The list comes from the Global Benchmarking Network’s 2008 survey on business improvement and benchmarking. Which of these does your organization use?

• Mission and vision statement
• Customer/client surveys
• SWOT (Strengths/Weaknesses/Opportunities/Threats)
• Informal benchmarking (encouraging employees to learn from other organizations)
• Quality management system (think ISO)
• Improvement teams
• Employee suggestion scheme
• PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act)
• Performance benchmarking (comparing process/activity performance levels)
• Knowledge management
• Business process reengineering
• Balanced scorecard
• TQM (total quality management)
• Business excellence (using Baldrige, EFQM, or other national excellence models)
• Best practice benchmarking (structured process for comparing performance and implementing best practices)
• Corporate social responsibility system
• Lean
• Industrial housekeeping (5S)
• Quality function deployment (QFD)
• Six Sigma

More than 450 responses from 44 countries ranked their organizations’ usage of these improvement tools in the order above. The percent of usage ranged from 77% for “mission and vision statement” to 22% for Six Sigma. Every tool from the top through PDCA was used by more than half the respondents; the rest were used by fewer than half.

The Baldrige message is a good news/bad news deal: “Business excellence” is currently being used by just 40% of the respondents, which is pretty good considering that only 59% said they understood what the “business excellence” tool is.

You can read a summary of the survey here.

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