Models Of Excellence In Leadership

Introduction:

Leadership holds the key to the door of continuous improvement. If the key stays in leadership's pocket, the organization has no chance of be-coming a quality leader. A lot of times it's brought on by trauma." Leaders often embrace total quality management because they see no alternative: im-prove or die.

MODELS OF EXCELLENCE

• Corning Incorporated vvas established in 1851 and today is a worldwide market leader in optical fiber and photonic components; television and computer display glass; advanced materials for the scientific, environ-mental, and consumer marketplaces with grovving capabilities in polymers; and the physics and chemistry of surfaces. Headquartered in Corning, New York, the company has more than 20,000 employees world-wide. Corning Telecommunications Products Division won the Baldrige Avvard in 1995.

• FedEx created the overnight air express business in 1973. Ten years later, it was the first U.S. company to top $1 billion in revenues in its first decade. The company is the vvorld's Iargest express transportation company: more than 110,000 employees move more than two million items to över 200 countries each business day. in 1990, FedEx became the first service company to win the Baldrige Award.

•  Marlow Industries manufactures customized thermoelectrie cool-ers—small, solid-state electronic devices that heat, cool, or stabilize the temperature of electronic equipment—for commercial and defense appli-cations. Located in Dallas, Marlow employs 250 people and has total an-nual sales of $24 million.

• Marlow Industries won the Baldrige Award in 1991. CEO and president Ray Marlow founded the company in 1973 and initiated a systematic quality improvement process in 1987, even though Marlow's market share was more than 50 percent at the time. Its market share in its majör markets is stili greater than 70 percent.