Building a Quality Management System for Administrative Systems

AT&T Bell Laboratories Administrative Systems uses business planning to establish better customer relations and manage costs. But departmental business planning does not address the interfunctional nature of many business processes. In May 1987, a task force was formed to identify the inter-functional business processes and to test the applicability of quality tools to an administrative environment. After identifying 22 processes, the task force used the Process Quality Management and Improvement Methodology to investigate one process and designed a management system to continue their work. Today the area has 12 quality improvement teams working under the sponsorship of a Quality Management Steering Committee.