Quality development in the public sector
The public sector organisations such as healthcare, social care and elderly care are challenged to improve their services while keeping costs down. There is, therefore, great interest to transfer approaches and methods that appeared to be successful in the private sector into the public sector. However, the knowledge about how to translate the approaches and make it work in the public service context is limited. This is where I come in with my research.As a PhD student I studied the implementation and operation of the international standards ISO 9000 and ISO 14000 in the manufacturing sector. These standards focus on a quality respectively environmental management and intend to support organisations in developing, implementing and improving a management system to meet stakeholder requirements. Since 2008 my focus shifted towards service operations and I have carried out several research projects on improving public sector quality and performance.
Currently I am looking how Lean principles can be applied in the service environment and what consequences it may have for the service productivity in terms of internal efficiency and external effectiveness.