Question

After you have completed your readings, please discuss what you believe would be the biggest advantage to achieving the Malcolm Baldridge Award within your organization.   What does this award have to do with commitment to "quality" versus "total quality." What are the prospective repercussions to an organization if it is portrayed as a provider of "poor quality" and what it means when the statement of "management-by-accounting is the antithesis of total quality."

Discuss why you feel this way? How would you suggest recommending to senior leadership to commit resources to achieve this award and what would your recommendations be?

Please be specific and utilize your readings to substantiate your thoughts. Be sure to include the key elements and keys to success in regards to total quality. Also, discuss your thoughts in regards to where you see the direction of quality management in the 21st Century.

Answer 1

After you have completed your readings, please discuss what you believe would be the biggest advantage to achieving the Malcolm Baldridge Award within your organization.   

Answer :

The biggest advantage in achieving this award would be that our business would be recognized as an organization which excels in multiple areas of the business as opposed to just one area. The reason being, The Malcolm Baldrige Award was set up by Congress to recognize businesses, organizations and individuals who performed exceptionally in Leadership, Strategy, Customers Service, Analysis and Measurement of their performance, Workforce Management, Operations and delivered tangible results. The Malcolm Baldrige Award has six different categories.

• Products or manufacturing industries

• Service based businesses

• Small Businesses

• Educational Institutions

• Health Care Organisations

• Non Profit Organisations

Source : NIST or National Institute of Standards & Technology

What does this award have to do with commitment to "quality" versus "total quality."

Quality Vs Total Quality

Quality Management is a term normally reserved for products or services or the process of manufacturing or delivering services. However Total Quality or TQM total quality management is a much broader approach. Total Quality Management or TQM is a management framework that's used to define, measure, analyze and control the quality of products or services of an organization. The frameworks are centered around customer focus and managing your supply chain or suppliers. The framework's outline or guiding principles are based around Culture, Communication, and Commitment. Based on these guiding principles, TQM focuses on People, Systems, and Processes. The Malcolm Baldrige Award does not just recognize excellence in one vertical of quality but it has a more universal approach to quality. Its purpose is to recognize quality in Leadership, Strategy, Customers Service, Analysis and Measurement of their performance, Workforce Management, Operations and delivered tangible results. Which is why this award has more to do with Total Quality than just Quality.

" What are the prospective repercussions to an organization if it is portrayed as a provider of "poor quality" and what it means when the statement of "management-by-accounting is the antithesis of total quality."

Consequences of being perceived as a business who's products or services are perceived as poor quality

• Financial Risk: Markets are an excellent judge of value. if a business is perceived as one which has poor quality products or services, it won't be able to command a high retail price in the market. It'll quickly be outflanked by competition.

• Talent Drain: Talented employees tend to stick with reputable organizations. There's a popular misconception that talented employee alone builds good businesses, it's a symbiotic relationship. Talent employees do build good businesses and good businesses attract talented employes. If an organization is perceived as one which has poor quality products or services, it'll fail to attract and retain key talent.

• Legal Risk: This also opens the company up to regulatory crackdowns, investigations, etc.

Management By Accounting is the Antithesis of Total Quality

Management By Accounting is another term for financial engineering or running a business purely from a numbers standpoints, without taking into account any of the qualitative aspects of the business such as human capital, talent, systems and process, quality, ethics, culture, etc. The reason why Management By Accounting is the Antithesis of Total Quality is that it is people within the organizations who drive the numbers. Financial Engineering doesn't just happen on an Excel Sheet, instead, it's merely a reflection of the company's sub-components and its employees.

Example of Management By Accounting is the Antithesis of Total Quality & Consequences of being perceived as a business whose products or services are perceived as poor quality

Shanghai Husi Food Scandal

China's counterpart for what we in the US call the FDA or the food and drug administration and the depart of health hygiene is commonly referred to in Shanghai as the food watchdog, recently cracked down on a meat supplier known as Husi Foods. This food supplier supplied raw meat to major American Brands operating in Shanghai such as KFC, Mc Donalds, Pizza Hut and Starbucks. All restaurant chains were forced to dispose of food boxes sent from the supplier.

Systematic Issues: Systematic issues ranged from a lack of a firm auditing system to lack of training for plant workers, little to no managerial oversight on production and packaging, poor quality control systems, forgery of quality control documents. So the systematic issues are widespread

Corporate Issues :

As stated before, this wasn't an oversight or mere negligence which led to a lapse in food quality, it was a result of a deliberate attempt to sell low quality meat to save on wastage costs. The Chinese authorities found that the supplier provided stale or rotten meat to its suppliers and that the issue was not a result of oversight but systematic, enterprise-level negligence and reportedly found evidence of forged records to pass the third party and internal quality control and audits

Source: Thompson Reuters

Discuss why you feel this way?

As I mentioned earlier, the biggest advantage in achieving this award would be that our business would be recognized as an organization which excels in multiple areas of the business as opposed to just one area. That's the primary reason why I feel this way.

How would you suggest recommending to senior leadership to commit resources to achieve this award and what would your recommendations be? Please be specific and utilize your readings to substantiate your thoughts. Be sure to include the key elements and keys to success in regards to total quality. Also, discuss your thoughts in regards to where you see the direction of quality management in the 21st Century

My suggestions or recommendations to leaderships would be to commit resources to TQM or Total Quality Management in order to effectively increase our organizations' Chances of winning the Malcolm Baldrige Award.

My thoughts on Quality Management in the 21st Century TQM or total quality management isn't the only framework for quality management. There's also Six Sigma. It's more common for larger organizations to use Six Sigma as a Substitute for TQM in the 201st Century Six Sigma involves defining problems and objectives, measuring efficiency, productivity and rate of success or errors and analysing the status quo of the manufacturing process and how it can be improved upon and finally charting out and implementing a plan to improve and create an excellent system of business and operational control to achieve those objectives