Quality management and improvement: A framework and a business‐process reference model

This paper presents a reference model for the process of management of quality and improvement based on a conceptual framework for managing the process of systematically deriving improvement actions from customer expectations and strategic decisions through business processes, and prioritising actions that will most contribute to achievement strategic objectives. After some introductory theoretical background to discuss the need for systematically managing quality and improvement as well as the contribution of mapping business processes, the process reference model is described to a certain extent and detailed by means of activity tree and event‐driven process chain (EPC) diagrams. Finally, some considerations are made on the benefits of using such an approach.