Baldrige and ISO 90001? They can’t be twins. They’re different animals.
When ISO 9000 was first released as an international standard in 1987, it was not without an American competitor: the national Malcolm Baldrige Award. Though ostensibly not intended to compete with ISO 9001, Baldrige did compete with ISO 9001. Baldrige has been hindering an understanding of ISO 9001 and how to apply it since the nearly simultaneous release of these two quality initiatives in the late 80s. Born nearly at the same time, it seems quality professionals often treat them as twins.
DIFFERENT ANIMALS
Baldrige Award criteria and ISO 9001 requirements are two entirely different animals. Baldrige and ISO 9001 have different scopes, objectives, and focuses, and they are not intended to be applied in the same way. ISO 9001 is focused upon quality management. Baldrige is focused upon organizational excellence.
The concept of ‘process’ itself appears to be used slightly differently between the two. ISO 9001 does not identify or describe processes needed for a QMS, yet Baldrige appears to identify and describe processes needed for organizational excellence. It seems that because Baldrige purports to convey processes needed for organizational excellence, Baldrige practitioners read ISO 9001 as if ISO 9001 tells organizations what processes are needed for a quality management system (QMS).
Consequently, Baldrige practitioners commonly regard ISO 9001 as being inadequate. This reflects a common misunderstanding of the intent and purpose of ISO 9001 and how it differs from that of Baldrige. ISO 9001 merely establishes audit criteria for assessing QMSs. ISO 9001 does not define QMSs, management does. On the other hand, Baldrige criteria are established to both define organizational excellence in a sense, and to serve as examination criteria.
Criticizing ISO 9001 for not being more like Baldrige is like criticizing a cat for not being more like a dog. It suggests a poor understanding of the inherent differences between these two animals. A cat isn’t supposed to be a dog.
PERFECTLY TIMED TRAIN WRECK
Malcolm Baldrige was Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of Commerce. Baldrige warned President Reagan that as the global economy finds its balance, American manufacturing might not do well. Why? Quality. Other nations seemed to have a better handle on quality. For example, Japan’s automobiles and consumer electronics were often perceived to be of superior quality than their American counterparts. Before Baldrige could act further upon his ideas about quality improvement, his life was cut short by a rodeo accident in 1987.
That same year, ISO 9001 was poised for release. It was no secret. America had a delegation sitting upon the committee drafting the standard. But, just ahead of the release of ISO 9001, Ronald Reagan enacted the National Malcolm Baldrige Quality Improvement Act of 1987. The criteria for the award were not immediately available in 1987, but the funding for this national award was released. The criteria for the Baldrige Award were released after ISO 9001 was released. The Baldrige criteria were, of course, based upon different principles and conveyed different models and was touted to be better than ISO 9001. It’s not better, it’s just different.
DIFFERENT SCOPE, FOCUS AND APPLICATION
ISO 9001 has a different scope than Baldrige. ISO 9001 is focused upon management of processes responsible for quality, in an effort to control product quality. Baldrige extends beyond that, which is fine, but we need to get quality straight first before going beyond. America’s leadership in the ISO 9001 arena seems to have failed to understand the process approach of ISO 9001 perhaps in part due to an effort to infuse organizational excellence into a standard focused upon quality assurance.
Baldrige applicants speak to, or address the established criteria. Baldrige-style applications reflect the structure of the criteria, written in response to the criteria questions.
From NIST’s Baldrige site (http://www.nist.gov/baldrige/publications/business_nonprofit_criteria.cfm ):
The Criteria are a set of questions about seven critical aspects of managing and performing as an organization:
- Leadership.
- Strategic planning.
- Customer focus.
- Measurement, analysis, and knowledge management.
- Workforce focus.
- Operations focus.
- Results.
These questions work together as a unique, integrated performance management framework. Answering the questions helps you
- Align your resources.
- Identify strengths and opportunities for improvement.
- improve communication, productivity, and effectiveness.
- Achieve your strategic goals.
So the criteria questions themselves “work together as a unique, integrated performance management framework.” They work together as a management framework.
However, this is, and never was, the way ISO 9001 was intended to be applied. ISO 9001 requirements do not provide or suggest a management framework, nor a quality management framework, beyond the process and system models presented in ISO 9000 and ISO 9001. These are based upon Plan-Do-Chck-Act (PDCA) (see ISO 9001:2008, 0.2).
In the ISO 9001 world, the management framework for a QMS is provided by organizational management, not by ISO 9001 (and not by Baldrige). ISO 9001 was never a model to be imitated by organizations. Organizations were never supposed to write documentation in response to ISO 9001 requirements, as they are to address the Baldrige criteria. Organizations were never supposed to look to ISO 9001 to identify their own organizational processes affecting quality.
Organizations using ISO 9001 certification status to select suppliers are concerned with a supplier’s ability to meet the organizations’ product requirements. These organizations are primarily concerned with receiving good, timely product. Certification to ISO 9001 suggests a system is in place to assure timely delivery of good product. That is the focus of ISO 9001.
A QMS is designed to output quality product, quality product being defined by the requirements of customers and other interested parties (e.g., end users of the product, or any concerned regulatory agencies). ISO 9001 is designed to assess any QMS’s ability to meet all such requirements. Organizations using ISO 9001 to select suppliers may not be primarily interested, or interested at all, as to whether a supplier is an excellent organization by Baldrige criteria (i.e., the supplier gives back to its community, its employees are empowered and satisfied, etc.). The primary concern lies with getting good product.
On the other hand, the focus of Baldrige exceeds ISO 9001’s scope of assessing organizations’ ability to meet requirements—requirements arising from various parties interested with quality—to addressing demands arising from parties interested in excellence. Though concerns of all parties may impact a QMS, and they may be addressed by a QMS to some degree, much of organizational excellence lies outside the scope of a QMS.
If using a Venn Diagram, organizational excellence would be the larger circle containing the smaller circle that is the QMS. It doesn’t make sense to cram organizational excellence into a QMS. A QMS is not designed to output organizational excellence; it is designed to output quality product.
QUALITY MODELS COLLIDE
Though ISO 9001 says to identify or determine QMS processes, it does not go on to tell us what those processes are. It tells us the requirements pertaining to QMSs and the processes needed for QMSs. Management determines these processes. From a quality management / ISO 9001 perspective, the processes in question are those having either a direct hand in processing product (core processes), or have a defined supporting role to enable the core processes to operate effectively and efficiently (support processes).
Together, these processes compose a QMS. From the perspective of ISO 9001, the idea is to manage all QMS processes toward effectiveness and improvement. Focus is primarily on the processes already under management, processes needed to output quality product.
On the other hand, the Baldrige criteria describe what processes are needed for organizational excellence. Many of these processes do not belong in a QMS based upon processes involved with product quality. Including processes needed for organizational excellence within definition of a QMS complicates and confuses definition of that QMS.
For example, from the Baldrige website [http://www.baldrige21.com/BALDRIGE_GLOSSARY/BN/Work_Processes.html], Baldrige identifies organizational key processes: “This achievement level is based on four factors that can be evaluated for each of an organization’s key processes: Approach, Deployment, Learning, and Integration.”
It’s unclear how these four key processes identified by Baldrige criteria are supposed to resolve into a system of QMS processes determined by management per ISO 9001.
I hope the above issues will be finally resolved with the issuance of ISO 9001 – 2015. It’a about time.
Bio:
T. D. (“Dan”) Nelson is a quality management consultant, author, and trainer specializing in the process approach, ISO 9001, and related sector schemes. Dan has roughly 20 years of experience with ISO 9000 and over 15 years’ experience with the process approach. Dan holds an MA in Business Administration from the University of Iowa. Dan can be reached at:
dan@tdnelson.com
319.210.2642