Quality Award Programs
Baldrige Beyond U.S. Borders
If your organization can claim world-class performance and if it does business—or wants to do business—with Asian/Pacific Rim nations, you may want to apply for the International Asia Pacific Quality Award, which marks its 10-year anniversary in 2010. Here’s what you need to know about the IAPQA:
- Your organization must have won its national quality award in the last three years to apply.
- You don’t have to write a new application. If, for example, your organization won the Baldrige Award, you submit your award-winning application and Baldrige feedback report.
- As with the Baldrige Award, any type of organization is eligible.
- Trained Baldrige examiners evaluate the candidates using the Baldrige model.
- The deadline for submitting candidates, which must be recommended by their national quality award organizations, is February 28, 2010.
- The deadline for submitting applications is March 30, 2010.
The award is administered by the nonprofit Asia Pacific Quality Organization, which is chaired by Chuck Aubrey, former president of ASQ. Its governing body includes representatives from Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, United States, United Arab Emirates, and Vietnam.
In 2009, the World Class IAPQA was given to:
- Vietnam Electric Cable Corporation
- Orel Manufacturing Ltd. (Sri Lanka)
- Hindalco Industries Limited (India)
- Shanghai Investment Consulting Corporation
- Centro Escolar Colima A.C. (Mexico)
To learn more about the Asia Pacific Quality Organization and the IAPQA, click here.
To learn more about the Baldrige application process, click on the following…
19Jan2010 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedWeapons and Performance Excellence
In the last three years, five healthcare organizations have won the Baldrige Award. Over the same span, three organizations that design, manufacture, and/or distribute weapons have also won the Award. Since there have only been 13 winners, that’s a significant number.
- The U.S. Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center develops 90% of the Army’s armaments and ammunition.
- Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies manages a plant that supplies 85% of the non-nuclear parts that go into a typical nuclear weapon.
- MidwayUSA offers shooting, reloading, gunsmithing, and hunting products from more than 700 vendors.
I can think of a lot of industries I would rather see leading the Baldrige charge. Airlines, insurance companies, banks, and schools come to mind. The performance of the weapons industry certainly reflects the priorities of American culture and politics, but that doesn’t make it any less disturbing. I don’t think the fact that we are becoming more efficient at killing things is any cause for celebration.
What do you think?
11Dec2009 | Steve George | 0 comments | Continued2009 Baldrige Award Winners Announced
Click on the organization to learn more.
Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies, Kansas City, Missouri, in the manufacturing category. With 2,700 employees and an annual operating budget of $540 million, FM&T is a management and operating contractor at the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Kansas City plant. Performance highlights include:
- Overall customer satisfaction at or above 95% for the last four years compared to a commercial best-in-class benchmark of 85%
- A Management Assurance System for identifying, implementing, measuring, and sustaining the “critical to quality” needs necessary for desired performance
- An Enterprise Alignment Process for daily accountability, aligned with FM&T’s balanced scorecard and strategic plan
- Cost savings of $23.5 million to $27 million annually for the past three fiscal years through the Six Sigma Plus Continuous Improvement Model
MidwayUSA, Columbia, Missouri, in the small business category. MidwayUSA has 243 full-time and 100 part-time employees and annual revenue of $185. It is a catalog/Internet-based retail merchant that offers shooting, reloading, gunsmithing, and hunting products. Performance highlights include:
- 1,500 documented processes, each focusing on the customer
- Overall customer loyalty of 94%
- Growth rate of 30% compared to 10% for its top competitor
- Strategic planning process that systematically aligns key processes to company goals, customer key requirements, and core competencies
AtlantiCare, Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey, in the health care category. AtlanticCare is a nonprofit health system with 4,872 employees and $700 million in annual revenues. Performance highlights include:
- Ranked seventh out of 4,200 hospitals in 2006 by…
2008 Baldrige Awards Presented Today
Three organizations will receive their Baldrige Awards from Vice President Joe Biden today in a ceremony in Washington, D.C. I attended such a ceremony about ten years ago as a guest of Custom Research, at which President Clinton handed out the Awards, and they are exciting events for the winning organizations.
The 2008 Baldrige Award recipients are:
- Poudre Valley Health System, a not-for-profit health care organization with a service area of 50,000 square miles in northern Colorado, Nebraska, and Wyoming. PVHS has some of the highest clinical outcomes in the country for mortality rates, complication, and infection rates, and patient satisfaction and financial performance well within the top 10% of all organizations nationally.
- Iredell-Statesville Schools, a K-12 public school system serving nearly 21,000 students in southwestern North Carolina. Its per-pupil operations expenditures are among the lowest in the state at the same time that it is ranked academically in the state’s top 10 school systems.
- Cargill Corn Milling North America, a business unit of Cargill Inc. that manufactures corn- and sugar-based food in nine manufacturing facilities throughout the U.S. CCM’s earnings after tax nearly tripled from 2003 to 2007. From 2006 to 2008, CCM saved more than $15 million from ideas generated by employees.
You can learn more about these Baldrige Award recipients and the winners in previous years at the Baldrige program’s Web site here.
To find out more about the 2008 winners, read:
2Dec2009 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedOrganizational Improvement Training
The Alliance for Performance Excellence offers inexpensive online training on a broad range of organizational improvement topics. I can’t vouch for the quality of the training because I haven’t taken a course, but training provided by the Alliance, which is a network of Baldrige-based award programs, should be excellent.
Click here to review a complete list of courses on such subjects as:
- Control charts
- Customer service excellence
- Data-driven decision making
- Lean
- Problem solving
- Process management
- Quality tools
- Six Sigma
- Statistical process control
If you take an online course through the Alliance or have taken one, let us know what you think by commenting on this article or sending us an email.
10Nov2009 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedNew Zealand Business Excellence
Three organizations are in the running for the 2009 Gold level New Zealand Business Excellence Award. The award, which is aligned with the Baldrige Criteria, has only been given twice in the last 13 years.
It’s interesting to consider the three candidates because none is actually a business: the New Zealand Fire Service, Western Bay of Plenty District Council, and Royal New Zealand Navy.
According to a press release (click here to read the release), the Fire Service started using the Business Excellence process in 2001. It received a Bronze Award in 2005. The Royal New Zealand Navy, which started its business excellence journey in 1999, has earned two Bronze awards and one Silver award. As for the Western Bay of Plenty District Council, CEO Glenn Snelgrove said, “The business excellence journey has been about ensuring every system, process, and activity of our business directly aligns with meeting the needs of our customers.”
The New Zealand Business Excellence Foundation has more than 160 members who benefit from services such as facilitated assessment tools, customized training, networking, best practice information, and business-related articles and presentations. You can find out more about the Foundation here. Presentations and award-winning applications are available to members only.
6Nov2009 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedBaldrige and the Tata Companies
The Tata companies, primarily based in India, employ 357,000 people and have annual revenues exceeding $70 billion. In 1994, its senior leaders chose the Baldrige model as the foundation of a new internal award called the JRD Quality Value Award.
Tata’s award process, which aligns with the Baldrige application process, is called the Tata Business Excellence Model, reaffirming its cultural significance. Tata companies must score 600 or higher to win the award. To date, eight companies have received it: Tata Steel, Tata Consultancy Services, Tata Motors, Titan Industries, Tata Chemicals, Tata Metaliks, The Tinplate Company of India, and Telcon.
At its annual Business Excellence convention in 2006, Chairman Ratan Tata said, “Excellence is not something we can buy. It is not something that we can acquire overnight. It is a long process. It takes commitment…This is not a world of just taking awards. It is a long, twisted, difficult road, filled with obstacles. Let us all keep excellence and operations through excellence as being our guidelines as we move into the future and continue to believe in what we are doing, so that we can continue to lead and never to follow.”
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