Using The Baldrige Criteria To Assess Quality

Introduction:

Baldrige criteria define the new management model hecause they pro-vide the best guide to understanding, assessing, controlling, and improv-ing an organization.

Facts of the BALDRIGE CRITERIA:

•      Since the Baldrige program was introduced in 1988, the National In-stitute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has distributed more than two million copies of the criteria. it estimates that people have made at least that many copies for their own use. NIST contmues to improve the criteria every year.

•      Companies aiso get the criteria from state award programs. Forty-two U.S. states now have quality avvard programs based on the Baldrige criteria.

•      Many state programs have broadened the eligibility to inelude educa-tion, health çare, and government agencies, ali of which are able to apply the Baldrige criteria to their organizations. At the nationallevel, NIST has piloted education and health çare awards and has trained examiners to evaluate education/health çare applications.

•      Studies have shown that 70 percent of the companies that use the criteria use them as a source of information on how to achieve excellence.

•      More than 20 countries, ineluding Australia, Brazil, Sweden, Canada, India, and Japan, have implemented quality avvard programs based on the Baldrige criteria.

•      The criteria for the European Quality Avvard, first presented in 1992, are patterned after the Baldrige criteria.

•      More than $9 million in grants has been provided for research related to the Baldrige core values.

Baldrige Quality System:

The Do-It-Yourself Way to Transform Your Business (John Wiley & Sons, 1992) explains how the criteria evolved and how companies of all types and sizes are using them to improve.

The Baldrige system was created to promote an understanding of the requirements for world-class performance. That the system also de-fines a new management model surprises no one who has been active in the implementation of total quality management (TQM).

System according to the Baldrige model:

• Focuses on the customer.
• Aligns internal processes with customer satisfaction.
• Puts everybody in the company to work on shared goals.
• Facilitates a long-term approach to continuous improvement.
• Demands management by fact.
• Promotes prevention rather than reaction.
• Seeks ways to be faster and more flexible throughout the organization.
• Looks outside the company for opportunities to form partnerships with customers, suppliers, and other companies; to benchmark; and to fulfill the company's responsibilities as a corporate citizen.
• Values results.