Flexible Automation and Integrated Manufacturing 1994

ISBN Print: 978-1-56700-018-4

ISO 9000 AND THE MALCOLM BALDRIGE AWARD: A COMPLEMENTARY STRATEGY FOR TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT DEPLOYMENT

DOI: 10.1615/FAIM1994.580
pages 567-577

Sinopsis

The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award was created to improve the competitiveness of American industry. The award has truly motivated a host of companies to improve. Examples are Motorola, Xerox and IBM Rochester to name a few. These organizations became customer-driven and their success was a result of culture change. The Malcolm Baldrige award depends heavily on self assessment, management leadership and customer focus. World class organizations are. driven by the customer's voice. These organizations have enlightened management and management values of customer focus, employee empowerment and cooperative team work in the work-place result in a strong quality oriented organization. It is also possible to win the quality award without substantial change in culture and in quality. There is no change in attitudes, culture and the infrastructure of these organizations. This is a consequence of "self monitoring" or the voluntary nature of the Malcolm Baldrige award application. The ISO 9000 standards created for the purposes of establishing a consistent quality system in Europe offer an excellent opportunity to correct this situation. ISO 9000 defines a minimum acceptable quality assurance system from the customer perspective. Quality systems must be deployed with an adequate infrastructure, business processes and operational procedures throughout the organization. In addition, the third party registration requirement imposes a discipline that the minimum documentation must be put in place. The requirement for "surveillance" audits at about 6 month or so frequency, followed by complete re-audit for registration every three years, creates a discipline that enforces a change in the organization. With that as the basis, a new strategy of total quality management deployment is proposed. The paper will examine the relationship between ISO 9000 and Malcolm Baldrige to show that a cost effective strategy for Total Quality Management deployment will be to obtain ISO 9000 registration first and then build a TQM environment upon the strength of the ISO 9000 infrastructure using the Malcolm Baldrige award application as the vehicle.