Baldrige Criteria - Are them Still Relevant Today for U.S. Manufacturers?

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey
Although some reports indicate that the economy is improving, I find it disheartening that many U.S. manufacturing jobs lost could simply be gone for good. The world economy is changing, and many jobs have changed or simply moved on.
The question to ask then is whether the Criteria for Performance Excellence are still relevant for U.S. manufacturers?
To help me answer that, I remembered an old quote from quality guru Dr. Joseph Juran, "Let me recall the staggering benefits which are waiting for the [United States]:

• Regaining market share
• Bringing back the jobs we exported
• Wiping out the bulk of our trade deficit

Those are goods which deserve the unified support of all of us. The activities surrounding the Baldrige Award have been a valuable contribution toward reaching those goals."
The Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence provide just the road map U.S. manufacturers need toward those goals today, as they did when Juran made this statement. The Criteria are not prescriptive, and they do not guarantee results. But they can help organizations think about the key drivers of improvement and innovation (or simply stated, sustainability), with thoughtful reflection on managing by fact, focusing on results and creating value, and focusing on customers.
The Criteria ask some key questions that may be particularly relevant for U.S. manufacturers, for example

• how you decide what to outsource (or support with external resources) based on your areas of greatest expertise?
• how your disaster and emergency preparedness system considers prevention, management, continuity of operations, and recovery?
• how you prevent defects, service errors, and rework to minimize losses?
• how you plan for early indications of major shifts in technology, markets, or customer preferences?

"We already know what to do in order to close the quality gap [among world manufacturers],"Dr. Juran said. "That knowledge has come to us not from philosophic reasoning—it has come from our role models—those few companies that have launched successful quality revolutions and have become quality leaders. Some of them, notably Baldrige Award winners, have published their results, which are stunning."
Can these and other key questions found in the Criteria for Performance Excellence help drive the improvement or sustainability efforts of U.S. manufacturers today? Only the future will tell, but with the Criteria as a road map, maybe reports of improvement in the economy might hold true.