The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) is designed to evaluate and recognize “world class” continually improving organizations. It essentially goes ‘beyond’ the ISO 9001:2000 goal of achieving customer satisfaction by assessing an organization’s ability to meet the needs of ALL interested parties (customers, shareholders, employees and society in general).

ISO 9001:2000 requires that you establish a process for continual improvement of your quality management system (QMS); some related ‘shall statements’ include:

· Organizations must continually improve QMS effectiveness.

· Top management must provide evidence of its commitment to continual improvement of the QMS.

· Measurable quality objectives, consistent with the quality policy, must be established and monitored for achievement.

· Outputs of QMS reviews by top management must include actions related to QMS improvement.

· Organizations must implement a process to continually improve QMS effectiveness.

Obviously, continual improvement is a fundamental requirement of the new standard, and a significant change in emphasis from the previous (1994) version.

An initial self-assessment and periodic reassessments against MBNQA criteria can quickly and easily be performed and form a foundation for continual improvement!

The MBNQA model is comprised of 7 elements. Six of these elements are classified as approach/deployment: Leadership, Strategic Planning, Customer and Market Focus, Information and Analysis, Human Resource Focus, Process Management. The seventh element requires the submission of results to support the assessments for the previous six elements.

IsoQual, Inc. offers a ‘mini’ Baldrige-Based Self-Assessment Package that simplifies the process further. You can quickly determine your current performance in each of 20 specific areas, and just as quickly identify opportunities for improvement. This package also includes an Excel spreadsheet you can use to input your assessment results and calculate your total point score. The results will easily help you establish a baseline level of performance and quality improvement objectives. Present your results at the Management Review meeting, adopt some quality improvement objectives, and start your improvement process! Repeat the process annually to ensure continual improvement.

In any case, meeting the requirements of ISO 9001:2000 will help you establish a world class QMS. Assessing your performance against MBNQA criteria will help you improve your QMS to achieve recognition as being among the best in the world.