An evaluative study on attempts to improve the quality of processes for the U.S. Senate Productivity and Quality Award for Virginia

Quality awards are formal award programs that have been established to recognize organizations (or sub-units thereof) for achieving excellence in quality and productivity. The criteria of these awards require a systematic and comprehensive program that is mature either from time or results. These awards are issued on a regular, typically annual, basis. The administrators of the awards can range from individual companies to state governments to the federal government. Recipients of these awards can be organizations or sub-units of organizations. Further, the recipients could involve specific projects and programs. The recipients are ultimately defined by the specific award process. This thesis describes the quality award program in the State of Virginia. Overall, this thesis is a formative evaluation of the U.S. Senate Productivity and Quality Award for Virginia. This research reviews the processes used in determining winners for this award. Recommendations are made to improve the application evaluation and feedback processes, in particular. The thesis describes the types of key performance indicators that organizations report in their applications. A set of common key performance indicators were collected to form a type of measurement system to assess the “health” of organizations in the State of Virginia. The purpose of this measurement system is to provide benchmarks to other organizations in the state. As a final output, this research compares the key performance indicators reported in applications to two measurement frameworks provided in the literature.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science

Level thesis:degree_level

masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Industrial and Systems Engineering

Department dc:contributor.department

Industrial and Systems Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

1994

Author dc:creator

• Simmers, Cheryl L.

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language.iso

en

Dc Identifier Other

etd-03242009-040925

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/41785