House of Quality Applied to Scott's Fitness Center Program
This paper applies the House of Quality (HoQ), a core quality management tool, to Scott's Fitness Center as described in a Business Week case study on corporate healthcare cost reduction. The analysis examines both the roof and the body of the HoQ matrix, identifying senior management commitment, cost-effectiveness, convenience, and measurable health incentives as critical success factors. Key performance metrics — including weight control, cholesterol levels, and aggregate health scores — are evaluated within the Reduce and Improve dimensions of the framework. The paper concludes that Scott's program offers a replicable, data-driven model for managing rising healthcare costs while improving employee wellness, morale, and organizational retention.
- Introduction: Overview of House of Quality applied to Scott's case
- Analysis of the Roof of the House of Quality: Senior management support and program foundations
- Analyzing the Body of the House of Quality: Health metrics, employee incentives, and ROI analysis
- Conclusion: Scott's as a replicable corporate wellness model
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What makes this paper effective
- It consistently applies a formal quality management framework (the House of Quality) to a real business case, keeping the analysis anchored to a specific analytical structure throughout.
- It links abstract management theory — change management, TQM, ROI — to concrete program features such as aggregate health scores, financial incentives, and trainer methodologies.
- Citations are integrated at the point of claim rather than clustered at the end, lending credibility to individual assertions rather than the paper as a whole.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates applied framework analysis: taking a recognized quality management instrument (the House of Quality) and systematically mapping the components of a real corporate program onto its structure. This technique requires the writer to identify which program features correspond to which framework dimensions, then explain the relationships, rather than simply describing the case study in narrative form.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a brief introduction that identifies both the analytical tool and the case study source. It then moves through two body sections organized by the framework itself — the roof (organizational and cultural prerequisites) and the body (performance metrics and feedback loops) — before closing with a short conclusion that restates the key findings and the program's broader implications. The structure mirrors the House of Quality matrix, giving the organizational logic of the framework to the essay itself.
Introduction
The intent of this analysis is to apply the quality management technique known as the House of Quality (Talib, Rahman, & Azam, 2011) to the key points made in the article "Get Healthy — Or Else: Inside One Company's All-Out Attack on Medical Costs" (Conlin, 2007), which serves as the case for this analysis. The relationships within the roof of the House of Quality are analyzed in addition to the matrix that defines subsequent design activities. Based on this analysis, a series of conclusions are offered for Scott's Fitness Center.
Analysis of the Roof of the House of Quality
Using the House of Quality as the framework for evaluating Scott's Fitness Center, the role of senior management and their support for the program immediately emerges as a critical success factor in the overall effort. Combining senior management's strong support and belief in the program with low membership costs and cash and travel incentives to encourage continual improvement, Scott's Fitness Center has set a solid foundation for bringing lasting change to its organizational culture. This single factor — senior management's active and financially significant support for new programs — is the single greatest determinant of change management success in quality management initiatives across industries (Hall, 1992).
In addition to senior management support, the combination of convenience and incentives ensures this program will succeed, as it is designed to deliberately lower the barrier to adoption and use. Because the CEO and management team view investments in this program as crucial to controlling healthcare-related costs, the cost-effective dimension of the roof is consistently positive as well. The roof of the House of Quality also sets the foundation for future global expansion of the program, given the replicable nature of these process areas. They can be readily duplicated across other parts of the organization thanks to the clarity of goals and measurements.
Conclusion
Scott's Fitness Center has created an innovative solution to a very difficult and costly problem that many corporations will face over the next twenty years. Getting and keeping an aging workforce fit and healthy is going to be a significant challenge for many businesses. Scott's has taken a leadership role by securing solid backing from the CEO and senior management, then creating a facility, programs, and metrics to evaluate the performance of that investment over time. The greatest ROI is healthy employees. The Improve and Reduce dimensions of the House of Quality are immediately relevant to both employees and the management team, ensuring this program's continued success.
References
Conlin, M. (2007, February). Get healthy — or else: Inside one company's all-out attack on medical costs. Business Week, (4023), 58–69.
Hall, P. (1992). Living with TQM. Risk Management, 39(3), 20.
Sepic, T., & McNabb, D. (1994). Applying TQM's golden rule to your support services. The Journal for Quality and Participation, 17(3), 44.
Talib, F., Rahman, Z., & Azam, M. (2011). Best practices of total quality management implementation in health care settings. Health Marketing Quarterly, 28(3), 232.
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