This second edition details all productivity and quality methodologies, principles and techniques, and demonstrates how they interact in the three phases of the productivity and quality management triangle (PQMT): measurement, control and evaluation; planning and analysis; and improvement and monitoring. This edition features material on practical strategies for implementing quality programmes, balancing productivity and quality results , resolving quality problems and empowering employees.

Compilation of research papers on the quality of working life and improved labour productivity - discusses the effectiveness of autonomous group work, job satisfaction and job enrichment, workers participation in decision making, flexible hours of work, countering alienation at the workplace, experiments in work organization, etc. Bibliography pp. 292 to 305, diagrams, references and statistical tables.

3 While all of these explanations seem to have merit, there is one dominant reason why the percentage of GDP and employment dedicated to services has continued to increase: low productivity. According to Baumol's cost disease hypothesis (Baumol, Blackman, and Wolff 1991), the growth in services is actually an illusion. The fact is that service-sector productivity is improving slower than that of manufacturing and thus, it seems as if we are consuming more services in nominal terms. However, in real terms, we are consuming slightly less services. That is, the increase in the service sector is caused by low productivity relative to manufacturing. The implication of Baumol's cost disease is the following. Assuming historical productivity increases for manufacturing, agriCUlture, education and health care, Baumol (1992) shows that the U. S. can triple its output in all sectors within 50 years. However, due to the higher productivity level for manufacturing and agriculture, it will take substantially more employment in services to achieve this increase in output. To put this argument in perspective, simply roll back the clock 100 years or so and replace the words manufacturing with agriculture, and services with manufacturing. The phenomenal growth in agricultural productivity versus manufacturing caused the employment levels in agriculture in the U. S. to decrease rapidly while producing a truly unbelievable amount of food. It is the low productivity of services that is the real culprit in its growth of GDP and employment share.

Preface -- Introduction -- Integrating service quality and productivity strategies -- What is a service quality? -- Identifying and correcting service quality problems -- Measuring service quality -- Soft and hard service quality measures -- Learning from customer feedback -- Hard measures of service quality -- Tools to analyze and address service quality problems -- Return on quality -- Defining and measuring productivity -- Improving service productivity -- Conclusion -- Summary -- Endnotes

Written for managers, this powerful guide produced by the American Productivity and Quality Center (APQC), outlines the fundamentals for planning, organizing, and introducing benchmarking into the workplace. Filled with information gleaned from surveys of 87 International Benchmarking Clearinghouse members, it provides unique insight, enabling organizations to better plan their own benchmarking efforts. Within eight appendices, there is a wide spectrum of additional useful knowledge, including definitions of legal and moral behavior in the context of benchmarking, and a comparison of the numerous steps involved in its implementation. The text also includes an extensive bibliography of benchmarking and total quality management literature.

The second edition of this classic work in the field of software metrics has been fully updated to reflect the major changes brought about by new technologies