The Journey to Excellence

Compiled by Hanrie Greebe, 1 May 2005

Air Publication Service Centre (APSC) had been stuck in the mud for the past seven years, operating insufficiently and in dire need of a wake-up call.

The South African Air Force (SAAF) chose a route to help APSC regain “excellence” in the form of a newly appointed Officer Commanding, Col (Dr) Kosie Oschman (SM, MMM). In February 2005, only a year after his appointment, APSC received the silver award in the category Support Units at the SAAF Prestige Awards.

Mr John Seema from the Reproduction Section at APSC utilises a
stitching machine to bind SAAF documents.

Col (Dr) Oschman says that receiving the award promoted confidence in the improved status of APSC as envisaged a year ago by Brig Gen Ehmke, Director Technical Support Services. Col (Dr) Oschman says that the award is only the tip of the iceberg and that APSC still has a long incremental climb ahead.

If APSC was still down in the mud a year ago, how did they manage to put themselves back on the map in such short time? According to Col (Dr) Oschman the quest started in October 2003, when APSC’s excellence journey departed along three parallel tracks: firstly, an excellence philosophy linked secondly to a strategic plan, and thirdly, linked to an action plan in the form of a decision register. Col (Dr) Oschman explains: “Our view was that we didn’t want ‘excellence’ to be bullied into APSC, irrespective of the crisis. As we travelled along these three parallel paths, we experienced four distinct phases as our excellence approach evolved”.

APSC’s four phases consisted of the start-up phase, total quality phase, cherry-picking phase and finally the integration phase. The start-up phase was based on APSC’s leadership and commitment to establish unity of purpose and direction for APSC in order to reach desired outcomes. In conjunction they developed and implemented strategies that resulted in improved customer and employee satisfaction.

Hours and hours of coaching were necessary. After the start-up phase was stabilized, which Col (Dr) Oschman calles the “the driver phase”, APSC commenced with the total quality phase where they learned that to satisfy internal and external customer requirements, any meaningful focus on quality had to have a major people component. “Our approaches to education, training, empowerment, teams and recognition took root in the excellence phase of our journey”, says Col (Dr) Oschman.

He explains: “The concept of continuous improvement, with heavy reliance on measuring, prevention, and corrective action, was also introduced during this phase. Investment in infrastructure also accelerated. Despite the fact that we entered the total quality phase somewhat unintentionally, it was a period of extremely great change for us. However, the roots of our current systems thinking and key infrastructure were established during this phase”.

The motivation for APSC’s transition into the third phase of its excellence journey was the South African Excellence Model (SAEM). “We sat down and tried our best to describe who we were and how we did things against the 11 building blocks of the SAEM criteria”, said Col (Dr) Oschman. When the Inspector General of the Air Force (IGAF), visited APSC in April 2004, the centre learned from the feedback report.

Col (Dr) Oschman says that at that point in time, they had not yet fully embraced the SAEM award criteria and only implemented the basics. After the IGAF audit, APSC cherry picked the feedback report – choosing what they would or would not act upon. During this phase APSC implemented many changes that were directly based on the April 2004 IGAF feedback report. Most of the changes involved for example; developing a customer complaint management process, re-engineering of all processes, employee climate surveys to measure employee satisfaction and, customer report cards to measure customer satisfaction and much more.

Motivated by the desire to protect APSC’s position in a changing environment, APSC adopted the SAEM criteria as a template to run their business. “We moved beyond the cherry picking phase and implemented the entire SAEM criteria”, says Col (Dr) Oschman.

Col (Dr) Oschman states: “It was clear that our greatest enemy might be complacency, so we shifted to a significant higher plane on which we ran our business. To do that, we had to integrate Total Quality Management (TQM) principles throughout APSC. We integrated TQM principles with SAEM criteria, added to the focus on continuously improving customer and employee satisfaction to round out APSC’s philosophy”.

The philosophy is used to deploy APSC’s plan to be: (1) strategic driven, (2) customer and employee focused, (3) manage by processes, (4) continuous improvement of processes, (5) measurement of progress through SAEM criteria and (6) building success on APSC’s foundation of values.

The final pieces fell into place during this phase when APSC fully integrated the SHERQ philosophy coupled with the ISO 9000:2000, to combine their business processes and bring them under the discipline of formal process management. APSC’s excellence journey was not easy, yet it is the norm for the future. When IGAF evaluated APSC again in October 2004, they were on track to become a “business angel” for the Air Force.

Col (Dr) Oschman stated that clearly, through this approach, APSC not only gained quality-improved techniques for solving problems in the future, but also helped team members to gain self-sufficiency. Through this approach everyone within APSC started to “make a difference” in order to achieve excellence.

Col (Dr) Oschman believes that in order to achieve excellence at a base or unit, the recipe for success should contain: (1) top management must lead the effort, (2) provision of needed resources, (3) recognise that customers provide the best quality assessments, (4) focus on what is important, (5) create meaningful and measurable value, (6) engage all employees, (7) integrate your principles into all training, (8) be persistent, (9) do not lose interest and (10) use the SAEM process to drive knowledge and understanding that can be translated into competitive advantage.

The Officer Commanding who brought the resounding wake-up call to APSC, received his second doctorate degree from the University of South Africa (UNISA) on 28 April 2005. Col (Dr) Oschman also holds four engineering diploma’s and seven degrees in different management sciences. He believes that there is no gap between the theories he espouses and the practice. He argues that it depends on the individual on how they apply their gained academic learning in their functional work and life.

Col (Dr) Oschman stated that his vision for APSC is to gain a well-earned reputation in the Air Force through organisational effectiveness and performance in order to ensure that their customers believe and trust in them.

Given the excellent performance under their new Officer Commanding, APSC is a rising star worth watching.