Quality management in administration

Quality management encompasses all coordinated activities for the management and control of an organization with regard to quality.

The quality management system at Clausthal University of Technology is documented in the three sub-areas "Research and Transfer", "Studies and Teaching" and "Administration".

The Office of Organizational Development supports the administration in its efforts to review, ensure, make transparent and optimize the quality of its administrative processes based on its mission statement and strategic quality goals.

The administration of Clausthal University of Technology has set itself the following strategic quality objectives in line with the guidelines for the university's administration formulated in the mission statement and the development plan:

  1. Ensuring a reliable and good quality of service by strengthening customer orientation as a prerequisite for outstanding performance in research, transfer, teaching and continuing education.
  2. Implementation of transparent and efficient processes through continuous improvement of workflows and consistent use of digitalization potential.
  3. Enabling the administration of an internationally oriented and networked university by optimizing the foreign language skills of contact persons and providing English-language organizational resources.

Information on process management

A process consists of interrelated activities / actions and converts the process trigger (input) into a customer-beneficial result (output) through the consumption of resources.

Example: A business trip is required and is requested (process trigger). By subsequently completing the necessary work steps, the employee is reimbursed for the travel costs at the end (output) or receives an advance on the travel costs in advance (possible variant).

Inputs and outputs can each be information, objects, events and/or states. A process can be part of another process or contain or trigger other sub-processes. The result of the process can take different forms. A process is often cross-departmental or cross-departmental.

Due to this complexity, a process can quickly become confusing and requires structured visualization in order to clearly present interfaces, resources and procedures and thus achieve added value for students and employees.

An organization's processes are usually divided into core processes, leadership or management processes and support processes.

Core processes

The core processes of studying and teaching as well as research and technology transfer are among the actual value-added processes at Clausthal University of Technology, as these relate to the university's core business.
However, these cannot take place without the management or support processes.

Management processes

Management processes serve to coordinate (plan and control) core and support processes and ensure that the defined process and result quality is achieved.
The processes include all strategic and operational planning and control activities for the optimal orientation of the university, such as the preparation and controlling of the budget, the negotiation and conclusion of target agreements, risk management or strategic orientation and university planning.

Support processes

Support processes are essential in order to provide the value-added processes of research and teaching optimally and individually. They are least noticed by the stakeholders, but are essential to enable the core processes and ensure their high-quality fulfillment.
Support processes include all service and administrative processes from the areas of human resources and budget, information technology, infrastructure and study matters, i.e. processes from the study administration.

The knowledge of those involved in the process is required to start the process.

Employees who potentially have extensive knowledge of the respective process serve as the first point of contact in this phase.

The most important framework data for the process is determined with them (process triggers, process participants, relevant documents, objectives) and documented in the process profile.

The process is then roughly outlined and all other parties involved in the process are identified.

In joint workshops and/or in discussions with the process participants, the process outline is further specified and all required information is systematically recorded.

In the next step, the process flow is modeled using the process modeling language BPMN 2.0 and thus made available to the users in a graphically clear manner.

The person responsible for the process checks the process documentation and the person responsible for the area in which the process falls (usually a department head or vice president) approves the process with his/her signature.

Our aim is to continuously record many more processes from the various areas and thus make them transparent and optimize them.

If you have workflows in your area that should be included as a process, please get in touch with us.

You are also welcome to contact us if you have any comments on our work, suggestions for existing processes or ideas for improvement.

We look forward to your feedback!