Towards World Class University Department

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Helsinki University of Technology | Diplomityö
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Date

1996

Department

Tuotantotalouden osasto

Major/Subject

Teollisuustalous

Mcode

Tuo-22

Degree programme

Language

en

Pages

117

Series

Abstract

The aim of the thesis is to apply central industrial management paradigms to develop a university department and through this help it to become a true world class department. Three major objectives are defined for the thesis: Firstly, to discuss the applicability of some of the central industrial management paradigms in university environment. Secondly, to learn from excellent universities and industrial management degree programs on both management and study administration level. Thirdly, to analyze the existing essential study administration processes and reengineer them so they can serve in the case department as well as give suggestions to other improvement actions. The scope of the thesis is limited to the supporting processes of education (i.e. study administration) at the Department of Industrial Management at Helsinki University of Technology. The literature research starts by a discussion of central concepts such as customer and product in university environment, followed by a discussion of similarities and differences between university and industry as well as description of basic principles in organizational development. This is followed by a discussion of the applicability of four central industrial management paradigms in university environment: Total Quality Management, Business Process Reengineering, Benchmarking and Learning Organization. Benchmarking of four world-class universities has two different aspects. Firstly, two ongoing development projects with different foci in world-class universities are presented to obtain an understanding about the dynamics of a change process in university environment. Secondly, three excellent universities are benchmarked regarding both their management and study administration. In the case department ten relevant processes are chosen for reengineering. These processes are analyzed and restructured. With the new processes improvements like significant lead time reduction (in some cases from few weeks to few hours), significant reduction in work steps (50 %) and improvements in customer service can be reached. The main result of this thesis is the analysis and synthesis method for improving university processes adapted from industrial engineering paradigms and tested in the case department. To results of this thesis also count findings and proposals to develop a particular university department and the benefits that can be achieved with the implementation of the new processes.

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Supervisor

Eloranta, Eero

Thesis advisor

Takala, Minna

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Permanent link to this item

https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:aalto-2020120343322

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[dipl] Teknillinen korkeakoulu / TKK