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This paper seeks to focus on the TQM journey of MilkFed, a major milk‐producing cooperative in the state of Punjab in Northern India. It aims to demonstrate how TQM principles have been used to create an organisation‐wide environment of continuous improvement in a cooperative sector organisation that spread into tradition and ways of doing business in spite of facing numerous challenges.

MilkFed hired Punjab Technical University's School of TQM and Entrepreneurship (PGSTE) to create an organisation‐wide system of continuous improvement. PGSTE consultants prepared a road‐map for TQM implementation. In the first phase, 14 teams comprising 76 senior/middle level executives (one team from each of Milkfed's 14 plants/units) were trained in the structured application of TQM principles and the project‐by‐project improvement through a series of workshops. Each team implemented an improvement project, which was facilitated by the consultants.

MilkFed has saved USD 0.89 million per annum which amounted to more than 25 per cent of its net profit. There is a tremendous scope for multiplying the gains through horizontal deployment of learning across various plants and units. Intangible benefits included transformation in attitude of employees, creation of team culture, breakdown of departmental silos and tremendous improvement in labour‐management relations.

The paper demonstrates that the project‐by‐project approach used in conjunction with the basic 7 QC tools is an excellent approach for building a culture of continuous improvement. It has many important lessons for organisations, which are starting their quality improvement journey.

The methods of quality management, business process management and knowledge management have until now been exploited by science and the industry separately. An integration of these disciplines could unlock the potential of a solid structure to measure and gradually improve knowledge transfer processes. This paper aims to address this issue.

A maturity model was developed for SMEs to measure and assess the quality of their business processes. This enabled the companies to determine their existing status and to take the necessary actions for the competence development of their business processes, which should contribute to the attainment of their knowledge management goals.

This paper introduces a maturity model for knowledge‐intensive business processes that enables companies to determine their processes' actual state and take the corresponding actions for their business processes improvement, in which special attention is being given to small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs).

The paper proposes an SME‐specified maturity model for knowledge‐intensive business processes. Its assessment procedure is developed based on literature researches and investigation of real processes of two industrial SMEs. This maturity model has advantages over other existing models since it accounts for the needs of SMEs by incorporating the company preference over the measured areas.

This longitudinal research project seeks to monitor and report on the levels of patient satisfaction with the delivery of dental care provided by the Australian Unity Dental Centres (AUDC), which offer private dental care to people within Australia. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the above issue.

The primary data gathering medium employed in this research was a survey based upon the SERVQUAL instrument. The research compares results obtained from the initial 2000 survey with the results of surveys conducted through to 2012. The key question addressed in this report is: how have patient perceptions of the service quality of care received at AUDC changed between the 2000 and 2012 survey periods?

The level of expected service has improved over the study period, as has the level of perceived service delivered. A number of areas that would benefit from further improvement are identified and matched to specific actions that are being implemented by the business.

A principal objective of the AUDC is to provide high-quality dental care to the patients. This objective can be best pursued through a regime that recognises that high-quality clinical outcomes are often dependent upon patients following recommended treatment pathways. This dependency pre-supposes that patients understand the treatment pathway's compliance requirements and, further, agree to comply with them.

No other research projects have utilised eight iterations of SERVQUAL over a 13-year period in the dental service delivery sector.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss how using an experiential Lean Six Sigma training model will dramatically decrease the amount of time it takes to become competent and capable at applying process improvement within a healthcare environment. The model was first put into use in 2006 and has evolved and been evaluated to its current state.

Typical Lean approaches use a Kaizen methodology that is dependent on a skilled facilitator entering the organization and leading a team of process content experts from the organization through the change process. It is costly to hire such facilitators and does not build sustainable capacity within the organization or the internal knowledge to apply the Kaizen approach to the many varying sizes and complexities of improvements within the healthcare arena. The root of the problem is compounded by many factors including cost, urgency, political pressure, and inconsistency in the Lean Six Sigma body of knowledge. The principles behind the Kaizen methodology are fundamentally sound but the difference in the approach of this training model lies in who is doing the educating and application rather than changing the Lean Six Sigma body of knowledge.

The first finding is that more people are capable of almost instantly leading change, given the right model, than organizations may be aware of. The second is the paradigm that an expert has to “live at least 500 miles away” simply meaning that people working within their current system are rarely seen as capable to solve the organization's problems. The third is that any organization can easily have a complete infrastructure in place within a week and their staff leading improvements within two weeks. The organization can be at a level of self‐sustaining internal capacity within four months of starting their Lean Six Sigma journey.

The paper consequently focuses on value created for the organization, by the organization, with minimal support of an external consultant.

This investigation focusses on the mechanisms that obstruct an organization’s ability to develop. The purpose of this paper is to focus on short-term phenomena, which occurs during an organization’s general development process.

The key resources in the development process include time and knowledge availability. The amount of the resources is one of basic factors of development effectiveness. From the “problems cleaner” equation, it follows that effectiveness depends on time, within which tasks are to be completed.

There are a set of generic circumstances that produce specific organizational behaviors, referred to as the “culture of hurrying.” These circumstances are based on the natural expectation that organizational function is recovered as soon as possible after a failure occurs. The pathology begins when hurrying becomes a basic way to compensate for the effects of the failure, without eliminating its mechanisms. The culture of hurrying affects the organization’s ability to develop. Consequently, the conditions that stimulate the “culture of hurrying” to grow are formulated.

Organizations managed by objectives provide examples of the culture of hurrying. On the other hand, organizations that adopt lean management illustrate how to escape from the culture of hurrying. This investigation shows that attitudes in favor of the culture of hurrying are related to the organization’s strategy.

The ISO27001 standard provides a model for “establishing, implementing, operating, monitoring, reviewing, maintaining and improving an Information Security Management System (ISMS)”. This paper seeks to consider the global adoption of the ISO27000 series of standards, and to compare them with the adoption rates for ISO9000 and ISO14000. The paper aims to compare the barriers to adoption for the different standards.

Previous studies suggest that ISO27001 adoption is slower than for the other standards. The uptake of ISO27001 has been slower than the related management system standards ISO9001 and ISO14001, with approximately half the certifications compared with ISO14001. In response to the issues raised in this analysis, the paper considers how an approach based on a maturity model can be used to help overcome these barriers, especially in smaller companies.

The 2008 survey of ISO27001‐certificated companies found that 50 per cent of the certificated organisations which responded had fewer than 200 employees, and were therefore in the SME category. Perhaps more surprisingly, around half of these had fewer than 50 employees The framework has used the ISO27002 code of practice to define the elements, which should be considered within the ISMS. Each element is then developed through a maturity model lifecycle to develop processes to the point where an ISO27001‐compliant ISMS can be implemented.

The principal contribution of the paper is a step‐by‐step framework designed to simplify the process for organisations working towards ISO27001 and offer significant benefits at milestones before systems are mature enough to achieve certification.