First Set of Baldrige Criteria for 2011-2012 Now Online

The Baldrige Performance Excellence Program has announced that the 2011-2012 Criteria for Performance Excellence for businesses and nonprofit organizations are now available for download. The Criteria serve both as the standard for selecting the annual recipients of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and the road map for organizations worldwide seeking improved strategy and operations through pursuing performance excellence. The other two editions of the 2011-2012 Criteria—for health care and education—will be available on the Baldrige website later this month.
The Baldrige Criteria work as an integrated framework for managing an organization. They are simply a set of questions focusing on seven critical aspects of management that contribute to performance excellence: leadership; strategic planning; customer focus; measurement, analysis, and knowledge management; workforce focus; operations focus; and results.
This year’s revisions to the Business/Nonprofit Criteria emphasized two themes: dealing with the increasing complexity of enterprise leadership and management; and improving customer engagement. The Criteria now include the concept of “intelligent risk taking” and an improved “line of sight” set of linkages that should take an organization from the strategic environment to the execution of its operations in a logical sequence. The category on customer focus has been reorganized to improve the flow of logic and now addresses the use of social media as an important contributor to capturing the “voice of the customer.”
Named after Malcolm Baldrige, the 26th Secretary of Commerce, the Baldrige Award was established by Congress in 1987 to enhance the competitiveness and performance of U.S. businesses. The award is not given for specific products or services. Since 1988, 86 organizations have received Baldrige Awards.
The Baldrige program is managed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in conjunction with the private sector.
Paper copies of the Criteria will be mailed on request. E-mail baldrige@nist.gov or call (301) 975-2036.

Snowpocalypse of 2010 (a.k.a. The Importance of Projections)

Posted by Bob Fangmeyer
Being a bit of a Baldrige geek, I have an unwelcomed tendancy to apply Baldrige concepts and principles at home. So yesterday morning, while lying in bed listening to the 40th inch of snow fall in the past 5 days, my wife suggested, somewhat sarcastically, that my blog post should be about the snowpocalypse we've been experiencing in the DC area. Of course she thought she was being cute, thinking there was no way I could somehow connect Baldrige to the extremely unusual weather. After 20 years of marriage and 13 years with Baldrige, I'd think she would know better.
The snow storms of the past few days have been history-making. Never before has the DC area seen so much snowfall in such a short period of time. In fact, we have already exceeded the all-time snow totals for the entire season. Yet no one should have been unprepared. The forecasters did an outstanding job informing everyone of what to expect.
In the Baldrige Criteria, we emphasize the importance of focusing on the future and being prepared-- having plans,  processes, and resources in place that will allow your organization to weather any storm and even predict some of them. Yet all organizations are faced with limited resources. You cannot be fully prepared, fully staffed, and fully funded for every possible situation; only those that are likely or those that must be avoided at all costs.
What a difference knowing what to expect makes. Imagine the impact of these storms if the best information available was Al Roker telling us "Expect snow this weekend." Reliable predictions of the outcomes are absolutely imperative if you are to be properly prepared. Reliable predictions, however, are not easy to come by. It takes a lot of valid data about your environment, your operations, and your past and present outcomes before you can realistically begin to project future performance, much less predict the impact of a change to one of those elements.
For these reasons, the Baldrige scoring guidelines ask for performance projections, but only expects them from organizations that have demonstrated a fairly high level of maturity in the design, implementation, and improvement of their processes and in the tracking and use of organizational performance measures. It's kind of like comparing today's computer-based weather models to the prognostic abilities of a typical 19th century explorer. He would be able to tell you "A storm's a brewin'-- snow by nightfall", but with data and systems developed over many years, we can know days in advance how much snow to expect, when it will fall, where it will fall, how fast it will fall, when it will stop, how strong the winds will be, and what the temperature will be-- all valuable information for ensuring the various components of the system work in an integrated manner to enable everyone to weather the storm.
OK- so now I want to hear from you- do projections matter? Usually, they are different than goals. How do you use the two in tandem? Or do you just make them up so you can look good?

The "Skinny" on Baldrige versus Lean

Posted by Bob Fangmeyer
I have heard it a hundred times--while standing in our booth at a conference, responding to a general inquiry from our customer service line, after presenting an overview of Baldrige to an audience with varying degrees  of interest, even when talking to friends and family-- "Yeah, my organization looked into that Baldrige stuff in the 80's and early 90's. We have moved into Lean Six Sigma because we think it is a better fit for our organization."
Of course as soon as I begin explaining how Baldrige and Lean Six Sigma are not only compatible but very complimentary the eyes glaze over and lose focus, searching for another place to be. (Apparently I need to work on a snappy rejoinder, maybe something like "Oh yeah!? Well Lean might use cool Japanese terms like kanban and kaizen but people tell us we have our own language: Baldrigese!"). OK- so it needs a little work...
Actually, maybe I should just refer them to a fantastic discussion started by Regina Pontes that is occurring on the LinkedIn Baldrige Improvement Discussion Group: Baldrige and other quality programs/tools. (You need to be a member of LinkedIn and then you need to join the discussion group, but registration is simple and it is free.) In the discussion you will hear from Lean Six Sigma experts, Baldrige experts, and some that are both. What I hope you walk away with is a better understanding of how Baldrige provides the framework that can help ensure organizations that utilize Lean Six Sigma do so in such a way that optimizes their entire system and their ability to achieve organizational objectives rather than "merely" streamlining key processes and eliminating rework. Baldrige does not prescribe a particular tool or methodology, instead we support and encourage the use of a variety of performance improvement tools to address and improve the outcomes of not only traditional customer-focused and production processes, but your leadership, strategic planning, and workforce-focused processes as well.
So join in the discussion and share your thoughts here around how Lean and Baldrige go together like walnuts and brownies, peas in a pod, or maybe some other metaphor that comes to mind.

Small Businesses: Doubling Revenue Growth With Baldrige Framework

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey
According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, the nation's small businesses totaled 27.3 million in 2008, and, of these, approximately 6 million were employers, accounting for 49.6% of U.S. private-sector jobs. Unfortunately, 50% of small businesses fail within their first five years, but there are role models.
What does this have to do with the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence? Aren't the Criteria just for big business? The simple answer: No. Of roughly 1,500 applications for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, 400 were from small businesses, and 22 small businesses have been named Presidential role models. Here's the story of two of those role models: MESA Products, Inc., and Stoner. At the 23rd annual Quest for Excellence Conference on April 4, both presented their stories of tremendous and sustained growth.

MESA, which manufactures products to prevent metal structures from corroding, including providing engineering and installation services, reports a 20% annual growth rate since its inception. In 2006, after five applications for the Baldrige Award, MESA was honored as a Presidential role model, and since then, "it continues to grow with the things we learned from our [Baldrige performance excellence] journey," said Cary Hill, controller/director of administration.
"Baldrige took all the stuff that we do and wrapped it up. It gave us the framework and the discipline; it helped us see the integration, and we became great," said Hill. He added that doing Baldrige is how we run our business. Doing Baldrige has helped lead MESA into the future, to become "a sustainable, enduring company."
Hill says he continues to serve as a Baldrige examiner, and as an examiner, he can bring the Criteria back to MESA and help identify gaps on where the company needs to improve. "This is what [Baldrige] is all about."
Rob Marchalonis, CEO of Stoner, a manufacturing and sales company of cleaners, lubricants, coatings, car care products, and a premium glass cleaner called Invisible Glass, which is the #1 glass cleaner in dollars in the United States and the #1 glass cleaner brand in the auto category, said the Baldrige Criteria forced the company to look at its methods, processes, and customer and employee satisfaction and engagement. Before Baldrige, Marchalonis said the 2005 Baldrige Award recipient focused entirely on its financial and product outcomes, but Baldrige helped it to improve its overall system by differentiating operational efficiencies and conducting lots of benchmarking.

Baldrige has provided a framework for Stoner to more effectively integrate its acquisitions and to evaluate the business potential of acquisitions, he said. Marchalonis added that being named a Baldrige Award recipient helped give Stoner performance excellence credentials, and the owners/founders of its acquisitions often become Stoner's best salespeople.
So what has the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence framework done for these small business? I think the results speak for themselves.

The Top Four Key Drivers of Project Work

Posted by admin on April 1, 2011 · Forward this article to your friends

Over the past several decades there have been enormous changes in the business environment. Organizations have been implementing numerous projects to compete on a global scale. Well known project management tools including Microsoft Project, PRINCE2 and many more being used to manage projects effectively. Many project collaboration tools such as Teambox, Basecamp and many more are available in the market place to manage projects easily.
No two organizations are exactly the same. One organization might implement a set of projects, and the other organization might perform completely different sets of projects. In order to know why organizations perform projects, one should understand what drives an organization to perform a project in the first place.
This leads to a simple question. What is a driver?

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Chinese close quality gap

Quality street: Geely's Emgrand EC7 will help to define Chinese quality to Australian consumers when it arrives here later this year.

Export quality almost within reach of Chinese car factories, survey shows

22 June 2010

By JOHN MELLOR

CHINESE car quality has improved dramatically in the past 10 years, according to data released to GoAuto by the world’s leading vehicle quality authority, J.D. Power and Associates.

Annual surveys of Chinese car owners show that Chinese car factories are fast catching on to the quality levels required to start exporting cars to western car markets in earnest.

The data shows two levels of quality – the cars made by domestic Chinese car-makers such as Chery, BYD and Great Wall and cars made in China by Japanese, European, Korean and US car companies in partnership with Chinese car-makers.

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Global brands face threat of rising China car quality

A model poses next to a Geely Englon TXN car at the Beijing Auto Show in Beijing April 23, 2010.

Credit: Reuters/Jason Lee

By Chang-Ran Kim and Kevin Krolicki

BEIJING (Reuters) - When Ric Hull first looked at launching Great Wall Motor (2333.HK) pickup trucks in Australia last year, he considered rebranding them, worried their obvious Chinese origins would raise questions about their quality.

Read it clicking here