Debbie Foster's List: Malcom Baldrige

• The Baldrige Award also has been criticized on grounds that it does not fit  service companies very well.
• Baldrige defenders contend that the real cost is not in preparing the  application but in installing the quality programs themselves.
• The notion that something called the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award is  not given in recognition of what a company produces or does well is simply  illogical and counter-intuitive" (Bowles 1992, 127). Hockman (1992, 137) agrees  that the Award is not for product excellence, but for those companies with  excellent quality practices; they probably will improve product quality and  probably will do it faster than their competition. The Baldrige Award is not a  guarantee that a company's products or services are superior; instead quality  comes as an end result of a long-term commitment to quality management systems.  Quality is a journey, not a destination
• it does not address some key elements of business success--innovation, financial  performance, and long-term planning (Main 1991, 62
• Some people feel that the Baldrige Award is flawed because it falls to predict a  company's financial success. This criticism was made because several Baldrige  winners experienced financial problems after winning the award. However, the  Baldrige Award denotes quality products or services, not business excellence.  The Award is not meant to be a measure of financial success

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• No valid numbers are currently available on how much the MBNQA has improved  American firms' international competitiveness, the U.S. economy's productivity,  or customer satisfaction levels, nor on the number of jobs it has created or  helped retain for America. But I believe the overall numbers are positive. Sure,  some MBNQA winners will fail in the marketplace. The award criteria and audit  procedures do not insure continuous marketplace success. No award system can  guarantee success forever. If one did, everyone would sign up! And some MBNQA  applicants will divert too much of their resources to the award process, and not  enough to taking care of business. These problems are outside the intended  bounds of the MBNQA. The award defines a solution space around quality.  Meanwhile, many people will study the guidelines, evaluate how they apply to  their business, and try to do it their own way.

• fourth criticism, according to Philip B. Crosby, is that "the award focuses too  much on quality processes and too little on quality products." Crosby said,  "When Congress established the Baldrige Award a few years ago, I assumed that  the criteria would relate to companies' quality output--companies that  consistently met the requirements established by their customers and reaped the  financial benefits would be judged the best" (Crosby and Reimann 1991).
• For service businesses and processes, output quality is not the only way  customers evaluate goods and services. When providing services, the process  often is the service. The customer tries to evaluate both outcome and process  quality. Outcome quality is what the customer gets via a service transaction or  encounter. Process quality concentrates on how the customer gets the service.  Often the customer is a better judge of process quality than outcome quality. It  is not clear whether Crosby recognizes these two types of quality based on his  comments. The danger here is relying solely on a product mentality, especially  in a service environment.

• the award seemed to divert management attention away from running the business.  It consumed resources this small firm did not have.

• The High Cost of Applying for and Winning the MBNQA
• Wallace had spent much money on quality related improvements such as computers  and changes in their processes. Company overhead increased by $2 million a year.

• Results also show that customer and market focus is a crucial input to strategic  quality planning, the commitment of senior leadership is critical in securing a  customer and market focus, and operational level business processes are driven  by a strategic commitment to human resource management.

• • DMAIC
• • Management Challenges and MB core values

• In the early stages of the self-assessment the scoring should not be emphasized  too much. There is a danger that the assessment is seen as a number-game. The  quality award self-assessment is not, however, any mathematics but a systematic  and critical business management task enhancing satisfaction of all interested  parties (stakeholders) and company's own business effectiveness and efficiency.  Finding strengths and weaknesses is in practice much more important than the  scores
• For description purposes all the assessment questions of the criteria should be  understood as "How" questions. In order to understand the hierarchy of the  questions, at Sonera a particular hierarchy-navigation methodology was  developed. The assessment criteria and scoring guidelines have to be understood  in the light of the unit's own business requirements (cf. business profile).  This calls for an interpretation as to how issues in the criteria are relevant  in the light of the unit's business requirements and how such issues ought to be  interpreted. The interpretation becomes clear when one asks oneself "should we  also?" and, if so, "do our business requirements require something special  regarding the approach or its deployment?" Also the business results must be  relevant from the unit's business viewpoints.
• The consensus procedure is a central and challenging part of all  self-assessments. If there is no time for it, something substantial is lost.  Reaching consensus is a difficult art. In a self-assessment consensus can be  sought either through the individual work phase or directly in a group. Before  the group phase starts the facilitator should recognize whether there are  differing views and potential conflicts. When necessary he or she should select  the correct conflict strategy. An inappropriate strategy may badly distort the  assessment. The main options of the strategy are: covering up, pacification,  heightening of awareness, and aggravation. In most cases the heightening of  awareness is the best strategy.

• Preferable there should be in the assessment team at least four persons who  know the assessment methodology. The highest business officer, e.g. the CEO,  should always be one of the assessors in self-assessments. It should never be  trusted only in one single expert in the assessment. The possible external  assessments, e.g. the assessments in context of applying the national quality  award, should be reviewed and interpreted by the business leaders for necessary  actions. Thus, those assessments are understood as a part of the own  self-assessment. The assessments should be carried out as an assessment process  (see figure 5).
• • maybe use this chart
• Self-assessment using a quality award model is not any easy task (see figure 6).  However, the assessment technique is quite simple and easy to learn. The  difficulty is originated from the substance itself. Critical understanding of a  complex business performance requires competent resources and initiativity and  commitment of the top management. Difficult issues are the understanding the  multi-dimensional assessment entirety and the individual criteria items in terms  of the own company.
• especially finding, understanding, and describing real strengths of the  business performance - has been a demanding management task. Based on many  years' experience, one does know any better methodology for this task than a  quality award model, especially the Malcolm Baldrige Criteria
• the company's management have a clear understanding of the basic  QM/TQM/business excellence concepts
  - the company have its own  QM/TQM/business excellence model with Malcolm Baldrige as a tool
  - the  company should have widely-applied business process approach for strategic  management and operational business management
  - the self-assessment approach  is based on the company's business needs and be integrated with business  management
  - the self-assessment approach is launched step-by-step
  - the  company have reasonably own expertise and resources for QM related  development
  - the self-assessments are done by own resources (by company's  management team, and quality experts as facilitators)
  - ISO 9000 standards  methodology, e.g. auditing, and quality award criteria are used simultaneously  to support each others
  - also other recognized quality management tools,  especially Balanced Scorecard and Hoshin Kanri, are used with Malcolm Baldrige  model
  - the self-assessment approach is being developed continually

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