The Current Serco Issues
Since recently, the Dubai subway management has been reorganized, since the Serco Company has taken over the former. By providing their services to the Dubai subway, the Serco Group has reorganized the methods in which the Dubai subway is maintained. To evaluate the effects of the Serco services provided for the Dubai metro, the ISO 9000 program (ISO, 2008) is going to be applied. By specifying the improvements that the Serco Group has provided for the Dubai subway operations and the quality of the subway management, and analyzing the existing drawbacks, as well as the “side effects” of the model application, the efficiency of the latter, can be evaluated fully in the most graphic way possible.
Quality Management
First and foremost, the improvements concerning how the metro in Dubai is managed must be checked. As the existing sources say, the chosen business excellence model is supposed to provide a clockwork operation of the Dubai subway system. By comparing the ISO 9000 quality expectations to the standards set by Serco (2011), one will be able to check whether the Dubai metro upgrade follows the business excellence model provided by ISO 9000. Also, Serco’s understanding of integral quality management (Serco, 2011a) must be incorporated into the analysis. Finally, since Serco is aiming at promoting the Dubai metro concept further into the Middle East (Serco, 2011e), it will be especially important to compare Serco’s “Plan do-check-act” (Serco, 2011h)with the quality standards set by ISO 9000, since the latter has proved efficient all over the world (Almenida, Caten, & Gutterres, 2009).
Planning and Scheduling at Serco
To evaluate Serco, the quality of planning in Dubai metro (Serco, 2011b) must also be considered. By adopting the standard ISO 9000 evaluation methods, one will be able to assess the quality of the Dubai metro upgrade.
Company’s Policies and Corporate Culture
Naturally, it will also be required to check whether the policies used by Serco to make the Dubai metro manageable and, which is more important, popular among the city dwellers are going to be justified. Also, it is crucial that the chosen methods should comply with the existing moral standards and ethical principles, which the ISO 9000 is going to be very helpful for. By using the ISO 9000 model, one will be able to evaluate Serco’s Policy and supporting philosophies (Serco, 2011c), especially the company’s policies concerning the quality of the provided services (Serco, 2011g). The latter is especially important, seeing how the Dubai metro quality management policies have been questioned in the past two years at least once (Webb & Rayner, 2011). To achieve precise results and conduct an objective assessment, it will be required to consider the Serco management system quality manual (Serco, 2011d). By using ISO 9000, one will be able to take into account every major field of Serco’s activity.
Management System: Information Sharing and Organizational Behavior
Last but not least, such issues as knowledge management and organizational behaviour strategies must be evaluated (Serco, 2011f). ISO 9000 must provide the latest demands concerning the quality of the knowledge management process, which means that the system of knowledge sharing introduced into the operations of the Dubai metro by Serco will be checked fully.
Reference List
Almenida, M. H., Caten, C. T. S. & Gutterres, M. (2009). Evaluating ISO 9001:2000 Certified and non-certified organizations in Brazilian leather-footwear chain. Brazilian Journal of Operations & Production Management, 6(2), 51-73.
ISO (2008). International standard. 4th ed. Geneva, SW: ISO.
Serco (2011). Concession agreement for the operations and maintenance. Dubai: Serco Dubai Metro.
Serco (2011a). Integral quality management. Dubai: Serco Dubai Metro.
Serco (2011b). Planning. Dubai: Serco Dubai Metro.
Serco (2011c). Policy and supporting philosophies. Dubai: Serco Dubai Metro.
Serco (2011d). Serco management system quality manual. Dubai: Serco Dubai Metro.
Serco (2011e). Serco Middle East integrated management system manual. Dubai: Serco Dubai Metro.
Serco (2011f). Serco Middle East quality management procedure document control Procedure. Dubai: Serco Dubai Metro.
Serco (2011g). Quality policy. Dubai: Serco Dubai Metro. 2
Serco (2011h). Plan “do-check-act.” Dubai: Serco Dubai Metro.
Webb, R. & Rayner, C. (2011). Dubai metro quality management policy. Dubai: Serco Dubai Metro.