ledningssystem anses vara ett sätt att öka ett företags konkurrenskraft. Inom ett företag är dock den allmänna förståelsen och kunskapen kring förbättringsarbete i kvalitetsledningssystem vanligtvis låg eftersom den ofta är isolerad till ett företags kvalitetsavdelning (Bohlin, 2018). Fallstudiens empiri samlades in genom semistrukturerade intervjuer på fallföretaget, med personer verksamma inom EMV-processen inom en av företagets divisioner. Utöver intervjuer användes dokument- och litteraturstudier, ostrukturerade intervjuer samt en fokusgruppsintervju för att verifiera modellen. Utifrån den processbeskrivning som togs fram under studien konstateras att EMV-arbetet drivs sekventiellt, först av den produktnära, tekniska funktionen och sedan de kundnära funktionerna, trots att teorin belyser vikten av en integrerad och tvärfunktionell utvecklingsprocess. Genom att teoretiskt problematisera relationen mellan förbättringscyklerna PDSA och PDCA upp-dagades att PDCA:s förbättringsfokus är inriktat på förbättringar av produkter medan PDSA fokuserar på förbättringar av processens prestanda, samt att de likställs i majoriteten av de undersökta artiklarna. Modellen för förbättringsarbete utvecklades utifrån den av studien framtagna process-beskrivningen och utnyttjar skillnaderna och beskriver hur PDSA och PDCA kan användas vid produkt-utveckling. Dessutom uppfyller modellen kraven i ISO 9001:2015 kapitel 8.3 Konstruktion och utveckling av produkter och tjänster. Modellen består av tre nivåer: Projekt, Process och Förbättring, och utgår från produktutvecklingsprojekt som följer en process i vilken flera företagsfunktioner är involverade. Studiens främsta fynd var den otydlighet som PDSA och PDCA beskrivs med, vilket vid implementering leder till ytterligare förvirring kring begreppen. ISO-standarden, som bygger på PDCA, har utvecklats från att vara produktorienterad till att anpassa sig efter sina kunders krav på mer processinriktning, och befinner sig mellan PDSA:s processinriktade förbättringsfokus och PDCA:s produktinriktade förbättringsfokus. Dessutom uppdagades att inom kvalitetsutveckling och produkt-utveckling beskrivs processer utgå från ett kundbehov och resultera i dess tillfredsställande, men hur kundbehovet ska tas tillvara på besvaras inte inom de teoretiska områdena. / In today's ever-changing and increasingly complex reality, companies face the challenge of meeting their customers' needs rapidly. For a company to be flexible enough to handle this situation, a healthy strategy for continuous improvement is required (Kaye & Andersson, 1999). Quality management and the use of a certified quality management system are a way of increasing a company's competitiveness. However, the general understanding and knowledge of improvement in quality management systems are generally low within a company, as it is often isolated to a company's quality department (Bohlin, 2018). This case study’s investigated data was collected through semi structured interviews at the company, conducted with people working in the EMV process within one of the company's divisions. In addition to interviews, document and literature studies have been performed, as well as unstructured interviews and a focus group interview used to verify the model. Based on the process description presented during the study, it is stated that the EMV work is driven sequentially, first of the productive, technical function and then the customer-close features, although the theory highlights the importance of an integrated and cross-functional development process. By theoretically problematizing the relationship between the PDSA and PDCA improvement cycles, differences in model improvement focus and similarity were noted in most of the investigated articles, where PDCA is focused on product improvements while PDSA focuses on improvements on process performance. The improvement work model was developed based on the developed process description, using the differences between the improvement cycles and describing how PDSA and PDCA can be used in product development. In addition, the model complies with the requirements of ISO 9001: 2015 Chapter 8.3 Design and development of products and services. The model consists of three levels: Project, Process and Improvement, and is based on product development projects that follow a process in which several business functions are involved. The main findings of the study were the ambiguous ways PDSA and PDCA were described by, which upon implementation leads to further confusion about the concepts. Furthermore, the ISO standard, which is based on PDCA, has evolved from being product oriented to adapt to their customers' demands for more process orientation. Now it is positioned between PDSA's process-oriented improvement focus and PDCA's product-oriented improvement focus. In addition, it was discovered that the processes described in quality development and product development are based on customer needs and should result in satisfying the customer need, but how the customer needs are supposed to be used are not answered within the theoretical areas.

Online marketing activities play an increasingly important role for organization in connection with the development of internet based technologies and their positive reception by the society. The aim of this dissertation is to design an artefact that would support the decision making of marketing specialists and thus the management of online marketing activities. The starting point is an explorative research among Czech companies, which identifies the issues felt as problematic and the needs of the selected set of organizations. Introduced at the same time is the current state of use of selected tools for online marketing by these organizations, and the situation is compared with worldwide development. The output of this explorative research, the examination of scientific literature, and a critical analysis serve as a basis for designing an own method, Genoma, whose purpose is to support the decision making of marketing specialists, and thereby also the management of marketing activities in internet-mediated environment. This method is presented as Deming (PDCA) cycle, which enables it to be used not only separately, but also as part of other frameworks for the management of marketing activities (e.g. the frameworks PMF, MCPF and RACE, which are presented in the dissertation). The Genoma method uses mainly the genetic algorithm for selecting a suitable portfolio of online marketing tools for a particular campaign. The selection is made on the basis of expected feedback at the level of social interaction, meeting the given marketing targets, and the financial demands of the individual tools. The prerequisite of using this method is a knowledge base that includes the area of sociotechnical interaction, which is based on interpreting phenomena related to the internet-mediated environment and the features of complex networks. Methodically, this dissertation builds on the complementary relationship of the behavioural (social informatics) and the design type of research (design science research). The final assessment of the suitability of the proposed method is done on the basis of a multiple case study, which uses also an own program created in C#, implementing the genetic algorithm used in the Genoma method.

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