Malcolm Baldrige Criteria – A Business Excellence Model

I briefly highlight some key points in the 2008 Malcom Baldrige Award Winner receipients which was announced in a press release on 25-Nov-09. (source: nist.gov/public_affairs/releases/2008baldrigerecipients.htm )

They include:

1. Cargill Corn Milling North America, Wayzata, Minn. (manufacturing)
2. Poudre Valley Health System, Fort Collins, Colo. (health care)
3. Iredell-Statesville Schools, Statesville, N.C. (education)

On a yearly basis, the board of examiners would assessed organizations for their performance excellence with respect to the application of the Malcolm Baldrige Criteria. The assessment would be conducted with an evaluation process for each of the recipients included about 1,000 hours of review and an on-site visit by a team of examiners to clarify questions and verify information in the applications pertianing to how they fulfill the Malcolm Baldrige Criteria.

The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Program (BNQP) and the Macolm Baldrige Award promote innovation and performance excellence across the country and around the world in a number of ways.
Malcolm Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence is designed to help organizations of all sectors to improve their business and operations.

To illustrate the acceptance of the Malcolm Baldrige Award program, more than 40 U.S. states and more than 45 countries worldwide have implemented programs based on the Baldrige criteria. It can also be evidence by over 10 million copies of the Baldrige Criteria distributed since 1988, and about 2 million copies are downloaded annually.

Nearly 5,000 public and private-sector leaders, practioners and consultants have served on the independent board of examiners that reviews applications for the Baldrige Award. Each Baldrige Award applicant receives 300 to 1,000 hours of feedback from these experts.

Read more Baldrige Criteria here

Is there similarity between Total Quality Management and Malcom Baldrige Criteria ?

One may be wondering in real life application, whether there is any different ? Many may argue that there are different and otherwise.  Before you make any conclusion, lets look at the facts.

Briefely, Total Quality Management is a set of philosophy  adopted by business organizations, government bodies even indivuals to perform their goal. It has a set of TQM principles by which it operates. It deal with Leadership, employee involvement, customer satisfaction etc aimed to management your business in a more holistic perspectives.

On the other hand for Malcolm Baldrige Criteria, it is a set of criteria or guidelines to judge if an organization is meeting business excellence level.  The criteria are grouped into seven categories. Each of them clearly states its objectives and set out their respective criteria or guidelines.  The seven Categories are:-

On the other hand, you may take note that the Malcolm Baldrige Criteria are build upon a set of core values and concepts and they are quite similar to the TQM Principles. There are eleven core values and concepts listed below:-

1. Visionary Leadership
2. Customer-Driven Excellence
3. Organizational and Personal Learning
4. Valuing Employees and Partners
5. Agility
6. Focus on the Future
7. Managing for Innovation
8. Management by Fact
9. Public Responsibility and Citizenship
10. Focus on Results and Creating Value
11. Systems Perspective

 
These Core Values and Concepts are embodied in detail Malcolm Baldrige Criteria  which are grouped into Seven Categories mentioned above. Each category has laid up its own set of criteria to the highest standard. While the values and concepts in the Malcolm Baldrige Criteria remain quite unchanged, the detail criteria for each category has changes every year. The idea to review and change the criteria is to keep current to the business changes and needs.

How To Measure Total Quality Management, TQM, Success
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Dr._LM_Foong]Dr. LM Foong

Implementing TQM is an initiative many organizations wanted to embark on. Assuming that you are a leader of this organization, a common question you probably asked would be: “How do I know whether my organization is successful in implementing TQM?”

TQM implementation has been in my mind for a long time and I wondered how to measure the success of TQM implementation in an organization. If we take an organizations who are winners of the Baldrige Award, then my question is whether taking an assessment based on Baldrige Criteria an appropriate measure to gage the success of TQM in an organization.

There is no doubt that measuring TQM implementation is success rate is of interest with all if not most leaders. Otherwise, how would you as a leader know the effort put into implementing TQM is really worthwhile, more so when a lot of resources such a money, manpower etc are deployed to support the implementation of a TQM initiative.

So, would you ask a similar question before the TQM initiative is started? Or You would ask half way during its implementation? How would you like to measure the success of the TQM implementation? Do you accept the opinion of your management comment alone or you rather based on some form of evaluation result?

One of the ways to evaluate the TQM success is to adopt a holistic approach of assessing your organization. One of the examples of such a holistic approach is the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award assessment approach. This is a national level award system in the United States to recognize organizations for achieving an excellent in their respective business.

To prepare for an assessment, you need to understand the Baldrige criteria which is used a reference for the assessment. Once you have understood the Baldrige Criteria, you would start to conduct an assessment based on these criteria. You may perform a self assessment guided by the Baldrige Self Assessment criteria to ascertain your level of performance with reference to the Baldrige Criteria. For a self assessment, it takes must lesser time. Alternatively, you can go for a full scale assessment. This mode of assessment may be conducted by your management team or a 3rd party Baldrige Assessors.

To help you to adopt the Baldrige Criteria, there are eleven core values and concepts used by the Baldrige Criteria. To jump start your assessment effort, perhaps you start with the understanding of these core values and concepts.

About the Author: Dr. LM Foong, PhD

He writes and publishes TQM articles, ebooks, case studies, trainer manual and presentation slides.  Please visit website  at http://www.tqmcasestudies.com for more TQM related matters.  He can be contacted at http://www.tqmcasestudies.com/ContactUs.html

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