問14
頻出度★★☆
総合的品質管理 (TQM 又は TQC) の重要な手法の一つである方針管理の説明として, 適切なものはどれか。
平成25年度 春期 ITパスポート試験 問14
ストラテジ系経営戦略マネジメント › 経営管理システム
This question's explanation and your answers so far.
解説
問 14
Incorrectア
This describes the Balanced Scorecard (BSC). The four perspectives — financial, customer, business process, and learning and growth — form a framework unique to the BSC. Performance indicators (KPIs) are set for each of these perspectives so that the execution status of corporate strategy is measured and managed from many angles rather than from financial figures alone. The BSC resembles policy management in that it too brings strategy down to indicators used on the ground, but its essence is designing indicators around the framework of four perspectives, which makes it a different concept from policy management, a TQM technique that deploys policy successively through the levels of an organization.
Incorrectイ
This describes benchmarking. It is a technique in which a company compares its own business processes and performance with the best companies in that field (best practices), analyzes the differences, learns their superior ways of working, and adopts them for its own improvement. Its distinguishing feature is that both the comparison target and the source of learning lie outside the company. That is completely different from policy management, which finds the trigger for improvement by deploying top management's policy downward along the company's internal hierarchy.
- ウ
正解 The correct answer is ウ. Policy management (hoshin kanri) is a core technique of TQM (Total Quality Management) / TQC. It is a goal-management mechanism running through the levels of an organization: the management policy and goals set out by top management are broken down, step by step, into the goals of lower organizational units such as divisions, departments, and sections (this is called policy deployment). There are two key points. First, the goals deployed at each level must not end up as mere slogans; they have to be linked to concrete implementation plans stating who does what by when. Second, after those plans are carried out, the results are measured and evaluated, the causes of any gaps are analyzed, and the findings are reflected in the next period's policies and plans — in other words, the PDCA cycle is turned so that improvement continues. Choice ウ describes exactly this: an activity that successively cascades top management's goals down to the goals of divisions, departments, sections, and so on, links them to implementation plans, and continuously advances improvement to achieve the goals. It satisfies all three elements of policy management — top-down goal deployment, translation into implementation plans, and continuous improvement. The TQM philosophy of aligning the whole organization with the management policy and having the entire company work as one to achieve quality and business goals takes concrete form in policy management.
Incorrectエ
This describes QC circle activities (small-group improvement activities). Employees from the same workplace or from related workplaces voluntarily form small teams and, using tools such as the seven QC tools, analyze and solve by themselves the quality and work problems that actually occur on the front line — a bottom-up activity. QC circles are also an important activity supporting TQM, but they start from problem awareness on the front line and move bottom-up, whereas policy management starts from top management's policy and deploys goals from upper levels down to lower ones, moving top-down. The two run in opposite directions, so they need to be remembered separately.
ここがポイント
- Policy management (hoshin kanri): an important technique of TQM (Total Quality Management) / TQC. Top management's policy and goals are successively deployed (policy deployment) to divisions, departments, and sections, translated at each level into concrete implementation plans, and pursued through the PDCA cycle as continuous improvement aimed at achieving the goals. Its essence is aligning the direction of the whole organization from the top down.
- Telling confusingly similar techniques apart: the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) is a strategy-evaluation technique that sets indicators from the four perspectives of financial, customer, business process, and learning and growth; benchmarking compares your company with the best other companies and brings their superior ways of working in-house; QC circle activities are bottom-up improvement activities in which front-line employees form small groups to solve on-site problems. A good way to hold on to this is the contrast: policy management is top-down, QC circles are bottom-up.
用語