All Posts Tagged With: "Cargill"
Blessed with OFIs
At the latest Quest for Excellence, an annual event where the previous year’s Baldrige Award recipients discuss their management systems, the leaders of the three winning organizations answered audience questions for about a half-hour. The YouTube video of that panel discussion is here.
The plant manager for Cargill Corn Milling was asked how his organization prioritizes the opportunities for improvement (OFIs) it gets from the Baldrige feedback and from Cargill’s Business Excellence process. He noted that they got a total of 131 OFIs from the 2008 feedback reports. Their leadership group used a priority matrix to rank the OFIs based on their importance to Cargill Corn Milling’s mission, vision, and purpose. They then decided to work on the top three OFIs this year.
For people new to Baldrige, a couple of things may be surprising about this. First is the fact that a Baldrige Award recipient got 131 OFIs. What you have to remember is that recipients typically score in the 650 to 750 point range. The missing 250-350 points are OFIs. There are no “perfect” organizations.
The second surprise is that, out of 131 OFIs, the organization is working on just three. I think that’s misleading. In my experience, improving performance on those top three OFIs will lead to improvement on several others. For example, addressing an OFI that questions how systematically…
1Sep2009 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Power of Process
Cargill Corn Milling (CCM) North America received a Baldrige site visit in October 2008, four months after the Cedar River crested at 20 feet above flood stage and caused an estimated $100 million in damage to its facilities.
It was ready. Despite having to remove and recondition 600 motors, 500 pumps, and more than 100 blowers, CCM was up and running in September and operating at full capacity in November—the same month it learned that it had received the Baldrige Award.
In “Watershed Moment” (Quality Progress, August 2009), CCM President Alan Willits credits his organization’s fast recovery to its process-oriented business culture. “We didn’t need to go back and ask how we were going to manage this project,” said Willits.” We had all the processes in place. We were simply able to use them to react to a very significant and difficult event.”
In the summary of its award-winning application, CCM describes how it uses its Best Practices Model to improve work processes. The model is a variation of Plan-Do-Check-Act or the DMAIC model that has four stages and nine steps:
- Plan: Identify opportunity / identify key measures / standardize measurement system / evaluate and identify best practices
- Evaluate: Document best practices / Implement best practices
- Analyze: Measure and communicate best practices / Audit best practice compliance
- Refine: Refine best practices
Through systematic deployment of its Best Practices Model,…
11Aug2009 | Steve George | 0 comments | Continued
