Juran Institute Acquires Baldrige.com

I am pleased to announce the sale of Baldrige.com to the Juran Institute. Founded by quality guru Dr. Joseph M. Juran in 1979, the Juran Institute offers a broad range of services to help organizations improve performance, including Baldrige Assessment and consulting, Lean and Six Sigma, change management, quality planning, team building, and the Juran Management System. You can learn more about the company here.

Dr. Juran was a vocal advocate for the Baldrige program. I interviewed him in 1991 for my first book on the Baldrige model and he was kind enough to write a reference for the book. At the end of the interview, he not only invited me to his annual conference, then called IMPRO, but he offered to pay all of my expenses to attend. Before the conference, Dr. Juran delivered, “Making Quality Happen,” which remains one of the most informative sessions I’ve ever taken part in about the value of a systems approach to quality management and improvement.

I quoted him in my book, The Baldrige Quality System: “Prior to the Baldrige Award, any company that didn’t have a quality revolution was confused. Quality consultants were tugging them in different directions. We lost a decade that way. The…

Still Passionate about Baldrige

“There is no question that our adherence to the Baldrige performance criteria has made us a much more efficient university, and helped us weather repeated cuts in state aid without affecting educational quality,” write Charles W. Sorensen and Julie Furst-Bowe, chancellor and provost at the University of Wisconsin-Stout (article here).

UW-Stout earned the Baldrige Award in 2001. Ten years later it remains passionate about the value of integrating Baldrige. According to Sorenson and Furst-Bowe, “The most important change brought about by our Baldrige experience, which is now part of our culture, was the establishment of an inclusive planning process to ensure that, in Baldrige speak, ‘all arrows are pointing in the same direction,’ and not at cross-purposes.”

Having worked with five Baldrige Award winners, I can attest to the value of aligning processes and people with the goals, strategies, and objectives of the organization. Whether you are in business, healthcare, or education, the ability to focus all activities on shared goals dramatically improves performance and is a major reason Baldrige Award winners achieve world-class results.

Sorenson and Furst-Bowe also state that “the Baldrige model…also led to a number of important innovations, including our e-Scholar or student laptop program, our designation as Wisconsin’s polytechnic…

Plan Now to Integrate Baldrige

As a new year approaches, many organizations are finalizing plans to begin or continue their Baldrige journeys. Most will not apply for an award, but rather begin using the Baldrige criteria to evaluate and improve performance. I’m often asked by those new to Baldrige about the best way to integrate Baldrige and what resources are required to make it effective.

From my experience, the introduction to Baldrige often begins with training. Senior leaders need to understand what Baldrige is and how it can help their organizations. They need to know what is involved in a Baldrige assessment so that they can allocate resources, set goals and expectations, and provide ongoing support. And they need to establish processes for reviewing the results of the assessment, prioritizing opportunities for improvement, and developing action plans.

The only way to effectively integrate the Baldrige model is through Baldrige assessments, which means completely and accurately answering the Baldrige criteria questions and evaluating those responses to identify strengths and opportunities for improvement. If you plan to conduct this assessment internally, you will need to train the people who will conduct the assessment in how to interpret the criteria, where to find the answers to the questions, and how…

2011 Baldrige Award Winners

Four organizations, three in healthcare and one nonprofit, have won the 2011 Baldrige Award:

• The Henry Ford Health System, a nonprofit organization based in Detroit, has more than 24,000 employees and operates 30 general medical centers and seven specialized medical facilities.
• Schneck Medical Center in Seymour, Indiana, is a nonprofit institution with 114 beds and a staff of more than 800 employees.
• Southcentral Foundation is an Alaska Native-owned, nonprofit healthcare organization serving nearly 60,000 Alaska Native and American Indian people in and around Anchorage.
• Concordia Publishing House in St. Louis is the publisher for The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, offering more than 8,000 products to families, individuals, Christian schools, and congregations.

Gary Meyer, president and CEO of Schneck Medical Center, noted that his organization first implemented the Baldrige framework four years ago. “The Baldrige criteria and our unwavering commitment to quality, satisfaction, and continuous improvement have helped us toward our vision to be an organization of excellence, every person, every time,” he said.

In 2011, 69 organizations applied for the Baldrige Award, of which 11 reached the final, site visit review stage. Six of the 11 were healthcare organizations. Baldrige examiners visited these site visit finalists for several days in October to clarify and verify the content of their application.…