The Journey to Performance Excellence

So you want to be a continuously improving organization - perhaps you even have a vision to apply for and win the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA).

ISO 9000 standards are the place to start and provide the road map for the journey - to performance excellence.

ISO 9000 standards provide a “World Class” model for managing quality. These standards, established and maintained by the International Organization for Standardization, are made up of the following three documents:

ISO 9000:2000 contains a standard set of terms and definitions related to quality management;

ISO 9001:2000 contains requirements for a quality management system (QMS) for achieving customer satisfaction by meeting customer requirements;

ISO 9004:2000 contains guidelines for improving your QMS - and, more importantly, contains guidelines for achieving the satisfaction of ALL interested parties - including customers, stake holders, employees and society in general.

Among other things, ISO 9004:2000 bridges the gap that has historically existed between ISO 9000 and models/criteria that aim a little higher - like the MBNQA criteria. To illustrate:

Many MBNQA winners have said that a “system” of some sort must be in place to establish and sustain any improvements - and many have said ISO 9000 standards provided the foundation for the system they needed. To illustrate:

ISO 9000 defines it as any set of interrelated processes.

What is a process?

ISO defines it as any activity that transforms inputs (resources) into outputs (desired results). To illustrate:

ISO 9001 requires that you manage processes to ensure the desired results are achieved. It’s as simple as it sounds; to illustrate:

ISO 9001 requires that you “prove” your processes are effective in meeting customer requirements and take improvement actions when needed. This is no small task considering the wide variety of customers and customer requirements to consider. ISO 9004 provides guidelines for managing processes to meet the needs of ALL interested parties, which in addition to customers also includes stakeholders.

Since stakeholders are usually interested in making a reasonable profit - you will also want to find ways to make processes more efficient as you continue your journey towards performance excellence. To illustrate:

As management expands the scope of interested parties to be included within the scope of their quality system, they will need to rely more heavily on a systematic approach to managing processes to make sure all of this happens. The organization that has grown accustomed to the structure and discipline of the process approach included in the ISO 9000 standards has a high probability of success. In any case, all systems and approaches will only be as strong as their weakest link.

My final illustration is a narrative one - I’m sure it describes your company ...

Your customers are completely satisfied because you consistently understand and meet their needs and strive to exceed their expectations.

Your top managers have plans and objectives for meeting your most significant challenges or business needs over the next 2-3 years.

Your people work in an environment of trust, loyalty and support - and people throughout your company work together to make sure everyone in the organization succeeds.

Your processes are clear and fully capable of achieving the results you need and your customers expect.

You recognize that meeting customer requirements is not enough - that to stay in business and grow you must continually improve the way you do business.

You analyze data and information to make fact based decisions before things get to the “fire-fighting” stage.

You view your suppliers as true partners for success and you work hard to establish mutually beneficial supplier relationships.

Your customers, suppliers, employees, stakeholders and other interested parties are completely confident that all of the above occurs because you routinely provide supporting information.

Not you? Well, the truth is that people change employers all the time - customers and suppliers come and go - organizations merge and reorganize regularly. These are not ingredients for generating confidence - rather they are ingredients for creating chaos and short term thinking.

Your only assurance of consistency and your best chance for survival in today’s global economy is a well defined and fully implemented quality management system.

So ... here's the "simple" road map ...

Start with an internationally recognized management model (ISO 9001) ...

then learn and apply guidelines for continual improvement (ISO 9004) that will lead your organization to “world class” performance excellence (national quality award), and, ultimately, to be becoming " #1 ".

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