'Making an Elephant Dance': How the Baldrige Criteria Helped Transform a Global Conglomerate

The Tata group—today a large Indian conglomerate whose many well-known brands include Jaguar Land Rover, Taj Hotels, Tetley, and Eight O’Clock Coffee—transformed itself from a $4 billion domestic company in 1991 to a $103 billion global enterprise by 2014, with an untiring focus on business excellence—a transformation derived from the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence.

In a recent paper "Transformation with Business Excellence and Innovation: Lessons from the Tata Group ," the authors outline how use of the Tata Business Excellence Model (TBEM), which is based on the Baldrige Criteria (see note 1), led to the transformation. Sunil Sinha, formerly CEO, Tata Quality Management Services and Chief of Group, Quality Management Services, Tata Sons Limited (currently resident director, Middle East and North Africa Region, Tata Sons), said in an interview on Blogrige that Tata has been using the Baldrige Criteria since the early 1990s (see note 2), customizing and renaming them the TBEM in 1998. Tata formally mandated the use of TBEM for any company that wanted to use its brand name by asking the company to commit to run its business in an excellent and ethical manner.

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