History

History

APQC’s rise to prominence as a world leader in process improvement began with humble roots more than three decades ago—long before benchmarking, the transfer of best practices, or managing knowledge were widely embraced concepts.

After serving as price control commissioner within the Nixon administration, APQC founder C. Jackson Grayson believed that productivity was on a steep decline, and he was committed to making a difference with the formation of the “American Productivity Center.”

Led by Chairman Grayson, APQC opened its doors in Houston in 1977 as the American Productivity Center (APC).  Within a year, the organization created its first training course, "How to Plan and Manage a Successful Productivity Improvement Program," and focused on measurement by adopting its "family of measures." By 1981 APC led a group of White House Cabinet members and Congress members on a study trip to Japan hosted by the Japanese Productivity Center, which led to a formal, two-year landmark study on white-collar productivity improvement. Nearly 4,000 employees of 13 sponsoring organizations participated in the work to define measures and boost productivity among white-collar workers.

From 1985 to 1987, the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award was created under the leadership of APC. Baldrige co-chairs Grayson and Sanford McDonnell, CEO of McDonnell-Douglas, brought together business leaders to determine the criteria and establish an administrative organization for the award. APC and the American Society for Quality (ASQ) jointly administered the award during its first three years. After inception of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, APC became well known as a resource for quality improvement methodologies, training, and advisory services. Because it is almost impossible to improve productivity without improving quality, the American Productivity Center expanded its name in 1988 to the American Productivity & Quality Center (APQC).

APQC moved into the new decade with renewed focus on rapid business improvement. In 1991 the International Benchmarking Clearinghouse, a benchmarking service within APQC, made its debut. APQC established its leadership position in benchmarking and measurement with the development of a widely recognized, award-winning benchmarking methodology that pushed the boundaries of process improvement, and as a result APQC became the global resource for benchmarking and best practices.

In 1992 APQC developed the business taxonomy with the Process Classification Framework^SM (PCF). The document is now a globally recognized business process model that defines activities and processes across 12 enterprise-level operating and management categories.

In 1993, APQC conducted groundbreaking research with INSEAD Business School to understand the barriers and enablers for the transfer of best practices. The innovative results of the research were a major catalyst for APQC's continuing leadership in knowledge management (KM) and understanding more clearly knowledge, processes, and the mechanisms used to transfer best practice.

In 1995 APQC partnered with Arthur Andersen to sponsor a Knowledge Imperative Symposium, the first conference of its kind on knowledge management, designed to highlight the opportunities and methods for transferring high-performing practices as well as the human component of knowledge as part of the process.

In 1996 Chairman Grayson again set course to improve performance and productivity with a major education initiative. APQC’s education initiative was initiated to help education institutions restructure academic and administrative processes by identifying, adapting, and implementing best practices found in all sectors including education, business, health care, and government. APQC Education focuses on benchmarking process improvement and innovation, quality improvement, knowledge management, use of data, knowledge sharing, and the transfer of best practices. The education North Star project partners APQC with 10 large school districts across the country to assist school systems in addressing the fundamental weaknesses in process improvement.

The 21st century bought even more new milestones. In 2001 APQC was named as one of the "100 Companies That Matter in Knowledge Management," by KMWorld magazine. In 2004 APQC launched the Open Standards Benchmarking Collaborative^SM (OSBC) research worldwide to create the first common database of process definitions, surveys, and measures, enabling organizations to benchmark their performance. In 2008 APQC received the Global MAKE award as one of the Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises, having been a recipient of the North America MAKE award seven times.

APQC did indeed arise from the vision of one man, Jack Grayson, but today that energy, commitment, and pursuit of excellence is embodied by all the staff at APQC.   

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