SKEDSOFT

Introduction:

International Service System A/S (ISS) is the largest cleaning company in the world today. ‘Improved quality leads to satisfied customers and satisfied customers lead to increased turnover and increased profit’, was the message to the participants of the TMC. Management by facts and continuous improvements are usually considered to be cornerstones of TQM.

CONTEXT: THE COMPANY

• International Service System A/S (ISS) is the largest cleaning company in the world today. It operates in more than 30 countries all over the world and employs more than 120 000 employees.
• The company was founded in Denmark in 1901 by a lawyer and began its activities as a small security company providing guard and other security services to business especially in the Copenhagen area.
• It was not until 1934 that ISS began its cleaning activities and at that time it was mainly as an add-on to the security service.
• ISS began its internationalization in 1943 by setting up a Swedish operation and this was followed by a Norwegian operation in 1952.
• Both of these operations were mainly cleaning activities because it proved to be very difficult to export the security side of the company, mainly due to the fact that within this area customers preferred a local supplier.

The real expansion of ISS, at that time actually called DDRS (Det Danske Rengørings Selskab A/S), started with Mr Paul Andreassen’s being appointed managing director in 1962. The 35-year leadership of Mr Paul Andreassen may be divided into four phases. When he first arrived at ISS the main thing was to turn the company into a professional business. Hence the idea was to introduce professional management to the company. This led to a strong system of standards for cleaning with a very efficient outcome. The market had, however, started to demand more and ISS realized that the way forward was to provide value-added services. Management focus was then turned to the concept of service management and the two together proved to be a very successful combination for ISS.

• In the middle of the 1970s it was realized that the company had grown so much and had become so diversified that it was necessary to standardize the planning process.
•  A new system of strategic planning, the team planning process, was developed and through this third phases ISS could safety continue its growth by application.
• At the end of the 1980s the fourth phase of management was introduced. Mr Andreassen realized that continuous improvement was the only way forward for ISS. This called for a more holistic management system and to this end the philosophy of Total Quality Management was adopted.
• In what follows the development of the quality process from the late 1980s to 1995 will be described with special emphasis on the measurement side.

IMPERATIVE FOR CHANGE: THE CHALLENGE OF THE WINNING HAND:

To be a player at the market-place for cleaning in the 1980s the company needed to be cost-effective. This is obvious because the profit margin in the cleaning market is very small and if you are not efficient you will very soon be history. To become part of the so-called choice set you should in addition to cost-effectiveness be able to deliver on time or to be more specific, you should be able to deliver where and when your customer wants. To achieve this was not enough, however, you should also be able to deliver a quality service on top of the others and this is where the ideas and practice of service management came in.

Conclusion of the working group prior to any quality initiatives was that a future management system would require the following focus areas:

1. Quality of relationships;

2. Management by facts;

3. Continuous improvements;

4. Innovation.

With this conclusion as a starting point it became clear that the ideas of TQM were very similar to the requirements of ISS. TQM focuses on more or less the same things.

Management by facts and continuous improvements are usually considered to be cornerstones of TQM and furthermore TQM focuses on the customer and the employee and these are of course part of the idea of quality of relationships.