"Nicolae Bãlcescu" Land Forces Academy is the main military education institution in the service in Romania, founded in 1995 as a result of the process of transformation and reform, the armed forces as well as the entire military education system has undergone. The case of the military institutions is relevant especially due to the double specialization given to the graduates and to the numerous capacities (fighter, manager, branch specialist, etc.) and capabilities (e.g. to lead military subunits, to use the weaponry and the technique, etc) that they intend to develop in correlation with the requirements of the market.
This paper is a natural follow-up to our interests – already translated into a research project initiated by “Nicolae Balcescu” Land Forces Academy and developed in cooperation with the other military academies from Romania– in identifying the possible means of improving Romanian officer’s career so as he/she could rise to the requirements of the military organization in particular and to those of the labor market in general. In order to be considered entirely satisfying, all approaches to the situation of human resources in organizations should by no means overlook people’s education and training process. It is our intention under the given circumstances, to analyze the curriculum of military academies and how it meets the operational requirements of military units – the actual “customers” – the QFD method being the adequate tool for us to use in order to direct our investigations which address a topic relatively new to the military environment. The authors advance a conceptual framework for the application of QFD to curriculum planning, in the field of military education, in Romania. By focusing resources on the key elements resulting from the real requirements of the modern battlefield, and on the qualitative standards specific to higher education, it can be determined whether simple improvements are sufficient or new strategies are needed to increase the efficiency of the transformation process all military higher education institutions have undergone. In the first phase we have developed a small-scale research on a relatively reduced number of officers from the Land Forces Academy, based on which we intend to develop a thorough study at the level of the entire army. We identified customer needs – the “customers” being here the military units – the “market segment” aimed at being the officers. The performed questionnaires focused on two fundamental elements: the requirements – task (mission) - specific to each hierarchical level of officers’ career and a self-evaluation in relation to the exigencies entailed by it. Information has also been gathered through direct observations, interviews, focus-groups and field work. We evaluated the degree of implementation of the educational policies by making use of statistical multidimensional analyses and of the conceptual framework defined by UNESCO Statistics Institute and objectified at a national level in the OECD handbook. In the second phase we’ll specify the technical requirements of a performing curriculum starting from the quality standards specific to higher education and the correlations between technical requirements and the customer’ needs. All these information will be included in HOUSE OF QUALITY and the results of this analysis will show us if simple improvements of present curriculum are enough or we have to rethink the whole forming process.