Strategy maps as improvement paths of enterprises

Abstract

To locate and prioritize the improvement needs of an enterprise, a strategy map merging managerial principles of the BSC with quality principles stemming from the Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award and the European Foundation for Quality Management is proposed. It comprises four hierarchical levels: business objectives, competitive priorities, core processes and components of the organizational profile. The implementation methodology for supporting its application in an individual enterprise makes use of quality function deployment (QFD), a quality design tool. A strategy map here represents a bottom up cause and effect potential improvement path of an investigated enterprise, starting from an improvement of its organizational profile towards an improved realization of its business objectives, thus providing a global perspective on the important linkages between its weakest components at different hierarchical levels. Analysis of two test cases for implementing strategy maps revealed strategy maps that differed from one company to another and discontinuities in some of the maps. We found processes, considered as core processes by interviewees that did not support any competitive priority and a competitive priority, strongly recommended by interviewees, that was not supported by any core process. Such findings call attention to the complex cause-and-effect relationships influencing the enterprise system behaviour, to the lack of management understanding of this behaviour and eventually they add motivation and support to the continuation of our work here.

A four-phase AHP–QFD approach for supplier assessment: a sustainability perspective

“…These four interrelated matrices relate the market segments (market mix) to their competitive priorities, then relate the competitive priorities of the market segment to critical processes, then relate the critical processes to attributes of location, and lastly assess various sites based on the attributes of location. Barad and Dror (2008) use QFD to develop a strategy map using four hierarchical levels: business objectives, competitive priorities, core processes, and components of the organisational profile. In our study, we also present a multi-phase QFD that consists of four hierarchical interrelated matrices, that is, relating stakeholder requirements to the company's sustainability strategy, and then the company's sustainability strategy determines the sustainable purchasing competitive priority, and sustainable supplier assessment criteria, and lastly assess and select the supplier based on these supplier assessment criteria.…”

Interrelation between Strategy Maps and other Implementation Tools and Actions

“…As mentioned by Barad and Dror (2008), the process of creating the strategy map should begin from the root causes (infrastructure) and only then include business goals. They also indicate that the usability of the strategy map is limited by time, so the map should be periodically updated and modified.…”

Assessing the impact of alternative continuous improvement programmes in a flow shop using system dynamics

“…Our approach can support such multi-criteria DSS by allowing decision-makers to explore the potential effects of different improvement programmes. Barad and Dror (2008) propose a strategy map for identifying and prioritising the improvement needs of an enterprise under which improvement needs at the corporate level are translated into prioritised improvement objectives at lower levels. These objectives are then translated into performance measures to be improved.…”