All Posts Tagged With: "analysis"
Baldrige Model: How do you manage information, knowledge and information technology?
Item 4.2 in the Baldrige Criteria asks key questions about how you build and manage your knowledge assets. The following processes, best practices, and problem areas look at critical issues in this part of the Baldrige model.
Your organization needs processes for:
- Managing the accuracy, integrity, reliability, timeliness, security, and confidentiality of data, information, and knowledge
- Making needed data and information available to employees, suppliers, partners, collaborators, and customers
- Managing organizational knowledge
- Ensuring that hardware and software are reliable, secure, and user-friendly
- Ensuring the continued availability of information systems during emergencies
Best practices to consider:
- The organization has identified what information its employees, customers, suppliers, and partners need to improve performance and has deployed processes that get the right information in the right hands at the right time.
- In a learning organization knowledge is currency, which is why a learning organization has processes for collecting and transferring knowledge and identifying, sharing, and implementing best practices.
- Critical data and information are backed up and stored offsite in case of an emergency, and the backup system is checked on a scheduled basis to ensure reliability.
Common problems areas:
- The right information either is not collected or is not distributed to the right people when it can be useful.
- Knowledge is lost when employees leave the…
Baldrige Model: How do you measure, analyze and improve organization performance?
Item 4.1 in the Baldrige Criteria asks key questions about how you use data and information to improve performance. The following processes, best practices, and problem areas look at critical issues in this part of the Baldrige model.
Your organization needs processes for:
- Selecting, collecting, aligning, integrating, and communicating data and information for tracking daily operations and organizational performance
- Selecting key comparative data and information and voice-of-the-customer data and information and using it to support decision making and innovation
- Ensuring that your performance measurement system can respond to rapid and/or unexpected change
- Reviewing organizational performance and capabilities, including using key performance measures and the analysis of those measures
- Sharing lessons learned and best practices identified during organizational performance reviews across the organization
- Using organizational performance reviews to project future performance and to develop priorities for continuous improvement and innovation
Best practices to consider:
- Develop a performance measurement system, the most common of which is a balanced scorecard, that defines how data and information will be selected and collected, aligns key performance measures with the organization’s mission, vision, and strategic objectives, and communicates performance throughout the organization.
- Role model organizations use comparative data and information for as many key measures as possible to provide context for their performance, helping them understand…
Quality Companion Supports Quality Improvement
(This guest post was written by Cate Twohill, product marketing manager at Minitab. To learn more about Quality Companion, click on the box on the right.)
A few years ago, I co-authored a white paper outlining The Three Keys to Six Sigma Success. The paper concluded that, by focusing on the key principles of project selection, securing executive support, and executing the DMAIC method, quality practitioners could increase their overall project success rate. This is proven to be true time and again.
I know what you’re thinking: “OK, but these principles are neither ground-breaking nor new”—and you’d be correct. But what was fairly new at the time was Minitab’s process improvement software, Quality Companion. The all-in-one application supports continuous improvement activities across different levels of a quality program as well as many stages of improvement projects. By summarizing our voice of the customer research into a white paper, we were able to easily draw parallels between the keys for success and Companion’s features, tools, and forms.
Since then, Quality Companion has been updated with Lean Six Sigma support features, including Value Stream Mapping, and its user community continues to grow as does Minitab’s plans for ongoing software enhancements.
So, now you’re probably thinking: “Why is she writing…
4Apr2011 | Cate Twohill | 0 comments | ContinuedEveryone Can Improve Quality
For the first twenty years of the Baldrige Award, the weakest category in terms of scoring was measurement and analysis. While the balanced scorecard movement has helped close the measurement gap, reliable and actionable analysis of data is still a struggle for many organizations.
Minitab, an industry leader in statistical and process improvement, addresses that gap. Virtually every major Six Sigma initiative worldwide uses Minitab software, which is also used to teach statistics in more than 4,000 colleges and universities.
The great thing about Minitab software is that it turns anyone into a statistician. The latest version of its software, Minitab 16, uses an interactive decision tree to help users choose the right analytical tool and walks them through their analysis step-by-step. It can then assist with interpreting the results and producing reports.
You can see how it works by clicking on the green box on the right. A short video introduces you to the features and benefits of Minitab 16, including the ability to use the software in seven languages.
If you want to learn more, click on the “Webinars” link at the top of the Minitab 16 web page for a list of free webinars about the product, or click on “Tour”…
10Feb2011 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedSmart Question #2: How Do We Know That?
(This excerpt is from The Baldrige Edge, an e-Guide from Baldrige.com. You can learn more about the guide by clicking on the black-and-red box on the right.)
Next to blaming people for process problems, making assumptions is a surefire way to miss the right solution. Which of these scenarios is more common in your organization?
(a) Options are debated based on what people think about a problem or issue and how they think it should be handled; or,
(b) Options are debated based on reliable data and information that illuminate the nature and causes of the problem or issue and point to possible solutions.
Most people act as if “a” is really “b”: My assumptions are based on experience and they’re as good as facts. They’re wrong. Guessing that you know what’s going on is not the same as actually knowing what’s going on, and the only way to know what’s going on is to collect and analyze relevant data and information. That’s where the second smart question comes in: How do we know that?
You have to be careful how you ask this question. If your boss says, “We’re getting customer complaints about how long they have to wait for service so we need…
1Feb2011 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedMaking Better Decisions, Faster
The Baldrige Criteria devote one Item to how you manage information, knowledge, and information technology. The goal is to make data and information accurate, reliable, timely, secure, confidential, and available to the people who need it, when they need it.
In “How Do You Speed Up Information Delivery?” (HBR, May 26, 2010), Tom Davenport addresses the need for speed in information delivery. He identifies several technical advances that are accelerating this including: (1) storing information in memory rather than on a hard drive for faster retrieval and manipulation; (2) using new forms of databases for faster data retrieval and analysis; and, (3) faster hardware and easier-to-use software the make data analysis easier.
This, he notes, “is the relatively easy part.” Process, behavior, and management change are tougher. The first step is to identify what information really needs to be delivered more quickly. Not all information is critical. Prioritizing will help focus resources on the greatest need.
Davenport points out that managers want information when they want it, which is not necessarily when they get it. For that reason, it’s often better to make information available for online access (pull) rather than issuing reports (push).
The next step is to have executives work with analysts “to…
1Jun2010 | Steve George | 0 comments | Continued10 Critical Questions: Data, Information & Knowledge
You manage what you measure, which is why, for decades, leaders managed their companies’ financial performance: They reviewed financial data regularly and other types of data sporadically if at all.
Category 4 in the Baldrige Criteria asks how you measure organizational performance, which for most organizations involves some type of balanced scorecard. It asks how you analyze and review performance and how that leads to performance improvement. And it asks how you manage your information, organizational knowledge, and information technology.
As we noted, the best way to evaluate your measurement system—and your management system—is through a Baldrige assessment using the Baldrige Criteria. You can find out how to do that here.
The Criteria consist of powerful questions, rarely asked, about how an organization functions. If you cannot do a full assessment but want insight into how to improve your measurement system, here are 10 critical questions to ask and answer:
- How do you select and collect the data and information you use to track (1) daily operations and (2) overall organizational performance, and how do you align and integrate these data?
- What are your key organizational performance measures?
- How do you select and use comparative data and information to provide benchmarks for these measures and to…
